Lucy Parham

It is a real pleasure to be inviting pianist Lucy Parham back to Bury St Edmunds with Elégie - the fifth 'Composer Portrait' concert that she has compiled and scripted.

For this evening’s performance she is joined by the impressionist, comic and actor, Alistair McGowan.

Known internationally for her 'Composer Portraits' in words and music, pianist Lucy Parham’s new programme chronicles the life of composer and pianist Sergei Rachmaninoff.

Though Sergei became an exile in 1917, Russia remained deeply rooted in his soul. His cultural identity and his longing for his homeland imbue his music, not least the many much-loved works he wrote for his own instrument, the piano. The narrative, scripted from letters and diaries, follows Rachmaninoff from his youth in Russia, through his subsequent self-imposed exile in 1917 and finally to California USA, where he died in 1943.

The programme includes many of his best-loved works for solo piano, including a selection of Preludes, Etudes-Tableaux and Moments Musicaux, some of his own transcriptions and the haunting Elégie, as well as works by Scriabin and Tchaikovsky.