Biography

Born in Moscow in 1990, Lukas Geniušas graduated from the Chopin Music College Moscow, in 2008. He has been a prize winner at several prestigious competitions, including the 2015 International Tchaikovsky Competition in Moscow (Silver Medal) and the 2010 International Chopin Competition in Warsaw. Since 2015, Geniušas has been a featured artist of Looking at the Stars, a Toronto-based philanthropic project whose purpose is to bring classical music to institutions and organizations (prisons, hospitals, shelters, and the like) where residents may not have opportunities to experience it live in traditional settings. His discography includes works by Beethoven, Brahms, Rachmaninoff (the complete Preludes), Chopin (the complete Etudes, the Third Sonata, and a selection of Mazurkas), Prokofiev sonatas, and works by Stravinsky, Bartók, Desyatnikov, and Tchaikovsky. His first recording on the Mirare label (Prokofiev’s Sonatas Nos. 2 and 5) was awarded the Choc de Classica and the Diapason Recital CD of the Year in 2019. Geniušas is also an avid collaborator in chamber music and a highly inquisitive musician who enjoys learning new works by modern composers as well as resurrecting rarely performed repertory from the past. “Geniušas, who takes risk after risk, draws from his keyboard a palette of which the variety, the truth, and the beauty are bewitching … [He] seems to know how to do everything better than anyone.” (Patrick Szersnovicz, Diapason) 2nd LMMC concert.

https://geniusas.com/

Notes

The Suite bergamasque was written in 1899 and published in its final form in 1905. “Bergamasque” refers to the region around the Italian city of Bergamo; by extension, it is a generic term for dances and poetry of the area. “Many compositions,” according to the Harvard Dictionary of Music, “even sophisticated ones, written in the seventeenth, eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, bear the title because of real or fancied relationship to Bergamo.” Debussy’s composition may be regarded as four vignettes of bergamasque character as revealed in atmosphere (prelude and moonlight) and dance (minuet and passepied). Refinement, elegance and restraint are the keywords in this deft amalgamation of tradition (medieval church modes, old French dances, Baroque chiaroscuro effects) and innovation (daring harmonies, rhythmic subtleties).

Georges Enesco (the Gallicized form of George Enescu) was born in Romania but spent most of his career in Paris. In addition to being one of Romania’s most famous composers, he was also a violinist, pianist, conductor, child prodigy (at seven he was the youngest student ever admitted to the Vienna Conservatory), teacher and statesman. Pablo Casals called him “the greatest musical phenomenon since Mozart.” The Nocturne of 1907 lasts nearly twenty minutes and is laid out in three large sections. The outer two are meditative, shadowy, redolent of the night, and feature writing of great sensitivity and delicacy. The central episode is agitated, rising to an intense climax.

For Schumann, the piano was the instrument through which he confided his most intimate thoughts, and was his most personal medium of artistic expression. The Davidsbündlertänze (Dances of the League of David) dates from 1837, when the composer was 27. In its first edition, it was published with the title “Florestan and Eusebius,” referring to the two fictional characters, members of the Davidsbund, who are actually only opposing facets of Schumann’s alter ego, the former representing his extroverted, exuberant side, the latter his quiet, meditative side. The Davidsbund itself is likewise purely a product of Schumann’s fertile romantic imagination. It is fashioned after the Old Testament figure (David), and represents the proud, musical pioneers who went forth to do battle (with pens and notes, not swords and slingshots) against philistines and ultra-conservative composers of the day. The spirit of the dance infuses the entire eighteen-piece set in one way or another. Mazurka, waltz, polka, tarantella, Ländler, march and other dance forms are used either obviously or subtly transformed in these mood pieces, which are by turns joyous, eccentric, reflective, lively, agitated, and whimsical.

Robert Markow