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Maha Zahid
29 February 2024 @ 12:45 pm – 1:45 pm
Tickets on the door (cash or card). Under 18s and carers go free
Doors open at 12:15 pm
Performers
Maha Zahid
Piano
Notes on the performers
Native of Casablanca, Maha Zahid started playing the piano at the age of 6. She started at the conservatory of the city of Casablanca and pursued her studies a few years later at the Salmon music school. She then went on to join the Ecole Normale de Musique of Paris. She studied with pianist Caroline Sageman while preparing a Master’s degree in Musicology at the University of Paris 8. Currently, she is studying in the Liège Royal conservatory with Alexander Gurning, Florian Noack and Christophe Meunier.
At the age of 19, the talented pianist gave her first concert at the French Institute of Casablanca. Since then, she has performed more than twenty times on stage; at the Musée du Luxembourg in Paris, the Acropolium of Carthage in Tunisia, the auditorium of Brest, the Théâtre Marguerite of Caltanissetta in Italy, the Villa des Arts and the National Library of Rabat, the auditorium of Regard du Cygne in Paris.
Programme
Programme notes
Claude Debussy
La cathédrale engloutie
“La cathédrale engloutie” (The Sunken Cathedral) is a musical composition written by the French composer Claude Debussy for solo piano. It was published in 1910 as the tenth prelude in Debussy’s first book of preludes. It is characteristic of Debussy in its form, harmony, and content. The piece is based on an ancient Breton myth in which a cathedral, submerged underwater off the coast of the Island of Ys, rises up from the sea on clear mornings when the water is transparent. Sounds can be heard of priests chanting, bells chiming, and the organ playing, from across the sea. Accordingly, Debussy uses certain harmonies to allude to the plot of the legend, in the style of musical symbolism.
Source: Wikipedia
Franz Schubert
Sonata D.664 in A major
- Allegro moderato
- Andante (in D major)
- Allegro
Well regarded among pianists, the “Little” A major sonata is so called to distinguish it from the hefty 1828 sonata in the same key. It is the shortest among Schubert’s complete sonatas. The manuscript, completed in July 1819, was dedicated to Josephine von Koller of Steyr in Upper Austria, whom he considered to be “very pretty” and “a good pianist”. The lyrical, buoyant, in spots typically poignant nature of this sonata fits the image of a young Schubert in love, living in a summery Austrian countryside, which he also considered to be “unimaginably lovely”.
The A major sonata is straightforward, with a dulcet melodic opening. It was the first of Schubert’s piano sonatas where the sonata form as perfected by his idol, Beethoven, does not seem wrestled with; rather, it is a “joyous breakthrough”, a carefree triumph over strict rules of construction.
Source: Wikipedia
Claude Debussy
Estampes, L.100
- Pagodes (“Pagodas”)
- La soirée dans Grenade (“Evening in Granada”)
- Jardins sous la pluie (“Gardens in the Rain”)
Estampes (“Prints”), L.100, is a composition for solo piano by Claude Debussy. It was finished in 1903. The first performance of the work was given by Ricardo Viñes at the Salle Érard of the Société Nationale de Musique in Paris on 9 January 1904.
This three-movement suite is one of a number of piano works by Debussy which are often described as impressionistic, a term borrowed from painting. This style of composition had been pioneered by Ravel in Jeux d’eau written in 1901, and was soon adopted by Debussy (for example in the earlier numbers of Images), but Debussy did not himself identify as an impressionist.