Experience an evening that combines baroque grandeur, romantic depth and modern expression. Georgian pianist Tamta Magradze will perform a program at Ostrava’s Vesmír, ranging from Handel’s lyricism to virtuoso Rachmaninov and Liszt, to Janáček’s emotional Sonata From the Street on October 1, 1905, and Ravel’s captivating La valse.

George Frideric Handel
Keyboard Suite No. 1 in B-flat major, HWV 434

Sergei Rachmaninov
Études-Tableaux, Op. 39 Nos. 2 and 1

Franz Schubert (arr. Franz Liszt)
Soirées de Vienne, S. 427 No. 6

Franz Liszt
Après une lecture du Dante, Fantasia quasi sonata, S. 161/7

Leoš Janáček
Sonata “From the Street, 1 October 1905”

Maurice Ravel
La valse

Tamta Magradze – piano

With a richly varied programme spanning music from the Baroque era to the 20th century, the young Georgian pianist Tamta Magradze will present herself to Ostrava audiences. Her interpretative artistry has been recognised by juries at numerous international piano competitions.

George Frideric Handel’s Suite in B-flat major, HWV 434, from the collection Suites de Pièces first published in 1720, embodies the composer’s command of keyboard technique, improvisational mastery, and creative genius, which established him as one of the most significant composers of his time.

The cycle Études-Tableaux, Op. 39, was composed by Sergei Rachmaninov during the First World War shortly before his emigration in 1917. The first two études were inspired by the sight of the sea and flocks of seagulls in flight.

Franz Liszt’s piano cycle Soirées de Vienne (1846–1852) was inspired by the music of the Viennese composer Franz Schubert. From Schubert’s extensive output of dance pieces, Liszt selected several waltzes and ländler, transforming them into technically brilliant piano works.

By contrast, Liszt’s Fantasia quasi sonata “Après une lecture du Dante” (1849) is a supremely Romantic, virtuosic musical poem for piano, inspired by Victor Hugo’s poem of the same name dedicated to Dante’s Divine Comedy.

An extra-musical impulse also lay behind Leoš Janáček’s piano composition 1 October 1905 (From the Street). The work was prompted by a demonstration in Brno in support of a Czech university and the violent death of the worker František Pavlík. Both movements—Foreboding and Death—speak in Janáček’s characteristically raw and urgent musical language.

A very different approach to waltz rhythms is found in Maurice Ravel’s La valse. In this choreographic poem from 1919–1920, metamorphoses and caricatures of the waltz are continually intensified, culminating in a state of almost ecstatic dance.