Bibliothèque nationale de France - Site Tolbiac
concert-portrait yvonne loriodsaturday, january 18th 2025 - 6:30pm
Florent Boffard, piano
Roger Muraro, piano
Born in 1924 to musician parents, Yvonne Loriod learned to play the piano with Lazare Lévy. It was with Lazare that she discovered the music of Olivier Messiaen, whose harmony class she joined in 1943. Loriod and Messiaen formed a close relationship that lasted for decades, until their marriage in 1961: he introduced her to the music of composers such as Jolivet, and she was one of the few performers willing to experiment with his difficult piano works. A virtuoso who ‘specialised in unplayable complete works’, according to a critic of the time, she premiered the Visions de l’Amen for two pianos in 1943. She was also for a long time the only interpreter of the Turangalîla-Symphonie. Alongside her career as a pianist, she studied composition with Darius Milhaud. It was during this apprenticeship that she composed a dozen works that bear witness to her insatiable curiosity, as much for modern instruments such as the ondes Martenot as for new trends such as ethnomusicology. She taught in Darmstadt, Karlsruhe and, from 1968, Paris, and helped to train some of the great pianists of the century, including Roger Muraro and Florent Boffard. She devoted much of her life to interpreting and promoting the works of Olivier Messiaen, notably through the Fondation Messiaen.
PROGRAM
YVONNE LORIOD
YVONNE LORIOD (1924-2010)
Three Pieces
for two pianos
OLIVIER MESSIAEN (1908-1992)
Visions de l’Amen (extracts)
for two pianos
DISTRIBUTION
Florent Boffard, piano
Roger Muraro, piano
FLORENT BOFFARD
Florent Boffard has been invited to play at major festivals (Salzburg, MusikFest Berlin at the Berlin Philharmonic, Festival Présences at Radio France, etc.), and has performed under the direction of Pierre Boulez, Simon Rattle and Peter Eötvös, with the Orchestre National de Lyon, the Philharmonisches Orchester Freiburg and the Orchestre Philharmonique de Radio France, among others. A soloist with the Ensemble Intercontemporain from 1988 to 1999, he has played alongside the greatest composers of our time, premiering works by Boulez, Donatoni, Ligeti, Marco Stroppa and others. He wrote the film ‘Schœnberg, le malentendu’, which accompanies his recording of Schœnberg’s piano works, published in 2013 by Mirare.
In 2021, Florent Boffard gave the world premiere of the ‘Antiphonie’ movement from Pierre Boulez’s 3rd Sonata for piano. In the same year, he will record this previously unpublished movement and this sonata for piano by Pierre Boulez, as a mirror work to Beethoven’s ‘The Tempest’ and Berg’s Sonata for piano (Mirare).
In 2001, the Forberg-Schneider Foundation (Munich) awarded him the Belmont Prize for his commitment to contemporary music. He has taught at the CNSM in Lyon and the Musikhochschule in Stuttgart. Since 2016, he has been professor of piano at the CNSM in Paris, and since 2021 he has also taught at the IESM in Aix-en-Provence.
ROGER MURARO
At the age of 17, Roger Muraro entered Yvonne Loriod’s class at the Paris Conservatoire and made the acquaintance of Olivier Messiaen. He soon established himself as one of the French composer’s leading interpreters, and in 2001 devoted his complete works for solo piano to him. Endowed with a dazzling technique, his playing is always at the service of poetry and sincerity, and applies just as much to Moussorgsky, Ravel and Debussy as to Beethoven, Chopin and Schumann. Welcomed in recital throughout the world, he collaborates with the greatest conductors (Daniel Barenboim, Myung-whun Chung, Sir Simon Rattle, etc.) as well as with the most prestigious ensembles (Berlin, Paris, New York, Vienna, Tokyo). In June 2017, Roger Muraro gave the world premiere in Tokyo of a work by Olivier Messiaen for solo piano (Fauvettes de l’Hérault – concert des garrigues) based on sketches that he had collected from the composer’s archives at the Bibliothèque nationale de France. At a turning point in his musical life, Roger Muraro is returning to a repertoire he has neglected for many years, ranging from Mozart to Schumann, Brahms and Scriabin, not forgetting Liszt, whose recording of the ‘Années de pèlerinage’ will be available in a few months’ time.
In 2001, the Forberg-Schneider Foundation (Munich) awarded him the Belmont Prize for his commitment to contemporary music. He has taught at the CNSM in Lyon and the Musikhochschule in Stuttgart. Since 2016, he has been professor of piano at the CNSM in Paris, and since 2021 he has also taught at the IESM in Aix-en-Provence.