SIMON TRPČESKI

The Chamber Music Cycle of Auditorio de Tenerife is offering this piano recital by the Macedonian musician Simon Trpčeski.

This programme tackles the wealth of composition for piano through classical forms, especially variations, where melodic invention achieves its greatest expressive intensity. With the eight variations on Come un agnello, Mozart pays tribute to the Italian musician Giuseppe Sarti, taking a theme from one of his operas and turning it into a great fantasia. Beethoven also finds variations to be a form of expression of great richness, where, along with the fugue, they were to be the forms he would most frequently use in his final works. His variations for piano on a Russian dance from the ballet Das Waldmädchen by Paul Wranitzky, stand out for their expressive power and their metric irregularities;  and the 32 variations on an original theme, written in 1806, constitute, in a certain way, a kind of demonstration of the technique of variation based on thematic material whose energy is fully concentrated, melodically and harmonically. The theme is in the style of a chaconne and each of the variations is linked with the following until it reaches the last, where it acquires the feel of free improvisation.

Another one of the great classical forms, the sonata has a representation in this recital through the work of S. Prokofiev. He fully exploited its possibilities by giving the form back its nobility with a harmonic density. Additionally, he incorporated a powerful and engine-like articulation which is very characteristic of his piano style. His sonata no. 7 is probably the most famous of the nine he wrote. The piece was written in 1932 and concluded in the Caucasus during the World War II. At the time, Prokofiev was fleeing from the terrors of war. The composition has an innate sense of anguish that runs throughout its three movements, which can be chilling at times. Its rhythmic precision expresses momentum and terror, while still maintaining an intense lyricism, which can be unsettling. This provides a contained calm that is almost threatened by the momentum and ardent virtuosity that permeates the entire work. On the other hand, although with a different freshness and lightness in the harmonic language, the arrangement for piano that the composer, pianist and orchestra composer, Mikhail Pletnev produced in the nineties of the famous Suite from the ballet The Nutcracker by Tchaikovsky matches that rhythmic precision of Prokofiev mentioned before, as a result of the clarity in the articulation and fidelity in the language when it comes to transcribing what is probably one of the most popular ballets in the history of music.