Zoltán Fejérvári was to make his first visit to Bantry this summer as were many others in our programme. His performance comes to us from Budapest, another city famous for music. He has chosen to play Tchaikovsky’s Seasons, a set of a dozen short piano pieces, one for each month in the year. They were commissioned by a St Petersburg magazine publisher with the idea of printing a new score each month. It did not quite work out like that. The first few months went smoothly but then Tchaikovsky had to focus on orchestrating Swan Lake ahead of a performance deadline.

The last seven months were composed together to the benefit of the later pieces. Each month was given a sentimental title by the publisher. Ravel’s Tombeau de Couperin harks back to eighteenth century France with Baroque movement headings like Prélude, Forlane, Rigaudon and Toccata. Ravel described the work as a homage to the whole of eighteenth century French music. After the First World War Ravel dedicated each of the six pieces to a friend who had been killed in the field, while the great French pianist, Alfred Cortot, wrote: ‘No glorious monument could honour the memory of the French better than do these luminous melodies, these rhythms which are at the same time both distinct and flexible – a perfect expression of our culture and of our tradition.’