Maurice Ravel                 Ma mère l’Oye [Mother Goose Suite]

I.                              Pavane de la Belle au bois dormant (Pavane of Sleeping Beauty)

II.                           Petit Poucet (Tom Thumb)

III.                         Laideronette, Impératrice des Pagodes (Laideronette, Empress of the Pagodas)

IV.                       Les entretiens de la Belle et de la bête (Conversations of Beauty and the Beast)

V.                          Le jardin féerique (The Fairy Garden)

George Gershwin         Rhapsody in Blue

Hanna Kulenty               VAN

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Igor Stravinsky               Trois mouvements de Petrouchka (Three movements from Petrushka) 

I.                              Danse Russe (Russian Dance)

II.                           Chez Pétrouchka (Petrushka’s Room)

III.                         La semaine grasse (The Shrovetide Fair)

Four hands – two people – one piano.  A more tightly-knit conversation there surely cannot be. The earliest known printed music for four hands was that of 1777 in London, by English respected academic and musician, Charles Burney – who had to explain this new practice in the preface.  Gabi and Joanne will be performing a mammoth programme.  I am thrilled they said yes to Stravinsky’s Trois mouvements de Pétrouchka.  Alongside this will be Maurice Ravel’s Ma Mere l'Oye, with its gorgeous fairytale movements, George Gershwin’s ever-popular Rhapsody in Blue, and Hanna Kulenty’s fiery VAN.  This evening will surely be a flashy and weighty way to close the curtains on The Three Palaces Festival 2025!

A work dedicated to Mimi and Jean Godebski, two young children whose parents were close friends of Ravel, and whom Ravel loved reading to, the Mother Goose Suite was completed in 1910.  It is a work of fairy tales coming to life through colours and textures and sounds.  The master painter of music, Ravel brushes across these imaginary landscapes and fantastical stories, in simplicity and elegance. An evocation of church modes takes us back in time, as the Sleeping Beauty has been asleep for a hundred years.  A nonchalant, carefree Little Tom Thumb is portrayed through changing rhythms.  He soon discovers that the trail of breadcrumbs he had left to find his way back has been eaten by the birds!  The Empress of the Pagodas uses pentatonic scales to depict the exotic, whilst the mysterious waltz transforms into something gorgeous, just like the Beast becomes the prince, when Beauty is won over by his kindness.  The enchanted garden ends with beautiful, gentle washes of colour and timbres, growing into flashes of luminosity and colour.  It evokes bursts of glittering sunshine to me.

This leads on beautifully to Gershwin and his blues notes.  Gershwin began his career in Tin Pan Alley.  Rhapsody in Blue is a merging of the classical and jazz world.  It’s iconic clarinet glissando opening – tonight a gliss on the piano – is probably one of the most recognisable openings in the history of music, together with Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony – or Mahler 5, for that matter.  Rhapsody in Blue was written very quickly.  It was premiered with George Gershwin himself as the soloist, in 1924 – just a couple of weeks after the premiere of Stravinsky’s Rite of Spring.  In the audience: Stokowski, Kriesler, and Rachmaninoff, to name but a few. It was an immediate success.  Gershwin described it as a ‘musical kaleidoscope of America – of our vast melting pot, of our unduplicated national pep, of our blues, our metropolitan madness’.  It has been performed in very many ways – including a performance by 84 pianos at the Los Angeles Summer Olympics opening ceremony!  Tonight, we have two – but what a sound they will make!

Written at the request of the Embassy of the Kingdom of the Netherlands in Warsaw on the occasion of the State Visit of King Willem-Alexander and Queen Máxima of the Netherlands, VAN is an explosion of sound and pulsating and changing rhythm by Polish composer Hanna Kulenty (b. 1961): ‘an extended kaleidoscopic exchange of repeated impulses which constantly interact through exchange, reflection and alternation’.  It leaves us in the gentlest of fashions, dissipating into silence…

We started with fairytales and we end with folk songs. Completed in 1921, ten years after the original ballet, and dedicated to Arthur Rubinstein, this is a work of extreme virtuosity, and a cornerstone of c-20^th music.

‘In composing the music, I had in mind a distinct picture of a puppet, suddenly endowed with life, exasperating the patience of the orchestra with diabolical cascades of arpeggi. The orchestra in turn retaliates with menacing trumpet blasts. The outcome is a terrific noise which reaches its climax and ends in the sorrowful and querulous collapse of the poor puppet. This bizarre piece having been completed, I sought for hours, while walking beside Lake Geneva, to find a title that would express in a single word the character of my music and consequently the personality of this creature. One day I jumped for joy—Petrushka! The immortal and unhappy hero of all the fairs in all countries: I had found my title!’ [Igor Stravinsky]

Petrushka is the Russian equivalent of Punch. Puppets magically come to life and dance for the crowd, a love triangle adds to the tension, whilst a dancing bear adds to the merriment.  The discordant Petrushka chord rings throughout the ballet.  Sergei Diaghilev was expecting a draft for the agreed Rite of Spring for the Ballets Russes when he visited an excited Stravinsky who was working on ‘an orchestral piece in which the piano would play the most important part—a sort of Konzertstück…’  This was the birth of Petrushka – with the piano always at the heart of what it was to become.

  Artist profile Gabi Sultana Described as “a demon of energy; yet one of impeccable articulation” and “synonymous with the avant-garde,” pianist Gabi Sultana is internationally recognised for her powerful interpretations of contemporary classical music and daring artistic choices. A bold soloist and chamber musician, she has performed at Carnegie Hall, BOZAR, Muziekgebouw aan ’t IJ, and festivals across Europe, USA, Japan, and Australia. A former core member of Belgium’s acclaimed SPECTRA Ensemble, she has premiered numerous works and collaborated closely with many living composers. Her versatility extends to interdisciplinary projects, including a filmed John Cage tribute with electronic artist Peter Van Hoesen for Culturebox in Paris. After two decades abroad, Gabi returned to Malta, where she remains active as a performer, collaborator—both locally and internationally—and a passionate educator dedicated to inspiring the next generation.

"...Sultana enraptured us with her superb technique, but above all, with her boundless passion…”  - Ben Taffijn for NieuweNoten.nl

Joanne Camilleri

Joanne Camilleri is an accomplished Maltese pianist and harpsichordist, lauded for her technical brilliance and expressive musicality. She has built a distinguished career as a soloist, chamber musician, and orchestral pianist, performing across Europe, Asia, and the Americas. Her versatile concert repertoire ranges from the baroque through to the 20th century. However, she is particularly recognized for her contributions in baroque music, with her Doctoral studies at the University of Malta culminating in Bach’s monumental Goldberg Variations.

Joanne is a prize-winning alumna of the Royal Northern College of Music (UK), graduating with a First Class Honours Bachelor’s Degree, and a Master’s Degree and Performance Diploma both with Distinction. Her tutors have included internationally distinguished musicians, while locally she has been taught, supported, and mentored in her advanced studies by Ingrid Calleja, Mro Michael Laus and the late Cynthia Turner.

Joanne’s discography includes Bach’s Goldberg Variations, In Bach’s Footsteps, Chopin: The 24 Preludes and Beethoven’s Hammerklavier & Op.90 Sonatas.