The La Jolla Music Society presents pianist Pierre-Laurent Aimard in a themed recital exploring the fantasia. The program extends across centuries from a late Renaissance work by Jan Sweelinck to the classical fantasias of Mozart and Beethoven to more contemporary compositions by Andrei Volkonsky and George Benjamin.

Aimard is widely acclaimed as a key figure in the music of our time and has had close collaborations with many leading composers including György Ligeti whose complete works for piano he has recorded. He has also worked with Karlheinz Stockhausen, George Benjamin, and Pierre Boulez, who appointed Aimard at age 19 to become the Ensemble Intercontemporain´s first solo pianist.

Dr. Brown Montesano will offer a historical and stylistic overview of the fantasia—a genre that demands both improvisational imagination and compositional discipline–and look into connecting threads between the very different works on this “fantastic” program.