NZ Herald Premier Series: Boléro

Conductor: Kazuki Yamada
Piano: Louis Schwizgebel

Arvo Pärt: Fratres
Bartók: Music for Strings, Percussion and Celeste
Ravel: Piano Concerto in G
Ravel: Boléro

Meditative, timeless, unutterably beautiful, Pärt’s Fratres is something that seems to exist outside of this world.

Bartók inhaled the essence of Hungarian folk music and from it made his own language. In the Music for Strings, Percussion and Celeste, we have the mysterious sounds of a moonlit night and the rustic energy of a village dance.

Ravel’s featherweight concerto is infused with the essence of jazz, but it is jazz through a very Ravellian filter. Then, an endlessly repeated rhythm, a sinuously feline melody, an imperceptible but implacable crescendo: it is the most hypnotic piece in the business, Ravel’s always-exhilarating Boléro.