Karina Canellakis and Pierre-Laurent Aimard

Please note! There are two concerts: at 1 pm and at 3.15 pm

Karina Canellakis and Pierre-Laurent Aimard.

Karina Canellakis and Pierre-Laurent Aimard perform Bartók's Third Piano Concerto, alongside a new work by Yannis Kyriakides and Stravinsky's intriguing ballet Agon.

Stravinsky's style experiment Agon

With The Firebird, Petrushka and Le sacre du printemps, Igor Stravinsky proved himself as a ballet composer early on in his career. But he kept searching for new possibilities within the genre. The differences between Les noces, Pulcinella, Le baiser de la fée and Orpheus already seem huge. In the 1950s, the Russian, who had emigrated to America, made Agon in collaboration with the choreographer George Balanchine. It was a very daring stylistic experiment: tonality, chromaticism and elements of Webern's twelve-tone technique, modern ballet, canons and even Renaissance 'bransles' come together. And the music continues to dance throughout all fifteen minuscule particles.

Pierre-Laurent Aimard plays Bartók

As you glide along in the notes of Béla Bartók's fairly romantic-classical Third Piano Concerto, you almost lose your way in the extremely slow movement, Andante religioso, in which every note is essential. In an undoubtedly exciting new work, the Cypriot-Dutch Yannis Kyriakides - he will receive the prestigious Johan Wagenaar Prize from the Municipality of The Hague on December 12 - mixes the voices of Silbersee with those of Karina Canellakis' Radio Philharmonic Orchestra and electronics.