Listen to the young piano virtuoso Nikola Meewsen, who was awarded the Concertgebouw Young Talent Award last year. On the beautiful Bösendorfer grand piano of De Waalse Kerk, he plays works by Johann Sebastiaan Bach and Maurice Ravel.
Nikola opens the programme with Bach's 'Nun komm der Heiden Heiland' from 1714, which was adapted for piano solo by Ferruccio Busoni in 1898. It is one of a series of ten chorale preludes by Bach that Busoni has transcribed. Bach's 6th Partitia is also in the programme. The American musicologist and clavicinist David Schulenberg describes in his book The keyboard music of J.S. Bach this partita as follows: "The Sixth Partita is the crowning work of the set and Bach's greatest suite. The allemande and sarabande contain some of the most audacious and dramatic melodic embellishment ever written, and the work opens and closes with two particularly ambitious contrapuntal movements".
With his Le Tombeau de Couperin, Ravel paid tribute to the French Baroque music. The different parts are dedicated to the friends of Ravel who fell during the First World War.On April 4, 1919, this work was first performed by the French pianist Marguerite Long. In the same year, Ravel made a four parts version for orchestras.