Symphony No. 9 in D minor, Op. 125
Transcribed for two pianos by Franz Liszt

• Allegro ma non troppo, un poco maestoso 15’46
• Molto vivace – Presto 14’31
• Adagio molto e cantabile – Andante moderato – Adagio stesso tempo 14’06

Finale

• Presto 2’19
• Allegro assai – Presto – Recitativo – Allegro assai 7’11
• Allegro assai vivace alla Marcia – Andante maestoso – Adagio ma non troppo ma devoto 7’14
• Allegro energico – Allegro ma non tanto – Prestissimo 6’38

Cédric Pescia

Cédric Pescia was born in Lausanne and holds joint Swiss and French nationality. He studied at the Conservatoires of Lausanne (Christian Favre) and Geneva (Dominique Merlet), the Universität der Künste in Berlin (Klaus Hellwig) and the Lake Como International Piano Academy (Dmitri Bashkirov, Leon Fleisher, Andreas Staier, William Grant Naboré, Fou Ts’ong). Alongside this he received advanced tuition from Pierre-Laurent Aimard, Daniel Barenboim, Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau, Irwin Gage, Ilan Gronich, Christian Zacharias and the Alban Berg Quartet. He won first prize at the Gina Bachauer International Piano Competition 2002 in Salt Lake City, USA. Cédric Pescia appears in recital and with orchestra in Europe, the USA, China and South America. His notable engagements have included the Philharmonie and Konzerthaus in Berlin, the Vienna Konzerthaus, the Wigmore Hall in London, the Salzburg Mozarteum, Carnegie Hall in New York, the Shanghai Oriental Art Center, the Tonhalle in Zurich, the Prague Spring, the Lucerne Festival, the Menuhin Festival Gstaad, the Schleswig- Holstein Musik Festival, the Davos Festival and Klavierfestival Ruhr.

He enjoys a longstanding artistic partnership with the violinist Nurit Stark and is artistic director of the Lausanne chamber music series Ensemble enScène.

Cédric Pescia has been awarded a scholarship from the Fondation Leenaards of Lausanne and the Music Prize of the Fondation Vaudoise pour la Culture. In 2012 he was appointed professor of piano at the Haute École de Musique in Geneva.

Philippe Cassard

Considered by his colleagues, the critics and the public as one of the most captivating allround musicians of his generation, Philippe Cassard trained with Dominique Merlet and Geneviève Joy-Dutilleux at the Conservatoire National Supérieur de Musique de Paris, where he obtained Premiers Prix for Piano and Chamber Music in 1982. He went on to advanced study for two years at the Hochschule für Musik in Vienna, and subsequently received guidance from the legendary Nikita Magaloff. He was a finalist at the 1985 Clara Haskil Competition, and won first prize at the Dublin International Piano Competition in 1988.

After this success he was invited to appear with the leading European orchestras (London Philharmonic, City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra, BBC Philharmonic, Orchestre National de France, Orchestre Philharmonique de Radio France, Orchestre National du Capitole de Toulouse, Budapest Philharmonic, Danish Radio Symphony Orchestra, etc.), playing under the direction of such conductors as Sir Neville Marriner, Marek Janowski, Charles Dutoit, Yan-Pascal Tortelier, Armin Jordan and Vladimir Fedoseyev. His penchant for chamber music and his passion for the voice have led him to perform with such artists as Christa Ludwig, Natalie Dessay, Angelika Kirchschlager, Stéphanie d’Oustrac, Wolfgang Holzmair, Donna Brown, Michel Portal and David Grimal, the Ébène and Modigliani quartets, and the actors Philippe Torreton, Roland Bertin, Judith Magre and Micheline Dax.

Philippe Cassard has published an essay on Schubert (Actes Sud) and a book of interviews about cinema and music, Deux temps trois mouvements (Capricci). He founded the festival Les Estivales de Gerberoy (1997-2003), and was artistic director of Les Nuits Romantiques du Lac du Bourget (1999-2008). Since 2013 he has been responsible for the classical programme of the Festival de Fontdouce (Charente Maritime). He has presented nearly 430 programmes in the radio series Notes du Traducteur on France Musique since 2005; in 2007 the series received
the Prix SCAM for ‘best sound work of 2007’.