Hélène Grimaud to release new album – The Messenger

“I was always interested in couplings that were not predictable, in unusual combinations, because I feel as if certain pieces – even sometimes pieces by different composers – can shed a special light on to one another.” Hélène Grimaud

We are delighted to announce the coming new album of Hélène Grimaud ‘The Messenger’, which is a creation of a pianistic dialogue between Mozart and the Ukrainian-born contemporary composer Valentin Silvestrov.

The recording sessions took place at the start of this year at an historic Mozart site in Salzburg, the Great Hall of the University, where Grimaud was joined by the Camerata Salzburg. The album includes three works by Mozart: the unfinished Fantasia in D minor K 397, the famous Piano Concerto in D minor K 466 and the Fantasia in C minor K 475. Grimaud sees his use of the minor as suggestive of “confrontations with fate or destiny”. She now appreciates that there is more to his writing than Apollonian elegance and restraint, noting that it took her “many years of inner cultivation to fully recognise those burning, unpredictable currents rippling beneath the transcendental beauty”. Valentin Silvestrov’s ‘The Messenger – 1996’ offers both a response to and an echo of Mozart’s music – this idea of acknowledging and paying tribute to what has gone before is central to his art as a composer.

The album will be released on 2 October 2020, while two pre-release digital singles, both in audio and video, will provide a perfect introduction: the third movement of Mozart’s Piano Concerto No. 20 is released today and Silvestrov’s ‘The Messenger – 1996’ for solo piano will be released on 11 September.

Listen to the first track of Mozart’s Piano Concerto No. 20 in D Minor here: https://dg.lnk.to/Messenger