Lisiecki plays Schumann

Although Canadian pianist Jan Lisiecki is in his early twenties, his career already spans a decade. He drew worldwide attention when he performed Chopin’s Piano Concerto at the Chopin Festival in Warsaw in 2008, at the age of ten, and that same year he made his Carnegie Hall debut. Two years later he had signed a contract with Deutsche Grammophon, and since then he has performed with most of the world’s leading orchestras. In 2013 he was named Gramophone Young Artist of the Year and won the Leonard Bernstein Award as well. At this ISO concert, he performs Robert Schumann’s hauntingly beautiful and romantic Piano Concerto, which he recorded in 2016, to outstanding reviews.

French conductor Bertrand de Billy is considered a particularly inspired conductor. He recently conducted a highly praised staging of Tosca at the Metropolitan Opera in New York. Many still remember clearly his appearance with the ISO at Háskólabíó in spring 2011, with Isabelle Faust performing Beethoven’s Violin Concerto. At last, de Billy is returning to Iceland, with two fascinating but seldom-heard works in tow. Olivier Messiaen was one of the most religious composers of the 20^th century. On tonight’s programme we hear one of his earliest orchestral works, Les offrandes oubliées (The Forgotten Offerings), written in 1930. Czech composer Josef Suk, son-in-law to Antonin Dvořák, composed Romantic music that is sometimes reminiscent of Richard Strauss. Pohádka (Fairy Tale), a dramatic and colourful orchestral suite that is considered his best work, is being performed tonight for the first time in Iceland.