Art against division and hatred. PIANOFEST2 – CONCERT 1: Christos Yiallouros on May 31

LMS presents PIANOFEST2, a piano festival featuring four virtuoso Cypriot pianists, Christos Yiallouros, Andreas Ioannides, George Mannouris and Nicolas Costantinou.

Music interpreters, in their capacity as universal performing artists, have always served as ambassadors of transnational artistic creation. Through their performances, they communicate to audiences an endless and diverse spectrum of meanings and messages, which, in its totality, ranks as the gateway to understanding human existence.

As a deed of altruism, music sets the conditions for mutual understanding, solidarity, empathy and love. Works that once emerged from the inherent need for personal expression, and which constituted catalysts for spiritual uplift, now offer a glimmer of hope that humans will ultimately coexist. By contrast, works, which were originally intended to awaken national sentiment, have come to operate as bridges of familiarity and communication between different cultures and peoples.

During their lifetime, many composers were severely criticized, if not persecuted, for the messages they sought to convey, precisely because the power of their music was regarded as a threat to the regime.

Have you ever wondered what the Six Partitas of the German Johann Sebastian Bach would have been like without the influence of the French clavecinistes, what meaning the works of the Hungarian Franz Liszt would have had without the influence of Italian art, or, even, what kind of dialectic the Russian Sergei Rachmaninoff would have infused into his works without the influence of the Polish Chopin—and what style would Constantinos Y. Stylianou’s Préludes have without the example of the French Claude Debussy and the inspiration drawn from the works of such visual artists as the Dutch Piet Mondrian, the English J. M. W. Turner, the Swiss Alberto Giacometti or the Portuguese Paula Rego?

LMS and the four distinguished pianists of PIANOFEST2 resist vehemently any form of division and alienation, and insist on promoting these timeless values in the furtherance of a better and more peaceful state of affairs, within which humanity may prosper in harmony.

You are invited to support an effort and stand up against all kinds of division and hatred, and for the preservation of peace and love.

Art unites

Bach: Partita No. 6 in E minor, BWV 830
Economou: Eight Nocturnes
Liszt: Deux Légendes [Two Legends], S. 175
Dutilleux: Piano Sonata, Op. 1

PIANOFEST2 is inaugurated by Christos Yiallouros, with a unique and varied programme. The young pianist, who is giving his first professional solo recital in Cyprus, studied at the Royal Academy of Music in London. Christos enjoys performing works from the baroque period, contemporary music, as well as lesser-known repertoire. He also frequently collaborates with multimedia and animation artists.

The Six Partitas hold a special place in the work of Johann Sebastian Bach, as they constitute the first collection of works whose publication Bach himself financed in 1731. It is a kind of instrumental suite, consisting of linked sections or movements of stylized contemporary dances. Technically demanding, the Six Partitas are some of the most sublime instrumental compositions Bach ever composed. The Partita in E minor is the last in the set, and the last suite that Bach composed.

Nicolas Economou composed his Eight Nocturnes in the 1970s and early 1980s. He recorded them sometime in the 1980s without having notated them first, a task that was undertaken by the German musicologist Reiner Starzonek posthumously. The Nocturnes are characterized by dark colours and dynamic juxtapositions, and are charged with intense and contrasting emotions.

Liszt’s Deux Légendes, written in 1863, are based on legends concerning the Italian saints, St. Francis of Assisi and St. Francis of Paola. These works are set against a narrative background and are two of the composer’s finest examples of conjuring up natural imagery at the keyboard: the first through its delicate imitation of the chirping of birds, and the second through its vivid description of a storm at sea.

The programme concludes with the Piano Sonata, Op. 1 (1946–8), by the French Henri Dutilleux. This is an extensive work in which the composer managed to move away from the Ravelian influence that plagued much of French music in the 1930s and early 1940s, and extolled a “sensual, not too dry” pianism.