French pianist Hélène Grimaud brings a virtuosic program to Meany Center, performing music from her 2018 recording, Memory. In exploring music’s ability to bring the past to life, she stirs profound emotions through the elegant simplicity of miniatures by Chopin, Debussy, Satie and Silvestrov which, in the pianist’s own words, “conjure atmospheres of fragile reflection, a mirage of what was — or what could have been.”

Music should be so transparent that one can see the bottom and that poetry shimmers through this transparency.
— Valentin Silvestrov

PROGRAM

SILVESTROV: Bagatelle I and II

SATIE: Gnossienne No. 1 and 4 

CHOPIN: Nocturne No. 19 in E Minor, Op. 72, no. 1

DEBUSSY: Clair de lune from Suite Bergamasque 

SCHUMANN: Kreisleriana Op. 16

and other works by Satie, Chopin and Debussy

President's Piano Series generously underwritten by Eric and Margaret Rothchild