Antonio Pappano/Vadym Kholodenko - Debussy: Nocturnes, Busoni: Piano Concert

The Director of the Accademia di Santa Cecilia Antonio Pappano returns to the Auditorium Parco della Musica with two masterpieces of music from the late 19th and early 20th centuries: Claude Debussy’s Three Nocturnes, with their fluctuating sound lines, and the singular and complex Concert for Piano, Male Choir and Orchestra by Ferruccio Busoni, with the famous Ukrainian pianist Vadym Kholodenko, winner of the 2013 van Cliburn Competition.

The Nocturnes, also known as Trois Nocturnes, are an impressionist composition in three movements, for female choir and orchestra, written by Debussy between 1897 and 1899, which is based on poems from the Poèmes anciens et romanesques of 1890, by the poet Henri de Régnier. The latter was a symbolist poet and his poems contain vivid images and associations of dreamlike ideas; Debussy, following these suggestions, gave life to a composition in a musical tempo where the form appears constructed, so to speak, with the movement of sound surfaces with iridescent colors, with mutable timbric-harmonic nuances.

While Busoni's Piano Concert in C major, Op. 39, is one of the most important compositions ever written in this genre. First performed in 1904, it is structured in five movements – instead of the traditional three movements – performed without interruption; in the final movement the male choir sings words from Adam Gottlob Oehlenschläger's verse drama Aladdin. An imposing work, this concerto blends together the characteristics of the concert form with different models and styles of previous works. The extreme rigor of the formal conception, of a “German” imprint, is combined with typically “Italian” melodic and rhythmic elements, among which three popular songs stand out. 

Orchestra and Chorus of the Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia; chorus master Andrea Secchi.

Photo credits: the Auditorium Parco della Musica official site