When looking back at the year 2009 I will remember many joyful, musical moments and inspiring meetings with artists, friends and, last but not least, the audience.

Particularly memorable was the performance in Stockholm of Prokofiev’s Second Piano Concerto, not  least because of the laborous studies preceding this concert. Some of the most fiendishly difficult passages in this music seemed indeed insurmountable at more than one stage during many hours of practising. At the same time the wondrous harmonic & melodic inventions and the natural flow of the music makes all efforts worthwhile.

The Royal Philharmonic Orchestra and maestro Alexander Vedernikov were my splendid counterparts in this fascinating work.
The long-term project of playing all Beethoven Sonatas at  Kulturhuset in Ytterjärna
continued with the second and third concert in the series.

During the summer I played my new recital program, with the title
”Maurice and the Romantic Musketeers”, where Schumann’s great C major Fantasie is juxtaposed with late Liszt, a Chopin group and excerpts from Ravel’s Miroirs. This program was created for the Summer Night Concerts at  Nationalmuseum in Stockholm on 1 July but I also performed it in Gävle (”Kulturaftnar på Engeltofta” ), Skebo Herrgård (within the festival ”Sommarnattens Toner”), Visby (Gotland Chamber Music Festival) and in Bodø, Norway, at the Nordland Musikkfestuke.


For my annual concert in the Cathedral of S:ta Maria, Visby, preceding the regular  festival program, I wrote arrangements of Nature Boy and Regina Spektor’s ”Samson” which were performed by singer Katarina Henryson, Staffan Scheja (playing the organ!), a little string ensemble and myself.

Both the Ravel Left Hand Concerto, with Norrköping Symphony Orchestra in Norrköping and Linköping in September and Stenhammar’s Second Concerto, with Turku Philharmonic Orchestra in Turku in November, I played for the first time.
I always dreamt of playing the Ravel- one of the supreme masterworks of the 20th Century.
The Stenhammar D minor Concerto I heard many times . I have known it is a pivotal achievement in Stenhammar’s œuvre and an important work in Swedish music history but it was only when studying the score inside out that I was truly moved by the drama and poetic power of the music.

It was in 2007 at the Verbier Festival that I first met Russian composer Rodion Shchedrin and his wife, the legendary Prima Ballerina Maya Plisetskaya. Shchedrin and I then gave the World Premiere of his Romantic Duets. In the same concert I played the piano part in ”My Age, My Wild Beast”, a vocal cycle on texts by Osip Mandelstam.
Since then I have had the pleasure to meet the radiantly charming couple Shchedrin & Plisetskaya and play Rodion’s music again : in Paris in February 2008 and last summer at the Rheingau Festival.
Kenneth Tarver admirably sang the demanding tenor part in all of these performances  of ”My Age..” and in Schloss Johannisberg we were joined by distinguished actress/singer Salome Kammer, who read from the diarys of Akhmatova.

<div class="thiswas_center"><img src="p2009/6-7.jpg" />With Rodion Shchedrin in Verbier 2007; Rodion & Maya</div>

Once again I had the pleasure of working together with Jacek Kaspszyk – a truly great musician. The occasion was the annual Östersjöfestivalen in Stockholm, the orchestra were the brilliant players of Sinfonia Varsovia and the music was Chopin’s F minor Concerto.


In October I met Sinfonia Varsovia again in France but this time I didn’t play. They accompanied the contestants in the 2ème Concours Européen de Piano in Ouistreham and Le Havre and I sat in the jury.

This season I’ve also made the acquaintance of a young talented violinist named Bartosz Cajler who introduced me to the fascinating music of Alexandre Tansman.
Before meeting Bartosz I knew very little about Tansman and had scarcely heard a note of his music. One November week in Warsaw we recorded the first volume (of two) of his complete works for violin and piano for Polish label Dux.

For me every year is a Chopin year but surely I can feel the increasing interest in his music because of the current 200th anniversary ; and it already started in October last year when I participated in a film production named ”Chopin at the Opera”. Director Jan Schmidt-Garré and producer Marieke Schroeder investigates the strong influence of the  bel canto style in Chopin’s music. Together with mezzo soprano Katerina Hebelkova, Peter Feuchtwanger, Jean-Jacques Eigeldinger and George-Albrecht Eckle a.o. we met in Nohant (where Chopin spent six summers during the 1840’s) to discuss, sing, listen and play Chopin and some of the music that surrounded him.

2009 has been busy, interesting, eventful and almost too hectic.
Therefore I have really enjoyed resting during the Christmas holidays which began very traditionally with ”Matteusbarnens Julbön”- A Christmas play at eight in the morning on Christmas Eve in the Matteus Church in Stockholm.
The Christmas play in Matteus is a tradition since more than seventy years. I have been singing in the choir for twenty but a couple of years ago I suggested that instead of singing I’d better play something on the piano after tolling of bells.
This year I played Corelli/Godowsky Pastorale (Angelus) and Liadov’s Music for a Snuff Box and my daughter Agnès sang in the children’s chorus.