Piano Quintet: Burnon, Suska, Janicki, Houzé, Giménez

Flagey opens its classical season with two absolute gems of the chamber music repertoire: the piano quintets of Antonín Dvořák and Johannes Brahms. With extraordinary melodic vitality inspired by Slavic dance forms such as the dumka and the furiant, Dvořák dispelled all doubts in his Piano Quintet No. 2 in A major after an earlier fruitless attempt in the genre. Brahms’s Piano Quintet in F minor also emerged from a long search: only after unsatisfactory versions for string quintet and for two pianos did Brahms find in the piano quintet the ideal sonority for his music. For these masterpieces, an exceptional ensemble gathers around pianist Valère Burnon, who was one of last year’s revelations at the Queen Elisabeth Competition, winning Third Prize as well as the audience prizes of VRT Canvas-Klara and Musiq3. Joined by Adam Suska and Amia Janicki (violins), Héloïse Houzé (viola), and Jorge Giménez (cello), all like Burnon himself trained at the Queen Elisabeth Music Chapel, he is surrounded by the ideal musical partners.