Feb 2019
From London to New York in the Bilbao Musika-Música Festival
On March 1, 2 and 3, Judith Jáuregui returns to the Festival Musika-Música which will take place in the Bilbao Palacio Euskalduna; this year, the Festival is devoted to music composed in London and New York throughout the 19th and 20th centuries. Alongside the Gerhard Quartet and the viola player Isabel Villanueva, Judith will give three concerts, performing works by Amy Beach, Rebecca Clarke, George Gershwin, Frank Bridge, Benjamin Britten and Enrique Granados.
The artist herself recognises that this is a Festival "where I feel at home, happy always to return here and to do so in the company of artists I have been wanting to work with for some time, and whom I admire. Isabel and I will be playing together for the first time at the request of the Festival. And I met the Gerhard Quartet there last year, and that is where the idea of playing together came up. It's a fantastic coincidence that the first time we play together should be right here at the Festival where we first met.”
On Friday 1st March, Judith and the Gerhard Quartet will perform the first of the two works by Enrique Granados that the pianist brings to the Festival. Granados premièred his Goyescas in New York to great acclaim, and on Friday Jáuregui and the Gerhards will perform his Quintet for Piano and Strings in G minor, opus 49, which –in her opinion- is "one of the most representative works of Spanish chamber music"; then she will play the solo piano work Four Sketches for Piano, opus 15, by Amy Beach "the musical icon of the United States at the start of the 20th century. The first great female American pianist and composer", she notes. That day's programme will be rounded off by Danny Boy by Bill Evans, performed by the Quartet.
On Saturday March 2nd, and alongside Isabel Villanueva's viola, the programme will include Enrique Granados' Sonata for Piano and Violin, arranged by Villanueva for her instrument. Judith explains that it is "a transcription for viola of his Violin Sonata, a work which would have been a Grand Sonata with 4 movements but for his premature and tragic death, meaning that Granados only managed to complete the first movement. Nonetheless, in this movement, the personality and originality of the work's author are to be found intact". With Rebecca Clarke's Sonata for Viola and Piano, the audience will hear "one of the works of reference within the repertoire for viola and piano. A work of absolute genius from start to finish, which combines huge energy with temperament, with moments of introspection", the pianist states. Finally it is the turn of George Gershwin with Three Preludes, ”a jewel of written jazz”.
Lastly, on Sunday March 3rd, Judith and Isabel will again perform the Clarke Sonata, and will complete the programme with works by Frank Bridge, Pensiero and Allegro Appasionato H. 82B, and by Benjamin Britten, Lachrymae for Viola and Piano, opus 48R, "which will plunge us into mystery and mysticism and keep us in tension until we reach the pure and simple melody of the finale".
+ information and tickets: http://www.bilbao700.eus/musika-musica/2019/programa/