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EKATERINA BONYUSHKINA
Beethoven, Brahms, Schumann, Kapustin
It was at the age of 22 that Beethoven set foot in Vienna, establishing his reputation as a virtuoso pianist. It is also the age of Ekaterina Bonyushkina, 2024 alumna of the Verbier Festival Academy, who reunites with us for a recital devoted to German Romantic music and the jazzy Variations by Ukrainian pianist Nikolai Kapustin.
Programme
LUDWIG VAN BEETHOVEN (1770-1827)
Variations and Fugue in E-flat major Op. 35 “Eroica Variations”
JOHANNES BRAHMS (1833-1897)
Klavierstücke Op. 119
Interval
ROBERT SCHUMANN (1810-1856)
Fantasie in C major Op. 17
NIKOLAI KAPUSTIN (1937-2020)
Variations Op. 41
Distribution
- Ekaterina Bonyushkina piano
The Eroica Variations, composed a year before the Symphony of the same name, set the tone: more than a simple sequence of variations using different compositional techniques, they unfold a veritable drama, from questioning murmurs to virtuoso, liberating fireworks.
Brahms’s Klavierstücke Op. 119, on the other hand, are the last murmurs of the old and at the time sick composer at the piano. This is a far cry from the young prodigy who brought the whole of Vienna to its knees before the insolence of his genius. Two very interior lullabies precede a short Scherzo, before a final Rhapsody concludes the Brahmsian piano adventure in a symphonic apotheosis. Schumann’s Fantasy, with its typical Sturm und Drang tremors, tells a very different story: that of a young man of twenty-six who makes a burning declaration of love to the young Clara Wieck, whose hand he had been refused. The Variations by Kapustin, one of the greatest jazzmen of the former USSR, a virtuoso pianist trained by the same teacher as Horowitz, are finally played by the young Ekaterina Bonyushkina, whose strength of character was needed to interpret their boundless fantasy.