LEGATO - The World of the Piano

 

PIERRE-LAURENT AIMARD

Not Just One Truth

 

Piano Works by Bach, Beethoven, George Benjamin, Elliott Carter

 

Pierre-Laurent Aimard (piano)

 

Pierre-Laurent Aimard was born in Lyon in 1957 and studied in Paris with Yvonne Loriod, wife of Olivier Messiaen, to whose music he is particularly close. Pierre Boulez appointed him as solo pianist to the Ensemble InterContemporain when he was 19 and he worked closely with Györgi Ligeti, who chose him to record his entire piano works.

 

This extensive portrait-cum-concert DVD features Pierre-Laurent Aimard in conversation with renowned music filmmaker Jan Schmidt-Garre under the telling title Not Just One Truth. Recorded live at the Akademie der Schönen Künste in Munich in spring 2008, the concert includes important and influential piano music from the Art of the Fugue and Beethoven's second last Piano Sonata No.31, written in 1822, along with works by the grand seigneur of American composers, Elliott Carter (*1908) and of George Benjamin (*1960), who studied under Olivier Messiaen. In the introductory portrait, scholar Christoph Wolff and composer Elliott Carter speak about music and Aimard's readings of it.Thus, the viewer is truly immersed in Pierre-Laurent Aimard's art of piano playing and comes to know one of the greatest contemporary pianists in concert, interview and documentary portrait.

 

Elliott Carter turns 100 on Dec 11th 2008: following their close collaboration,Aimard here performs Carter's Matribute, Two Diversions (1 & 2) as well as Caténaires (2006)

 

BONUS: Pierre-Laurent Aimard in conversation with Jan Schmidt-Garre

 

"His technical facility is astonishing…Mr.Aimard's performance was lucid, subtle and delicate." New YorkTimes

 

NTSC · 16:9 anamorphic

PCM Stereo, DD 5.1, DTS 5.1, Region Code: 0

Booklet Notes: English, German, French

Running Time: 30 mins (Portrait), 75 mins (Concert), 73 mins (Interview)

 

Medici arts DVD NTSC 2055798