Nelson Goerner

Welcome to the 20th Klarafestival!

Under the title We Are Now, this special anniversary edition pays tribute to the here and now. No one embraces the magic of the moment more fearlessly than festival artist Patricia Kopatchinskaja. Wherever and whatever she plays, this Moldovan violinist and composer sets the stage alight. For her, every concert is a new beginning, a full moment in which anything can happen. Klarafestival 2025 paints a multifaceted portrait of Patricia Kopatchinskaja as a violinist, composer and inspiring presence.

In honour of our 20th anniversary, we are launching a new tradition: for one day, Mont des Arts will be transformed into the Muziekberg /Mont des Musiques. Alongside concerts and performances at various venues, a new ensemble will also see the light. Sound of Brussels Orchestra goes in search of the exceptional sound of our capital.

We live in challenging times, and some of the festival projects reflect on this. At the same time, they demonstrate how much hope can lurk between the notes of a Stabat Mater or a Dies Irae. How music can move and inspire us. For Patricia Kopatchinskaja, music is no abstract matter: ‘Music is there for us to do something with it. Even when it has no concrete message or function, it appeals to us. It wants to be heard. I don't believe in absolute music. Not really.'

Let the celebration begin!

Joost Fonteyne, intendant
Jan Raes, chairman
Chantal Pattyn, network manager

Each in their own way, Franz Liszt, Claude Debussy, and Maurice Ravel conjured entire worlds from the keyboard. These composers were pioneers in their quest for new musical expression, harmonic innovation, and virtuosity.

The recital by the Argentine pianist Nelson Goerner aligns with the recent release of his twelfth recording on Alpha Classics, dedicated to the piano works of Franz Liszt. By placing highlights from the piano repertoire of Ravel and Debussy alongside those of Liszt, the works come to life. For example, shadows of Debussy’s impressionistic sounds can be found in Liszt’s visionary harmonies, while Ravel’s refined, coloristic writing style would be unthinkable without Liszt’s infamous virtuosity.

Ravel’s ode to the past
When you ask someone about Maurice Ravel’s (1875–1937) most popular musical works, Boléro, M. 81, tops the list, followed by Pavane pour une infante défunte, M. 19. According to Ravel, the Pavane from 1899 ‘evokes a pavane that a young princess [Infanta] might have danced in former times at the Spanish court.’ Ravel adopts the elegance and rhythm of the slow processional dance from the 16th and 17th centuries. He envelops the dance in a subtle, nostalgic atmosphere through impressionistic harmonies and modulations.

Just as the Pavane is a look back to a Spanish past, the eight Valses nobles et sentimentales, M. 61, from 1911, are a tribute to composer Franz Schubert (1797–1828). In 1823, Schubert had published a series of waltzes with the same title. During the performance of Ravel’s waltzes on May 9th, 1911, the title remained a secret. The concert was a musical experiment organised by the French Société musicale indépendante. The works were performed anonymously, and the audience had to guess which composer had written them. To Ravel’s disappointment, his waltzes were recognized by ‘a narrow majority.’ Other listeners thought the music had been written by Erik Satie, Charles Koechlin, Vincent d’Indy, or even Zoltán Kodály. The illustrious French names in this list are each major innovators of contemporary French music. This confusion highlights the modernity of Ravel’s Valses nobles et sentimentales.

The complex and varied dance rhythm that drives the waltz melodies is supported by bold harmonies, modal scales, and polytonality. Each of the dances is utterly unique. In the ‘Épilogue’, the final waltz, Ravel returns to themes and motifs from the preceding seven waltzes. Ravel must have greatly enjoyed composing this piece. Jokingly, he adds a quotation from poet Henri de Régnier to his suite: ‘... Le plaisir délicieux et toujours nouveau d'une occupation inutile’ (‘... The delicious and ever-new pleasure of a useless occupation’).

Debussy’s pictorial universe
‘Tout l’univers visible n’est qu’un magasin d’images et de signes auxquels l’imagination donnera une place et une valeur relative; c’est une sorte de pâture que l’imagination doit digérer et transformer.’ (‘The whole visible universe is but a storehouse of images and signs to which the imagination will give a place and a relative value; it is a kind of fodder which the imagination must digest and transform.’) This quote from The Painter of Modern Life encapsulates Charles Baudelaire’s (1821–1867) symbolic and modernist vision, a perspective that French composer Claude Debussy (1862–1918) also shares. And since Debussy ‘loves images as much as music,’ this fascination culminates in visionary works like his Images for piano. This suite of six pieces is compiled into two books in 1905 and 1907.

Image and music go hand in hand in the first movement, ‘Reflets dans l'eau’. Debussy depicts the play of light in the water through rapid arpeggios, snatches of melodies and shimmering waves of sound that never lead to a real climax. ‘Hommage à Rameau’, the second Image, is no more a copy of Schubert than Ravel’s Valses nobles et sentimentales. His homage is rather a melancholic reflection on the time of composer Jean-Philippe Rameau (1683–1764). Debussy sublimely combines the slow sarabande dance and Rameau’s baroque harmonic modal language with his own typically impressionistic parallel fourths, fifths, and chord progressions. According to Goerner, we hear here ‘Debussy at his best. The lyricism of the middle section is rare in his music. This is the page around which the entire book is organised.’ The first book of Images concludes with ‘Mouvement’. This piece reflects Debussy’s fascination with movement as an abstract concept. A constantly present ostinato in the right hand propels the music, while Debussy continuously introduces new motifs and melodies that create subtle rhythmic shifts.

Away from Paris, from their entourage, from their responsibilities... In secret, Debussy and his lover Emma Bardac traveled to the island of Jersey in 1904 for a brief vacation. How much they enjoyed their paradisiacal escape is evident in L’Isle joyeuse, a euphoric piece in which Debussy celebrates the sea. In composing it, he was likely inspired by the painting The Embarkation for Cythera by Antoine Watteau. Do we hear in the music a journey from mystery to joy? The many trills and chromatic lines evoke the excitement of departure, followed by music expressing the joyful discovery of the paradisiacal place. The sparkling scale-like figures and rhythms ultimately lead, in Goerner’s words, ‘this miracle of style, colours, and tempo, to the grand final explosion. It is a radiant piece.’

Liszt in all his facets
Liszt based his second Ballade on the eerie ballad Lenore by Gottfried Bürger. A young woman, despairing over the supposed death of her lover, is collected one night by a mysterious rider, who turns out to be death and takes her to the grave. The ballad dates from the spring of 1853, shortly after Liszt completed his Piano Sonata. Liszt subjects three contrasting themes throughout the ballad to numerous thematic transformations, allowing the listener to recognize the underlying story. The range of moods he evokes is threatening, dramatic, or very lyrical. But what especially characterizes the second Ballade is its particularly virtuosic piano playing.

This virtuosity is also the starting point of La leggierezza, a piano study that Liszt published in 1849 along with two other Études de concert. The whimsical opening bars lead to a ‘Quasi Allegretto’ in which hints to the delicate piano music of Frédéric Chopin (1810–1849) are never far away. In this study, technical virtuosity and poetic expression go hand in hand. Moreover, Liszt flirts in La leggierezza with the impressionism of Debussy through the many chromatic modulations and chord progressions.

Harmonically even more advanced are the dissonances and chromaticism in his short second Valse oubliée, which Liszt composed in his later years. His four Valses oubliées date from the years 1881 and 1884. The ‘forgotten’ character of the waltz is a metaphor for the transience of time, love, and youth. The atmosphere of the waltz is therefore particularly refined, subtle, and melancholic.

How great, then, is the contrast with the patriotically charged Hungarian Rhapsody No. 6! From the 1840s onwards, Liszt published numerous arrangements of Hungarian ‘national’ melodies. His main series was created during his time in Weimar: a series of fifteen Hungarian Rhapsodies (1851–1853) inspired by Hungarian gypsy music. The rhapsody follows the traditional lassan-friska structure, a two-part form typical of Liszt’s Hungarian Rhapsodies. The Lassan solemnly introduces the melody, which then leads to the energetic and (especially) groundbreaking virtuosic Friska. A feast for the pianist and the listener.

Waldo Geuns

Nelson Goerner

Nelson Goerner is one of the most highly regarded pianists working today. In 1990 he made his international breakthrough when he won the Concours international d'exécution musicale de Genève. Since then, he has worked with orchestras such as the Philharmonia Orchestra, Orchestre de Paris, London Philharmonic Orchestra and NHK Symphony Orchestra and with conductors such as Vladimir Ashkenazy, Philippe Herreweghe, Fabio Luisi and Esa Pekka-Salonen. As a chamber musician, Goerner has shared the stage with musicians such as Martha Argerich, Janine Jansen and Steven Isserlis. For Alpha Classics he made CD recordings of works by Beethoven, Chopin, Brahms and Debussy, for which he has received a Diapason d'Or several times.