hélène grimaud

Hélène Grimaud, one of the most poetical pianists of our time, will come to Andermatt to present a whole evening full of miniatures with fleeting moments that echo on.

Her programme comprises works by Chopin, Satie, Debussy, Silvestrov and Schumann, miniatures that unfold a play of colours and forms as if in a kaleidoscope. These pieces utilise different means to transport the listeners – as Hélène Grimaud herself says – into a contemplative state: “transparent textures, nostalgic, melancholic moods, cyclical structures. The works are simple, or rather there is a simplicity to them; it is, in a sense, immaterial music. It serves to conjure atmospheres of fragile reflection, a mirage of what was – or what could have been”.

Chopin’s Nocturne, Debussy’s “Rêverie” and “Clair de lune” conjure up a nocturnal, dreamlike atmosphere that is disrupted by dances – such as Satie’s Gnossiennes, Silvestrov’s Bagatelles and the waltzes by Debussy and Chopin. In this manner, dreamlike, night-time states and ecstatic dance intermingle to create a feeling that Hélène Grimaud has described as follows: “The almost hypnotically measured, repetitious rhythms of the Chopin and Satie dances also remain within this contemplative, meditative frame of expression, like an endless lamentation. As if in a suspended, magical trance, we travel great distances through inner landscapes without ever bursting the spell”.

After the interval, Grimaud will play Schumann’s cycle Kreisleriana, which is a key work of the Romantic piano repertoire. Its eight movements, full of dotted rhythms and themes in which the anacrusis plays a major role, evoke associations with Baroque dance music. Karl Böhmer has aptly described the fourth movement as “a phlegmatic adagio in an extended twilight state”, and the fifth as a “fantastic dance”; the various motifs of this programme thus find their culmination in Schumann’s cycle.