In this concert, the Japanese pianist Takahiro Yoshikawa proposes to Limenmusic’s audience two wonderful pieces.

The first, Trois mouvements de Petrouchka, is an arrangement for piano from the ballet Petrouchka, written by Igor Stravinsky for his friend, pianist Arthur Rubinstein, and dedicated to him.
After finished the musics for the ballet The Firebird, Stravinsky had already in mind a new picture: a “conflict” between a puppet and the orchestra, till the collapse of the puppet. Then he decided to call him Petrouchka, like a Russian traditional puppet made of straw and with a bag of sawdust as body, but who comes to life and starts to develop emotions.
Serge Diaghilev, founder of Ballets Russes, recognised the possibility of developing this opus into a stage work, thus the Petrouchka became a ballet performed for the first time a Paris in 1911 at Théâtre du Châtelet.
Ten years later, Stravinsky composed Trois mouvements de Petrouchka for the solo piano, for his friend Arthur Rubinstein, with the aim of compose a score which would be essentially pianistic even though its musical material was drawn directly from the ballet.

The other piece, Pavane pour une infante défunte, is a solo piano work composed by Maurice Ravel in 1899, during his studies at the Conservatoire de Paris, under the guidance of the French composer Gabriel Fauré, and dedicated to his parton, the Princesse the Polignac.
This is an evocation of a pavane, a slow processional dance widespread in Europe in 16th century, that a little princess might have danced at the Spanish court.

Enjoy!!!!