French pianist Nicolas Horvàth’s hommage to Jaan Rääts

On the occasion of celebrating Estonian composer Jaan Rääts’ 85th birthday, French pianist Nicolas Horvàth, who is an admirer of Estonian music, will be performing a selection of the composer’s suites for piano. In addition to Jaan Rääts’ own music, Horvàth will play a selection of pieces written by the composer’s former students.

Nicolas Horvàth is famous for some of his extraordinarily long piano concerts. He has recently performed and recorded music pieces of such renown composers as Erik Satie and Philip Glass. Horvàth has interpreted a wide range of famous coomposers’ work: from the romantic piano pieces of Ferenc Liszt and Fryderyk Chopin to Aleksandr Skrjabin and Erik Satie’s composition (amongst the latter’s work’ “Vexation”, which is more than 14 h long!) to Philip Glass and more contemporary young composers. He has made first interpretations of over 120 new music pieces.

Nicolas Horvàth has a special relation to Jaan Rääts’ composition – he has made it a personal cause to widespread his music. Horvàth has performed Rääts’ pieces in several countries and at such important concerts as the final concert at the 2015 Universal Exposition in Milan, in 2016 at the European Parliament on the occasion of assigning EU Council Presidency to Estonia and also in Carnegie Hall, where he played all of Philip Glass’ preludes for piano and also 13 new piano pieces from various composers, among them a piano prelude by Jaan Rääts. 

The music composition of Jaan Rääts is ample and generally described as playful and rythmic. He has mainly composed instrumental music pieces with much of it written for the piano.

The concerts :

• on 6th of April at 6 pm at Karksi valla kultuurikeskus, FREE concert
• on 7th of April at 6 pm at Viljandi Muusikakooli orkestrimaja, FREE concert
• on 9th of April at 1 pm at Raadio 1 studio, ERR, Kreutzwaldi 14, Tallinn
• on 10th of April at 6 pm at Keila Muusikakool, FREE concert

The program :

Jaan Rääts (1932): “Raadio 4” op. 124 (2004) Ballad nr 1 and 19 from the cycle “24 marginaali” op. 65 (1979–1980) “Tokaata” (1968) Ballad nr 3, 4, 8, 15 and 22 from the cycle “24 bagatelli” op. 50 (1973) Sonata nr 10 op. 111 (2000/2014) Sonata nr 9 op. 76 (1985/2014)
Vsevolod Pozdejev (1979) “Vaadates Jaan Räätsa käsikirju. Süit Jaan Räätsa kahele teemale” (2016, first ever performance in Estonia)
Avi Benjamin (1959) “Hommage Jaan Räätsale” (2016, first ever performance in Estonia)
Timo Steiner (1976) “Hommage Jaan Räätsale” (2016, first ever performance)
Raimo Kangro (1949–2001) Sonaat nr 3 op. 15 (1976, first ever performance,in hommage to Jaan Rääts)
Kerri Kotta (1969) “Outro” (2016, first ever performance in Estonia)
Tõnis Kaumann (1971) “Hommage Jaan Räätsale” (2017, first ever performance)
Erkki-Sven Tüür (1959) “Hommage Jaan Räätsale” (2017, first ever performance)
Tõnu Kõrvits (1969) “Ending in C” (2016, first ever performance in Estonia)
Mihkel Kerem (1981) “Toccata (Hommage Jaan Räätsale)” (2016, first ever performance in Estonia)

Horvàth has helped organize some orchestra performances of Jaan Rääts’ compositions is a contributor to the development of the website: www.jaanraats.com.