Mavroudes Troulos, Bassoon
Lily Maisky, Piano

Mavroudes and Lily have come up with a program for two instruments that rarely come together: the bassoon and the piano. The piano, either solo or in chamber music, may be more familiar but the bassoon is rarely played solo. Yet its potential is immense: sometimes full of nostalgia (think of the opening of the Rite of Spring), sometimes full of humor, “unusual to the point of being strange” according to Mavroudes himself, the bassoon can express a whole range of emotions, from the grotesque to melancholy and sentiment. The two musicians devised a program of transcriptions of songs such as Schumann, Poulenc, Falla, Tchaikovsky…, transcriptions of works for cello and piano such as Bloch, and orchestral/piano works like Bartók’s Rumanian Folk Dances. A festive and colorful program.