Pierre-Laurent Aimard Makes Mostly Mozart Festival Debut on August 9 and 10 as Both Conductor and Soloist

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performing with Chamber Orchestra of Europe in Programs of Haydn, Mozart, Ligeti and Stockhausen

Pierre-Laurent Aimard assumes the roles of pianist and conductor when he makes his long-anticipated Mostly Mozart debut at Lincoln Center on August 9 and 10 with the Chamber Orchestra of Europe (also making its Mostly Mozart debut). The extraordinary French musician balances two Viennese classics by Haydn and Mozart with a modern masterpiece in each evening’s program. For the first concert the new work is Gyorgy Ligeti’s Chamber Concerto for 13 Instruments. This concert, part of the “Lincoln Center 50 Years” celebration, will mark the first time the music of Ligeti – the Hungarian master who died in 2006 – is performed at Mostly Mozart. The following evening, Aimard will explore Karlheinz Stockhausen’s chamber work Kontra-Punkte with members of the orchestra.

Aimard wanted each program to feature a seminal work by Haydn, a Mozart piano concerto, and a newer work, all of which demonstrate prominent common themes of rhythm, time, and counterpoint. Haydn and Mozart both used the forms of their time and included comic twists or humorous games of musical manipulation in these pieces. These techniques appear in the work of many contemporary composers, including Ligeti.

Aimard, who has performed and recorded much of Ligeti’s fiendishly difficult music, including the Chamber Concerto and the piano etudes, opens the first concert with Haydn’s D major “Clock” symphony, followed by the F major Mozart piano concerto, K. 459, which he conducts from the keyboard. For the next evening’s concert, Aimard leads Haydn’s “Farewell” Symphony and Stockhausen’s Kontra-Punkte before returning to the keyboard to play and conduct Mozart’s Piano Concerto No.17 in G major, K.453. Aimard recently completed the first of three years that he will spend as artistic director of England ’s esteemed Aldeburgh Festival. His programming and performances received virtually unanimous praise. In the U.S, the Chicago Tribune, one of many U.S. newspapers that have applauded his recent work, wrote: “The brilliant French pianist boldly goes where few, if any, of his colleagues have gone before.” Aimard’s Mostly Mozart Festival concert details

Sunday, August 9, 2009 at 5:00pm
Pierre-Laurent Aimard, conductor and pianist (Mostly Mozart debut)
Alice Tully Hall, Starr Theater
Chamber Orchestra of Europe (Mostly Mozart debut)
Haydn: Symphony No.101 in D major ("The Clock")
Ligeti: Chamber Concerto for 13 Instruments
Mozart: Piano Concerto No.19 in F major, K.459

Monday, August 10, 2009 at 7:30pm
Pierre-Laurent Aimard, conductor and pianist
Alice Tully Hall, Starr Theater
Chamber Orchestra of Europe
Haydn: Symphony No.45 in F-sharp minor (“Farewell”)
Stockhausen: Kontra-Punkte
Mozart: Piano Concerto No.17 in G major, K.453

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