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La Roque-d'Anthéron International Piano Festival - Kevin Chen plays Liszt and Chopin.

Sarah Walker introduces performances given last summer at this prestigious festival in the heart of Provence. Since its foundation in 1981, the world's greatest pianists and nearly two million listeners have flocked to the festival’s open air performances in the Parc du Château de Florans. Surrounded by trees and birdlife, not to mention the sound of cicadas - and the occasional raindrop - the festival is famous for its friendly atmosphere as well as its stellar music making. And last year's festival was no exception, with rising pianists performing alongside more established artists. At the heart of the 2023 festival were performances of all three books of Liszt's Years of Pilgrimage, which Sarah introduces tomorrow and in programmes later in the week. But today the twenty-year-old Canadian pianist Kevin Chen, winner of the Artur Rubinstein Gold Medal, makes his French debut playing Liszt and Chopin in a recital that took La Roque-d'Anthéron by storm. One critic wrote that his was "a recital of unbelievable pianistic and musical perfection in which even Liszt’s old war horse of ‘Norma’ was given a new vibrant life....and the audience was astounded by Chopin’s Studies op.10 that have rarely if never been played with such mastery."

Chopin: Etude in G sharp minor, op. 25/6
Liszt: Reminiscences of Norma, S. 394, on themes from Bellini’s opera
Chopin: Ballade No. 4 in F minor, op. 52
Chopin: 12 Études, op. 10

Kevin Chen (piano)

Recorded in the open air at Auditorium du Parc, La Roque-d'Anthéron.