Afternoon in Paris: Cork PianoFest Recital Series

Music by Chaminade, Debussy, Boulanger, Lewis and Porter
Anna Xaubet Piferrer, Laura McLaughlin, Maryia Vasiljeva and Aaron Russ

This programme takes us on a voyage through the City of Light, beginning with beautiful character pieces for piano duet by Cécile Chaminade and two movements from Claude Debussy’s Suite Bergamasque including one of his most popular and enduring works, ‘Clair de lune’. Lili Boulanger was only twenty when she wrote this set of variations on an original theme, though tragically she died only four years later from tuberculosis having suffered from ill health throughout her life. She was the first female composer to win the prestigious Prix de Rome in 1913, coincidentally the same year that Chaminade became the first female composer to be awarded the Légion d’Honneur. The programme concludes with two American impressions of Paris, by the jazz pianist John Lewis and the celebrated songwriter Cole Porter, who spent several years living in the French capital and whose first hit Broadway show was entitled ‘Paris’.