Cédric Pescia returns to EPFL for a transcendental sonata

The concert and class mark the second visit to EPFL for Pescia, who performed in 2019 to mark the School’s 50^th anniversary. For Pescia, performing for students at universities is an especially enjoyable experience.

“One of my favorite places to play is always universities, to play for young people and for teachers,” he says. “There is this eagerness from the audience to learn something. I really have good memories of my first concert at EPFL, of playing at a place where there is so much curiosity. You don’t necessarily encounter this in more regular places where classical music is performed. The ability of having so many young people is missing in the classical music world.”

“I feel like a child who’s been given a new toy”

The piece that Pescia has chosen to play – Concord Sonata by Charles Ives – has unique characteristics for its time. Ives was not a professional composer, and the Sonata, which is composed in four parts, pays homage to the American transcendentalist philosophical movement of Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry David Thoreau, Amos Bronson Alcott and Nathaniel Hawthorne, among others. In addition, it was never finished, as Ives kept making changes to it up until he died.

“The Concord Sonata, which is now one hundred years old, is a monument for the piano, a work that contains reflections of a spirit imbued with great culture through its many references to the traditions of the art of composition,” says Constance Frei, a professor of musicology in the CDH Social Sciences and Humanities (SHS) program and will have a discussion onstage with Pescia before his performance.

“By being part of history, this Sonata is also the ideal playground for developing innovative techniques and an individual avant-garde language. It is therefore a perfect work, combining tradition and innovation, to serve as a model for an EPFL audience constantly challenged to work on these two dynamic axes.”

For his performance, Pescia will be accompanied by Néhémie Manca on the flute and Avishai Chameides on the viola. He is looking forward to playing this avant-garde piece, which he says leaves a lot open to be interpreted by the pianist.

“I feel like a child who has been given a new toy,” he says, “with the ability to explore new things.”

The link between philosophy and music

The event will start with a discussion between Pescia and Frei, where they will cover topics such as the unique way Ives wrote and played his music, his connection with transcendentalism, and the link between philosophy and music.

“It's yet another opportunity to remember that music is part of our daily lives, and a powerful means of developing deep reflection on our existence,” says Frei.

Because Ives’s Concord Sonata is inspired by transcendental philosophers writing about nature, the experience of listening to this performance opens the audience up to new perspectives on ecological issues. In his “Essay on a Sonata”, Ives elaborates on his relationships with these different philosophers.

“He tried to put into music what he felt and thought after reading these great texts,” Pescia says of Ives. “I really hope that in playing this piece, I can really tell a story.”

A piano masterclass

Leading up to the concert, Pescia will also offer his musical teaching gifts to three fortunate EPFL students by teaching them a piano masterclass. These three students were selected based on their experience and skill level to take part in this masterclass, which will be taught on a concert grand piano at the Rolex Learning Center Forum and is open to the public.

“The excellence and quality of Cédric Pescia's piano playing, his great skills as a teacher and his human generosity offer a unique opportunity for the EPFL community to immerse itself in a musical universe of the highest caliber and to question our relationship with music,” says Frei.