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This new release from The Chopin Institute presents Mozart’s Don Giovanni in Georges Bizet’s transcription for piano, performed here by pianist Cyprien Katsaris. In transcribing from solo voices and orchestra to just solo piano, Bizet provides us with the chance to focus our attention exclusively on Mozart’s musical art. Here, we are faced with the question as to what is the priority in opera: the dramatic action presented by the libretto or the musical narrative contained in the score? Why debate the question and disintegrate the composer’s conception? Bizet’s ‘translational’ idea is risky, to say the least; the de-staging of the work, which belongs to the stage by principle, idea and concept. And it would no doubt suffer defeat if it concerned anyone other than Mozart. For the most spectacular theatrical phenomenon in the realm of music, deprived of the theatre that is constitutive of its message as a whole, nevertheless-in spite of everything-triumphs. A French pianist and composer of Cypriot origins, Cyprien Katsaris is a graduate of the Paris Conservatoire, where he studied piano with Aline van Barentzen and Monique de la Bruchollerie. Katsaris performs with the Berlin Philharmonic, Moscow Philharmonic, Leipzig Gewandhaus, Cleveland and Amsterdam Concertgebouw and the Philharmonia Orchestra. He has worked with conductors such as Leonard Bernstein, Neville Marriner, Simon Rattle and Mstislav Rostropovich. Review Gramophone Magazine May 2023 “He is, in any case, a superb Mozart player who, unlike many others (no names, no pack drill), lets Mozart do all the work for him. His limpid, singing tone on Polish Radio’s Bechstein is a joy. |
