Works by Johann Sebastian Bach/Reinhard Febel, Johann Sebastian Bach/György Kurtág, Rouzbeh Rafie and Igor Stravinsky

Devotions

For three decades, Duo Villarceaux has cultivated a distinctive musical voice, combining the highest precision with artistic daring, a rich imagination for sound and poetic depth. Acclaimed internationally, the duo continually explores new possibilities in music for piano duo – with curiosity, uncompromising conviction and boundless energy.

The programme traces a fascinating journey from the spiritual power of Baroque chorales to the explosive sound world of modern music. Chorale arrangements by György Kurtág and Reinhard Febel offer fresh perspectives on the music of Johann Sebastian Bach. Here, the Baroque tradition encounters a contemporary musical language that questions and transforms the familiar, revealing it in unexpected ways. Reinhard Febel, the festival’s Composer in Residence, contributes his chorale arrangements to this musical dialogue. The exploration of his work continues throughout the festival, culminating on the final evening in the world premiere of his specially commissioned Concertino for Piano and String Orchestra.

After the interval, Igor Stravinsky’s Le Sacre du printemps, in the composer’s arrangement for piano four hands, unfolds with the elemental force of a musical phenomenon – primal, overwhelming and driven by extraordinary rhythmic energy. A work that once shook the musical world as a revolutionary orchestral composition becomes, in the hands of Duo Villarceaux, an almost physical experience of sound: virtuosic, explosive and possessed of an intensity that seems to transcend the instrument itself.

Deutschlandfunk describes their interpretation as a performance that enacts the pagan human sacrifice ‘as though it had been composed for a Bronze Age concert grand piano with a blood channel’. An evening poised between contemplative reflection and elemental force, between the finest poetry of sound and music at its most extraordinary.

Devotions

Reinhard Febel (*1952)
Chorale arrangements
Ich ruf zu dir, Herr Jesu Christ, BWV 639
Wo soll ich fliehen hin, BWV 694
Erbarm dich mein, o Herre Gott, BWV 721

Rouzbeh Rafie (*1981)
Harmonies of a fractured line
Four Resonances of a Bach Chorale
for piano four hands (world premiere)

György Kurtág (*1926)
Chorale arrangements
Alle Menschen müssen sterben, BWV 643
Gottes Zeit ist die allerbeste Zeit, BWV 106
Aus tiefer Not schrei ich zu dir, BWV 687
Allein Gott in der Höh’ sei Ehr, BWV 711

Interval

Igor Stravinsky (1882–1971)
Le Sacre du printemps
In the composer’s own arrangement for piano four hands