concert nr 59 / AROUND THE WORLD IN 60 MINUTES

About

Le tour du monde en miniature – Alexandre Tansman’s cycle of piano miniatures is the result of a journey the composer undertook in 1932–1933. He visited the United States, Hawaii, Japan, China, the Philippines, Indonesia, India, Ceylon (currently Sri Lanka) and Egypt. All of these locations, as well as Naples, the last movement in the cycle, have been depicted with sound. Each miniature, however, is not just a musical impression of a given location, but also a presentation of various musical means of expression, such as the ostinato (a continuously repeated melodic figure), intervallic modelling (building a miniature using a specified number of intervals) or irregular placement of accents in a measure.

Claude Debussy is considered to be the first of musical impressionists. His works are steeped in ideas of this movement in art. despite a uniformity of style, every one of Debussy’s compositions is unique, presenting something different to the listener. The Piano Trio in G major was written when the composer was 18 years old. Even though it is still reminiscent of the Romantic period, the Trio is quite adventurous harmonically and aspects of colour play an important role.