Festival Messiaen - Recital Renaud Capuçon - Hélène Mercier

Works by Messiaen, Debussy and Ravel come to life under the magician's fingers of the talented Renaud Capuçon, invited for the first time to the Messiaen Festival.
With pianist Hélène Mercier, trained at the Juilliard School in New York and a former student of Pierre Sancan at the CNSMD in Paris, they perform a programme of French music concentrated over a period of some twenty years, by modern composers who revisit the forms of the past.
The sonatas by Debussy and Ravel, two personalities whom Messiaen admired, attest to a well-established style and mastery on the part of their authors, while Messiaen was barely 25 when he composed the Thème et variations and the Fantaisie, having just married Claire Delbos, the marvellous violinist to whom these pieces are dedicated. They already show a personal style despite their relatively conventional construction. The Thème et variations, consisting of a three-part theme and five variations, is conceived in a gradation in the manner of a vast crescendo; the Fantaisie is not free-form as its title might suggest but takes the form of a rondo. Although each follows the traditional three-movement plan, the two sonatas by Debussy and Ravel are of great imaginative writing and require all the virtuoso talents of its performers.

-Renaud Capuçon, violin
- Hélène Mercier, piano

Programme:
Olivier Messiaen,
Thème et variations

Claude Debussy,
Sonata for violin and piano

Olivier Messiaen,
Fantaisie

Maurice Ravel,
Sonata for violin and piano