Chamber Music Whanganui's 2022 Celebrity Subscription Concert Series is nearing its close, with a final concert to be performed by one of New Zealand's favourite pianists, Michael Houstoun.
On Saturday, November 12 at 4pm in the Royal Whanganui Opera House, Michael will take us on a journey of music inspired by dance.
His beautifully conceived programme "To Dance or not to Dance" will include a suite of Baroque dances by Bach, Ravel's beautiful Pavane for a Dead Princess alongside his Valses Nobles et Sentimentales and a selection of well-known waltzes, mazurkas, a nocturne and a polonaise by Chopin, the collection of these dances becoming the music for the ballet Les Sylphides.
This music for Les Sylphides was chosen by Fokine, choreographer for the Russian Ballet, and orchestrated by Glazunov who had already set some of the music in 1892 as a purely orchestral suite, under the title Chopiniana, Op. 46.
In some prefacing notes about this programme, Michael has written, "In the piano repertoire there are a great many works inspired by dancing. Composers have been captivated by the spirit of dance, especially in its romantic and intimate guises. Most of the music on today's programme is dance music yet none of it was written to actually be danced to. The waltz in particular has generated marvellous piano music, its seductive swirl on full display in the works of Chopin and Ravel."
