05 December 2017
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Paul Lewis
On Tuesday 23 January 2018, Paul Lewis returns to the Royal Festival Hall to perform as part of the International Piano Series.
On Tuesday 23 January 2018, Paul Lewis returns to the Royal Festival Hall to perform as part of the International Piano Series. In the first of four recitals exploring the music of Haydn, Beethoven and Brahms, Lewis performs Haydn’s Sonata in C major and Sonata in G major, Beethoven’s 6 Bagatelles and Brahms’s 6 Klavierstücke. Lewis’s cycle continues at the International Piano Series on Tuesday 5 June 2018, and he will perform the final two programmes next season.
Beethoven has been central to Lewis’s life for many years. Brahms is a more recent presence in his programmes, while Haydn stands as a significant new repertoire addition. Lewis describes how he was drawn to Haydn by the composer’s passion for the absurd, but how falling in love with Brahms’s music was a long, slow process; “I felt with Brahms that the expression was locked in to the craft, that the craft was everything. Now that I’m in my 40s, I’ve come to love that paradox.”
Watch Lewis play Beethoven's Concerto No 3 with the Hallé Orchestra, from the 2010 BBC Proms:
Lewis has chosen to complete the programmes with Beethoven to offer a link with the quirkiness and humour of Haydn, while some of the later Bagatelles point towards what was to come with Brahms. “The more you become immersed in the works of one composer, the more variety you discover,” observes Lewis. “Although these programmes are about the parallels and connections between three different composers – Haydn, Beethoven and Brahms – they really feel like a single body of work.”
Paul Lewis is co-Artistic Director of the Leeds International Piano Competition. Read his interview inside Pianist issue 94, still available as a digital issue.
Tuesday 23 January 2018
Haydn Sonata in C major Hob XVI/50
Beethoven 6 Bagatelles Op.126
Brahms 6 Klavierstücke Op.118
Haydn Sonata in G major Hob XVI/40
Tuesday 5 June 2018
Beethoven 11 Bagatelles Op.119
Haydn Sonata in E flat Hob XVI/49
Haydn Sonata in B minor Hob XVI/32
Brahms 4 Klavierstücke Op.119
Book tickets here at INTERNATIONAL PIANO SERIES
