London Today and Yesterday – Kammerorchester Basel & Jan Lisiecki

Orchestral Concert

Sunday 8 August 2021
6 pm, Gstaad Festival Tent

Change of cast: Jan Lisiecki replaces Hélène Grimaud

Unfortunately, because of a lengthy procedure for obtaining permission to stay in the United States due to the pandemic and the resulting problems with entering and leaving the country, Hélène Grimaud has had to cancel her concert at the Gstaad Menuhin Festival & Academy on August 8. For the orchestral concert on August 8 and the performance of Mozart's Piano Concerto No. 20 in D Minor K. 466 with the Kammerorchester Basel, we have been able to secure the services of the excellent young Canadian-Polish pianist Jan Lisiecki. An exclusive Deutsche Grammophon artist, Jan Lisiecki has already replaced Hélène Grimaud in concerts at the German Schleswig-Holstein Festival in July, including the opening concert which was broadcast throughout Europe by 3Sat.

What a sumptuous evening ahead! On the one hand the “historic” London embodied by Haydn's Drumroll Symphony. On the other, the uninhibited London represented by Thomas Adès, today's most famous British composer, whom the Festival, together with other musical institutions, has commissioned to write a work for strings entitled “Shanty – Over the Sea”, a reference to the songs sung from time immemorial by the sailors of merchant ships to give them heart. And Jan Lisiecki in the centre, who in the company of the Kammerorchester Basel has chosen to hone possibly the most beautiful concerto written by Mozart, the twentieth in D minor, with its sublime Romance and dreamy melody seemingly suspended above the relentless course of time.