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Bach’s keyboard concertos were composed for a café performance! Café Zimmermann in Leipzig was the place to meet, mix, and hear Bach and his ‘Collegium Musicum’ play weekly. Performing these works with a string quartet, we revive their original size and spirit. Hearing the concertos in this format lets listeners rediscover the intimate, intricate relationships between the lines.

Tal’s Concerto for Piano and Magnetic Tape is exciting in its fresh sound world and its unique take on the concerto idea. The piano soloist is at some points alone, at others accompanied by the soundtrack or in a dramatic dialogue with it. The interaction resembles that of piano and orchestra, yet challenges it: Can musical or human interaction exist when only one side of the duo is ‘alive’?

Performing Haydn Concerto with the Jerusalem Symphony Orchestra and Maestro Doron Salomon on this ‘back to stage’ concert after Covid was a joy. Particularly fun was composing the many cadences and improvised passages in this concerto, following the tradition of my mentor Paul Badura-Skoda.

Ravel’s masterpiece ‘Miroirs’ encompasses every possible aspect of piano virtuosity in five picturesque movements. To me, each of these five mirrors a human emotion in nature: From the restless anxiety of ‘Night moths’ to the loneliness of ‘Sad Birds’, from the vulnerability of ‘Boat on the Ocean’ to the seductive ‘Alborada del gracioso’ and somber ‘Valley of Bells’.

Experiencing the whole Well-Tempered Clavier in a concert is like opening a massive book and witnessing in it the greatness of humanity. As the preludes and fugues follow each other, one gains a deeper grasp of Bach's statement: “The aim and final end of all music should be none other than the glory of God and the refreshment of the soul.”

Couperin’s ‘The Nightingale in Love’ and his other nature-depicting miniatures offer us the experience of marveling at the world through the composer’s 18th-century eyes: At times melancholic, then amused, but always adoring.

Ives’ Piano Sonata is a horizon-widening experience that feels like a journey through America of the early twentieth Century: Ragtime and early jazz, church hymns, band music, gospel melodies - all come together in this grand creation.