On Friday evening next, October 9, Con Brio launch their 27th annual Sligo Music Series with a concert by renowned pianist Daniel Lebhardt. Daniel returns to Sligo for his second performance in Sligo having given an exceptional recital for Con Brio in 2024. He is a critically acclaimed Hungarian classical pianist based in London, known for a performance style that The New York Times described as possessing “power, poetry and formidable technique”. Over the last decade, he has established himself internationally as a distinguished soloist and chamber musician, praised for his emotional intensity and commanding authority at the keyboard.
Daniel began his formal musical education in Budapest at the Franz Liszt Academy of Music. He subsequently relocated to the United Kingdom to advance his training at the Royal Academy of Music in London under the tutelage of Christopher Elton and Pascal Nemirovski. His international career launched rapidly following a string of major competition successes which included First Prize at the prestigious Young Concert Artists (YCA) International Auditions in both Paris and New York in 2014 and the Geoffrey Tozer Most Promising Pianist prize at the Sydney International Piano Competition in 2016. He has participated in masterclasses with Alfred Brendel, Maxim Vengerov and Leslie Howard.
As a concerto soloist, Lebhardt has performed alongside prominent orchestras worldwide. A frequent interpreter of Beethoven’s Piano Concerto No. 5, he has performed the work for his debuts with the Hallé Orchestra, at the Barbican Centre, and at Birmingham Symphony Hall. His orchestral footprint extends to collaborations with the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, Konzerthausorchester Berlin, and the Venice Symphony in Florida. Last month he reached a major career milestone by making his debut at the Royal Albert Hall, performing Rachmaninoff’s Second Piano Concerto with the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra.
He has recorded the piano works of Béla Bartók for the Decca label, an acclaimed album dedicated to Franz Schubert for Naxos and two highly praised duo albums with his frequent collaborator, violinist Benjamin Baker.
Daniel’s programme for this concert features works by Beethoven, Schubert, Chopin, Liszt, Brahms and Tchaikovsky.
Tchaikovsky’s Autumn Song (October), from The Seasons, Op. 37a, is one of a set of twelve character pieces depicting the months of the year in Russia. He commenced work on the pieces shortly after the premiere of his First Piano Concerto, and continued to work on them while he was completing his first ballet, Swan Lake.
From the gentle melancholy of the Tchaikovsky piece the programme moves to Beethoven’s Sonata in D minor, Op. 31 No. 2, the celebrated “Tempest” Sonata. Written during a period when Beethoven was beginning to confront the reality of his worsening hearing loss, the work is among the most dramatic and innovative of his middle-period sonatas. It marks a critical turning point where the composer famously declared his intent to take a “new path” in composition, breaking away from traditional Classical models to usher in an intensely emotive, dramatic, and experimental Romantic style.
Liszt’s Nuages gris (Grey Clouds), composed late in the composer’s life while battling severe depression, offers a striking glimpse into his experimental final style, anticipating harmonic developments that would emerge decades later.
Chopin’s Scherzo No. 1 in B minor, Op. 20 follows, a work of extraordinary virtuosity and emotional intensity that remains one of the most demanding pieces in the piano repertoire. Historically, the term “scherzo” implied a playful or humorous character, but Chopin fundamentally subverted this expectation by turning it into a dark, tempestuous, and deeply emotional form. Written during his time in Vienna, the piece was heavily influenced by his profound homesickness and the outbreak of the November Uprising against Russia in his native Poland.
Brahms’s intimate and deeply personal Four Piano Pieces, Op. 119 was his final solo piano collection. Written during his summer residency in the Austrian spa town of Bad Ischl in 1893, these introspective character pieces are considered part of the composer’s “autumnal” late period.
The programme concludes with Schubert’s richly imaginative Three Piano Pieces, D946, which were completed in May 1828, the final year of the composer’s life. These masterworks represent the composer’s final productive period alongside his late piano sonatas and String Quintet.
This richly varied and evocative programme performed by an exceptional pianist is an exciting start to the new Sligo Music Series. The concert takes place in The Model and tickets which cost €20 (students €10) can be obtained from The Model at 071 9141405 or online at con-brio.org.
This concert is sponsored by Sligo County Council Arts Service.
