Jean-Philippe Collard

Everyone likes programs that are well put together. In that respect alone, the French pianist Jean-Philippe Collard offers us something beautiful. The program starts with the sonatina and two movements from 'Miroirs' by Ravel. Then we hear two movements from 'Vingt regards sur l'enfant Jésus' by the unadulterated Fansman Messiaen. These will be followed by the 'Painting Exhibition' by the ancient Russian Mussorgsky.

Collard chooses, among other things, 'Oiseaux tristes' from 'Miroirs', while Messiaen was an ornithologist who used musically written birdsong in his works. The paintings that Mussorgsky expresses in his work are by painter and architect Victor Hartmann, a good friend of Mussorgsky. Hartmann's sudden death was the reason for writing the Painting Exhibition.

Victor Hartmann belonged to a movement of artists who had the ambition to develop a new aesthetic based on traditional Russian forms and motifs. What Hartmann was to architecture, Mussorgsky was to music.