French piano virtuoso Jean-Efflam Bavouzet, one of the most renowned specialists in French music, winner of the Gramophone Award, the BBC Music Magazine Award and the Diapason d'Or, will close the Rudolf Firkušný Piano Festival 2024 with a recital of works by Claude Debussy, Robert Schumann and Karlheinz Stockhausen. Bavouzet's interpretation of Claude Debussy’s music, which form a large part of his Prague programme, is almost unrivalled. He joins only a few pianists such as Aldo Ciccolini and Walter Gieseking who have recorded Debussy's complete piano work. Of Bavouzet's mastery on this recording, The Gramophone wrote: “Jean-Efflam Bavouzet’s flexible virtuosity and innate grasp of Debussy’s style and sound world yields ravishing, freshly minted interpretations.” In Prague, he will perform, among others, the famous Etudes (Book 2) from the war year 1915, which in its time significantly pushed the technical and expressive boundaries of piano playing, the lesser-known Berceuse héroïque (Heroic Lullaby) with its quotation of the Belgian national anthem, or the impressive cycle entitled Children's Corner, composed by the fifty-year-old composer for his young daughter, affectionately nicknamed Chou-Chou.

More about Rudolf Firkušný Piano Festival / Jean-Efflam Bavouzet Event www