Happy birthday, György Kurtág!

For his concert at the Conservatoire Darius Milhaud as part of the Aix-en-Provence Festival, Pierre-Laurent Aimard has put together a very special programme to mark the 100th anniversary of the Hungarian composer’s birth.

Pierre-Laurent Aimard is not only renowned for his outstanding performances. His concert programmes and projects, which very often ingeniously combine music from different styles and eras, are also highly acclaimed by critics and audiences alike.

One of these magnificent concert projects came about during the COVID-19 pandemic. The music always varies slightly, depending on the occasion and the event. The structure, however, remains the same: Pierre-Laurent Aimard plays the celesta, two upright pianos and (following similar concerts in Paris and Bochum) the piano duo Op. 353018. And whilst the pianist moves from instrument to instrument as if in a dream, with the hall lights dimmed, he accompanies himself on a Yamaha Disklavier.

Backed by decades of experience (the first Disklavier was launched in 1987), Yamaha’s Disklaviers are arguably the most technically advanced, reliable and versatile grand pianos with recording and playback functions for professional use. And yet (and fortunately!) there is still a very slight, but clearly perceptible, difference in sound during playback between the playing of a flesh-and-blood human being and the reproduction by a near-perfect machine.

And since a musician like Pierre-Laurent Aimard cannot be satisfied with this slight deficiency in sound, on the day of the concert the pianist records all the pieces himself on the Disklavier, checks the result in the concert hall and adapts his playing until the music reproduced by the grand piano meets his expectations. And the balance of tone, expression and volume between the Disklavier and the other instruments is also taken into account down to the finest detail. Absolutely marvellous!