LE PIANO FRANÇAIS

In her program LE PIANO FRANÇAIS, Oni Buchanan delves into the expansive artistry of French composers, through the fantastic wealth and variation of their works for solo piano. “Le Piano Français” spans more than three centuries of music, from the early Baroque keyboard works of François Couperin, through the high romanticism of Gabriel Fauré, the impressionistic sounds of Debussy and Ravel, the quasi-mechanics of Poulenc, and the synaesthetic shimmer of Messiaen.

Thematically, the program explores the abundant connections between the composers and their chosen musical inspirations. In addition to Couperin’s Nightingale in Love, we also hear from the Oiseaux Tristes (sad birds) of Ravel and La Colombe (the dove) of Messiaen, a bird work preceding or perhaps presaging his lifetime work of transcribing birdsong. In Debussy’s Japanese-inflected Pagodes and in the solemn tollings of Ravel’s Valley of the Bells, we hear panoramic landscapes layered with cross-rhythms ringing in the breeze. Exploring sounds of other countries and other eras, Ravel and Debussy both offer works employing a Spanish musical vocabulary, while Fauré’s Nocturne seems almost medieval in its sonic choices, evoking images of ancient armor, abandoned castles, and cobwebbed passageways. This haunted loneliness is revisited in Ravel’s Une barque sur l'océan (A Boat on the Ocean) and again in Messaien’s Chant d'extase dans un paysage triste (Ecstatic Song in a Sad Landscape). But humor also abounds, from the ridiculous melodrama of Couperin’s Plaintive Songbirds and the frantic scurrying of his Frightened Linnet, to the boisterous final movement of Poulenc’s Mouvements Perpetuels, to the tumbling spectacle of the jester in Ravel’s Alborada del gracioso as he amuses us all with his effortless acrobatics.

Piano works to be performed on LE PIANO FRANÇAIS program include:

Couperin, set of works from Pièces de Clavecin
Fauré, Nocturne in Eb minor, Op. 33, No. 1
Messiaen, Preludes (selection)
Debussy, Estampes
Poulenc, Mouvements Perpetuels
Ravel, Miroirs