Jonathan Rees and Helen Reid

Jonathan Rees and Helen Reid perform a programme dedicated to the memory of one of the finest musicians and arguably the most influential music teacher of the twentieth century, Nadia Boulanger (1887-1979).

Famed both for her uncompromising rigour and her boundless joy as she engaged with music as composer, pianist, conductor and teacher, she taught successive generations of the 20th century’s most famous composers, conductors and instrumentalists. As one of her students said after studying a piece of music with her, “It was as if the work at hand suddenly became as deep as the sea”.

Today’s programme for cello and piano presents music composed by some of her many students – Leonard Bernstein, Quincy Jones, Aaron Copland and Astor Piazzolla – alongside compositions by her friend Igor Stravinsky, her tragically short-lived and equally gifted sister Lili Boulanger, her renowned teacher Gabriel Fauré, and of course Nadia Boulanger herself.