“Matthieu Bergheau Presents Rachmaninoff & Scriabin" at the Sound Conservatory -- October 4.
Friday, October 4, 7 p.m.
Sound Conservatory, 504 17th Street, Moline IL
Inviting classical-music lovers to immerse themselves in the haunting beauty and virtuosity of two iconic composers, Moline's Sound Conservatory, on October 4, will host Matthieu Bergheau Presents Rachmaninoff & Scriabin, an evening with the French pianist praised by Interlude's Doug Thomas as an artist whose playing "shines with a sense of natural, an absence of artefacts, and a focus on the narrative of the musical journey."
Matthieu Bergheau is a French classical pianist. As a laureate of seven international competitions, he has already performed as a soloist in France, Italy, Spain, Armenia, and the United Kingdom. In 2019, he performed at venues including the Teatro Ciudad in Marbella, Spain and the Fondation Cziffra in Paris, France on Cziffra’s own piano, among others. He has 16 piano concerti in his repertoire, ranging from Bach’s Brandenburg in D-Major to Prokofiev 3. Although Bergheau plays pieces from all epochs, he has a predilection toward romantic composers, including Chopin, Rachmaninoff, and Scriabin. He has played the complete études by both Scriabin and Rachmaninoff, as well as all of the Rachmaninoff concerti, including Rhapsody on a Theme by Paganini. In addition, he has played the complete études by Chopin, as well as the composer’s complete ballades and Scherzi.
In addition, Bergheau is one of the most-recognized figures of classical music on social media, boasting more than 25,000 followers. His social media accounts feature in excess of 1,000 videos that have garnered hundreds of thousands of views. Beyond his career as a concert pianist, Bergheau is active as a teacher in his hometown in Lyon, France, and also offers online lessons to aspiring professionals.
Sergei Vasilyevich Rachmaninoff was a Russian composer, virtuoso pianist, and conductor widely considered one of the finest pianists of his day and, as a composer, one of the last great representatives of Romanticism in Russian classical music. Early influences of Tchaikovsky, Rimsky-Korsakov, and other Russian composers gave way to a thoroughly personal idiom notable for its song-like melodicism, expressiveness, dense contrapuntal textures, and rich orchestral colors. The piano is featured prominently in Rachmaninoff's compositional output, and he used his skills as a performer to fully explore the expressive and technical possibilities of the instrument.
Alexander Nikolayevich Scriabin was also a Russian composer and pianist. Before 1903, Scriabin was greatly influenced by the music of Frédéric Chopin and composed in a relatively tonal, late-Romantic idiom. Later, and independently of his influential contemporary Arnold Schoenberg, Scriabin developed a much more dissonant musical language that had transcended usual tonality but was not atonal, which accorded with his personal brand of metaphysics. Scriabin found significant appeal in the concept of Gesamtkunstwerk as well as synesthesia, and associated colors with the various harmonic tones of his scale, while his color-coded circle of fifths was also inspired by theosophy. He is often considered the main Russian symbolist composer and a major representative of the Russian Silver Age.
Matthieu Bergheau Presents Rachmaninoff & Scriabin will be performed in Moline on October 4, admission to the 7 p.m. concert event is $12-40, and more information and tickets are available by visiting SoundConservatory.com.
