Memory Hélène Grimaud

• Valentin Silvestrov (b.1937):
• 1 Bagatelles I-XIII: Bagatelle I 03:20
• Claude Debussy (1862 - 1918):
• 2 Deux Arabesques, L. 66: 1. Andantino con moto in E Major 04:16
• Valentin Silvestrov:
• 3 Bagatelles I-XIII: Bagatelle II 03:38
• Erik Satie (1866 - 1925):
• 4 Gnossiennes: 4. Lent 02:21
• Frédéric Chopin (1810 - 1849):
• 5 Nocturne In E Minor, Op. 72, No. 1 04:04
• Erik Satie:
• 6 Gnossiennes: 1. Lent 03:12
• 7 3 Gymnopédies: 1. Lent et douloureux 03:12
• 8 1. En y regardant à deux fois 01:34
• Claude Debussy:
• 9 La plus que lente, L. 121 04:15
• Frédéric Chopin:
• 10 4 Mazurkas, Op. 17: 4. Lento, ma non troppo in A Minor 04:19
• 11 3 Waltzes, Op. 34: 2. Lento in A Minor 05:25
• Claude Debussy:
• 12 Suite bergamasque, L. 75: 3. Clair de lune 04:24
• 13 Rêverie, L. 68 03:34
• Erik Satie:
• 14 Pièces froides / II. Danses de travers: 2. Passer 01:25
• Nitin Sawhney (b.1964):
• 15 Breathing Light 02:42
• Total Runtime 51:41

Info for Memory

Hélène Grimaud’s new album MEMORY can be thought as an invitation to mindfulness.

Music that can help remind us “that for all in our daily lives that is trivial, there is a place where meaning is stored”

I think it was Heidegger who said memory is to meditate on what is forgotten. Memory is not concrete – it is a recollection of things past, defined as much by what fades as what remains. The repertoire here is not connected to specific personal memories for me – memory is not autobiographical or programmatic in that sense. My interest is rather in exploring memory as a state of consciousness common to us all, and discovering paths and features of that meditation, suggested by music. – Hélène Grimaud

Hélène for the first time in her career brings together French piano favourites from Satie, Debussy and combines them with Chopin, Rachmaninov's Vocalise, a piece by the Ukranian composer Valentin Silvestrov, as well as a brand-new piano version of "Breathing Light", one of Hélène 's favourite piece by her musical friend and collaborator composer/performer/producer Nitin Sawhney.

The project consists of a classical piano recording by Hélène Grimaud (MEMORY slated for release in Sept 2018), followed by a recording from Nitin Sawhney (MEMORY ECHO coming in Q1 2019), on which he improvises and performs his own music, adding new layers to the classical piano compositions and transforming them with organic and natural sounds inspired by the concept of MEMORY.

“I think of the album as a sequence of crystalline miniatures capturing time” – Hélène Grimaud.

Hélène Grimaud, piano

Hélène Grimaud - Pianist
A truly multi-faceted and charismatic artist – for pianist Hélène Grimaud music is a limitless passion. Hélène regularly appears with the most important orchestras in the world, playing with the Berliner Philharmoniker, Symphonieorchester des Bayerischen Rundfunks, Philharmonia Orchestra and Münchner Philharmoniker, as well as all the great orchestras in North America. She has performed with three generations of conductors, including Kurt Masur, Bernard Haitink, Esa-Pekka Salonen, Neeme Järvi, Pierre Boulez, Ricardo Chailly, Valery Gergiev, Vladimir Jurowski, Fabio Luisi and Andris Nelsons. She was soloist at the Last Night of the BBC Proms 2008.

An ardent and committed chamber musician, Hélène Grimaud performs regularly in the most prestigious festivals and cultural capitals with a wide range of collaborators including Thomas Quasthoff, Rolando Villazòn, Jan Vogler, Truls Mørk, Clemens Hagen and the Capuçon brothers. In 2009 she performed hugely successful debut recitals in China and Korea and further concerts in Europe. In 2010 she appeared as Artiste Etoile in four concerts at the Lucerne Festival. An international recital tour encompassing Europe, USA and Japan dominated her 2010/11 season with repertoire ranging from Mozart to Bartòk. In between recitals Hélène Grimaud has performed regularly in concert throughout the season – in Moscow with Myung-Whun Chung and the Orchestre Philharmonique de Radio France, in St Petersburg with Valery Gergiev and the Kirov Orchestra, in Beijing with David Zinman and the China National Symphony Orchestra, in Germany with the Munich Philharmonic and Christian Thielemann and in the States with both the San Francisco Symphony and Philadelphia Orchestras. This summer she appears at leading European festivals including Beethovenfest Bonn and the London Proms.

Highlights of this autumn include a European tour with the Orchestra of the Accademia di Santa Cecilia and Antonio Pappano, a week-long Paris residency in November entitled Domaine Privé and a further Paris concert with the London Symphony Orchestra and Valery Gergiev. In March 2012 Hélène Grimaud returns to perform with the Vienna Philharmonic for concerts with Yannick Nézet-Séguin and in April she joins the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra and Andris Nelsons for performances in Munich.

An exclusive Deutsche Grammophon artist since 2002, Hélène is one of DG’s most important recording artists with a string of imaginative and highly successful discs. This autumn she releases her debut of Mozart ‘s Piano Concertos No.19 and No.23 with Kammerorchester des Bayerischen Rundfunks, the disc also features a collaboration with singer Mojca Erdmann on a recording of Mozart’s ’Ch’io mi scordi di te? KV 505’. Her most recent release, Resonances, features music by Mozart, Berg, Liszt and Bartok. Previous DG recordings include Bach’s solo and concerto works in which she directed Die Deutsche Kammerphilharmonie Bremen from the keyboard, and a Beethoven disc with Staatskapelle Dresden and Vladimir Jurowski, ‘Reflection’ and ‘Credo’ (both of which feature a number of works linked thematically), and a Chopin and Rachmaninov Sonatas disc. Hélène also features on two recent DVD releases: 2010 ECHO Klassik award winning DVD of Rachmaninov’s Second Piano Concerto with Claudio Abbado and the Lucerne Festival Orchestra, and Ravel’s Piano Concerto in G major with Vladimir Jurowski and the Chamber Orchestra of Europe.

Recipient of numerous awards worldwide, in 2009 Hélène Grimaud received the Musikfest Bremen Award. She has been appointed ‘Officier dans l’ordre des Arts et des Lettres’ by the French Ministère de la Culture in 2002 and ‘Chevalier dans l’Ordre National du Mérite’ in 2008. In 2004 she received a ‘Victoire d’honneur’ at the Victoires de la Musique and in 2005 she won the ECHO ‘Instrumentalist of the Year’ Award. Author of two very successful books, “Variations Sauvages” and “Leçons Particulières”, she champions many charitable causes, including the Wolf Conservation Center which she founded in upper New York State in 1999, the International Children’s Camp Villa San Souci, the Worldwide Fund for Nature and Amnesty International.

Date Last Edited: 30th September 2011

This album contains no booklet.