Piano Recital I / Anastasiia Kliuchereva

The works of three master composers and pianists will be presented by the virtuoso 21-year-old winner of the 11th Johann Nepomuk Hummel International Piano Competition, Anastasia Kliuchereva. A student at the Mozarteum Salzburg, she is the recent winner of third prize at the prestigious Bartók World Competition in Budapest. Béla Bartók's Suite is one of the few works that does not conceal Eastern European folk idioms. While Bartók's Suite was written during World War I, Sergei Prokofiev's trilogy of sonatas (Nos. 6, 7, and 8) is linked to the following war. It is said that in 1940 Prokofiev was forced to perform a compulsory exercise and write a salute for the regime. In contrast to the joyful salute to Stalin's 60th birthday, the three war sonatas are the true expression of Prokofiev's view of the horrors being committed. It is a great irony that he was even awarded Stalin's second-class prize for Sonata No. 7.