Legato - The World of the Piano: Roland Pöntinen - Listening to Yourself

LEGATO is a DVD series dedicated to presenting some of the most fascinating of today’s younger generation pianists - their development, their ideas and, of course, their music. Each DVD in this series presents an artist and explores an aspect of the world of piano music. Viewers meet the artists and get to know their styles, their methods of working and their personal idiosyncrasies. The sum of these portraits provides an overall picture of the art of piano playing today. We live in a “renaissance of the piano”, as the New York Times so surprisingly put it in summer 2005. A new generation is reviving the piano’s popularity as pianists with a passion for virtuosity and a willingness to expand their repertoire take to the concert stages. In addition to the standard classics, they perform formerly disparaged works or discover neglected composers. The Swedish pianist Roland Pöntinen was born in 1963. He made his debut at 17 with the Royal Stockholm Philharmonic and has since performed with the major orchestras worldwide. Thanks to an insatiable musical appetite and a stupendous technique he has acquired a vast repertoire, ranging from the Baroque period to contemporary music. This DVD portrays Roland Pöntinen in concert and interview. Recorded live at the Folkwang Hochschule Essen in July 2007, the DVD presents works by Jean-Philippe Rameau, Francois Couperin, Frédéric Chopin, Isaac Albéniz, Ferruccio Busoni, Maurice Ravel, Sergei Rachmaninov and Kaija Saariaho. In addition to this live recording and the half-hour documentary, the DVD also features an hour-long interview with the artist, giving the viewer a glimpse of one of the most exciting pianist in the new generation.