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In aid of The Amber Trust, a charity whose vision is for blind and partially sighted children, including those with additional disabilities, to have the best possible chance to meet their musical needs and aspirations and fulfil their potential.
James Lisney’s …petits concerts take their title from the annual series of recitals given by Charles Alkan at the Erard Showroom in Paris during the 1870s. Johann Sebastian Bach travelled to Potsdam in 1747 to meet with King Frederick the Great. During his visit, he improvised a three-voice fugue on a theme of the King’s devising, later developing the music into the Musical Offering. Given that Bach extemporised upon the newly developed Silbermann fortepiano, the Ricercar a 3 can justifiably be regarded as the first significant work for the piano. James Lisney’s musical offerings centre upon Beethoven’s three final sonatas, one of music’s great spiritual journeys, written when the composer was turning fifty years old and occupied with the Missa Solemnis. This transcendent, dramatic, lyrical, and ultimately communicative music is prefaced by complementary preludes by Bach, Chopin and Shostakovich. Myra Hess was a peerless interpreter of Beethoven’s final sonatas and her transcription of Bach’s chorale prelude Jesu bleibet meinen Freude (from the Advent cantata Herz und Mund and Tat und Leben) is the perfect way to mark her passing sixty years ago on November 25th. |
ProgrammeFryderyk Chopin
Prelude, Op.45 Ludwig van Beethoven Sonata, Op.109 Dmitri Shostakovich Two Preludes, Op.34 Ludwig van Beethoven Sonata, Op.110 Johann Sebastian Bach Ricercar a 3 (Musical Offering) Ludwig van Beethoven Sonata, Op.111 Johann Sebastian Bach “Jesu, Joy of Man’s Desiring”, arr. Dame Myra Hess |
Lisney...made of these sonatas a phoenix, boundlessly expressing a glorious rebirth of Beethoven’s creativity, re-animating the very phrases of his musical processes in all their enchanting, mercurial, forceful, kaleidoscopic variety – brusque and blunt, longing and tender, ineffable and sublime. One felt that all emotions human-beings had ever felt were incomparably here – and, further, some that had been felt only by this extraordinary man and, maybe, just a few others. Lisney gave us a journey of the soul.
The Classical Source
The Amber Trust
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At The Amber Trust, we believe that vision impairment and other disabilities should not prevent children and young people accessing appropriate musical opportunities.
The Amber Trust was founded in 1995 with the aim to provide blind and partially sighted children, including those with additional disabilities, the best possible chance to meet their musical needs and aspirations. We have grown to become the only national charity dedicated to supporting vision impaired children with their musical development and education. We aim to enhance the lives of as many of the 29,000 vision impaired children in the UK as possible through music, and to promote high quality music provision. |
James Lisney |
James Lisney website
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James Lisney enjoys a rich musical life, moving seamlessly from concerto and recital soloist to chamber musician, song accompanist and pianist director. Initiatives, such as his Schubertreise series at London’s Southbank Centre, his extensive Beethoven Project or the recording company Woodhouse Editions, provide a platform for his wide-ranging musical sympathies.
In recent years he has given Schubert cycles at the Leipzig Gewandhaus and in Mumbai; held residencies at Carnegie Recital Hall, New York and the Amsterdam Concertgebouw; and he has recently completed a survey of the late music of Haydn, Beethoven, Schubert and Chopin at St George’s, Bristol. His recent and upcoming diary includes performances in France, Belgium, the Netherlands and the Czech Republic. |