New CD Release Florian Uhlig – French Piano Concertos Vol. 2, March 10th, 2017

Florian Uhlig’s second album featuring French piano concertos is devoted to compositions from the early 20th century by Maurice Ravel, Jean Françaix, Nadia Boulanger and Germaine Tailleferre. Music during this time remained under the influence of impressionism on the one hand yet on the other, deliberately turned away from it and towards a new practicality and classicism as represented by the “Groupe des Six”. Here, strict forms were just as popular as a playful ironic style.

Florian Uhlig begins his CD with the Piano Concerto for the left hand in D-Major by Maurice Ravel (1875–1937) commissioned by the pianist Paul Wittgenstein (1887–1961) who lost one arm due to a war injury. The technically-demanding, single-movement composition summons up an enormous sound range and audibly makes use of military music and jazz elements. As the only woman belonging to the group of French composers, “Groupe des Six” founded in 1919/20 under the leadership of poet Jean Cocteau, Germaine Tailleferre (1892–1983) represented the ambitions of this group excellently with her brilliant, polytonal works of the 1920’s. Her Ballade for piano and orchestra went through several phases during the years 1920–22 initially starting off as purely an orchestral work and turning into a solo piece for piano before settling into its final version in concerto style. Her contemporary, Nadia Boulanger (1887–1979) was mainly active as an educator of many world-renowned composers. Her comparatively traditional Fantasie (variée) for piano and orchestra is enriched by whole tone scales and the occasional rather impressionistic harmonies. One of her students was Jean Françaix (1912–1997) who elegantly and entertainingly continues the stylistic ideals of the “Groupe des Six” with his piano concerto from 1936: almost entirely tonally-centered yet with prickly bitonal passages and a constant ironic twist.

Florian Uhligs’s extensive discography was honoured with prizes such as the German Record Critics’ Award. Currently a recording of the complete works for solo piano by Robert Schumann are underway. He is highly valued across the globe as a soloist, chamber musician and lieder accompanist. He has performed with the BBC Symphony Orchestra, Beijing Symphony Orchestra, National Symphony Orchestra of Taiwan, the Deutsche Radio Philharmonie Saarbrücken Kaiserslautern and with the Simón Bolívar Youth Orchestra. He has been the Artistic Director of the Johannesburg International Mozart Festival in South Africa since 2008. www.florian-uhlig.com