Tim Horton’s showcase solo piano recital will be at Kettle’s Yard in Cambridge on Thursday 16th March.
His programme focuses on contemporary works that “look to the past for answers to the future”. Thomas Adès pays homage to Chopin in his Three Mazurkas, Op. 27, while Julian Philips’s Barcarola transports the audience to an intimate 19th-century salon, but with a modern and somewhat unsettling take on the tradition of the ‘boat song’. Helen Grime’s 10 Miniatures throw new light on a form that has been popular amongst composers for centuries, as she explores the idea of transforming material in unusual ways, each mini character piece based on some small fragment of what came before.
Tim’s concert will conclude with Pierre Boulez’s Piano Sonata No. 2, an extraordinary masterpiece of intense expression from the late 1940s, Boulez’s self-professed attempt to “destroy” the traditional formal structure of a piano sonata. The piece is full of dense counterpoint and is permeated by what Boulez described as an “explosive, disintegrating and dispersive character”.
Tim Horton adds:
“I’m always interested in how new music relates to its past, either as a positive engagement or a conscious breaking with it.
This programme ranges from Thomas Adès’ homage to Chopin and Szymanowski and Julian Philips’ contemporary take on the worlds of Chopin and Fauré to Boulez’s deliberate and, at times, violent refutation of past forms. Before this there is Helen Grimes’ Ten Miniatures in which each piece relates to its predecessor and whose title, to my mind at least, harks back once again to nineteenth century forms.”
Tickets are available via the Kettle’s Yard website, with £5 tickets available for students. Doors open at 7:30pm for the 8pm concert on Thursday 16th March.
Tim Horton | Music at Kettle’s Yard: Cambridge | Thu 16 March | 8:00pm
Thomas Adès: Three Mazurkas, op. 27
Julian Philips: Barcarola
Helen Grime: 10 Miniatures
Pierre Boulez: Second Piano Sonata