Solo Concert by Bianka Szauer & Olivér Joakim Pajor Presented by Liszt Academy

Bianka Szauer and Olivér Pajor are outstanding talents of their generation, both achieving remarkable results in numerous international and domestic competitions. As part of the Talent Obliges series, they will perform a joint solo concert, which will also feature a chamber music piece: Maurice Ravel’s Introduction and Allegro, originally written for string quartet, flute, clarinet, and harp. The concert will begin with a piece from Jean-Philippe Rameau’s Nouvelles suites de pièces de clavecin (New Suites of Harpsichord Pieces), which was likely published in 1728, and embodies the elegance and dignity of the French Grand Baroque style. This will be followed by a contemporary work for harp, composed in 2002 by Philippe Hersant, a French composer. Bianka Szauer will also perform a piece by Henriette Renié, a contemporary of Ravel and one of the greatest harp virtuosos and teachers of her time. Olivér Pajor will complete the French musical panorama with two pieces by Debussy: the composer’s final piano work, which was written as a thank you to a coal merchant during the deprivation of World War I (its title is a line from a Charles Baudelaire poem, translated as “Evenings Illuminated by the Heat of Coal”), and the three-movement Estampes. The evening will conclude with a grandiose sonata by George Enescu, a 20th-century Romanian composer. The technical challenges of this piece are as demanding for the performer as the slowly unfolding musical processes it contains.