Pierre-Laurent Aimard explores the keyboard fantasy over the centuries

French pianist Pierre-Laurent Aimard is known as a champion of modernist composers such as Elliott Carter, Harrison Birtwistle, György Kurtág, Karlheinz Stockhausen, Pierre Boulez, György Ligeti and Olivier Messiaen. For his latest recital tour, Aimard pairs 20th-century works with earlier classics, all in exploration of the fantasia.

Spanning almost four centuries of music, Aimard’s program surveys the keyboard fantasy, a genre whose improvisatory roots let its composers’ imaginations run unfettered. For his SCP Piano recital Feb. 25, he juxtaposes examples by Mozart, Sweelinck, C.P.E. Bach and Beethoven with George Benjamin’s Fantasy on Iambic Rhythm (1985), and fantasies by Sweelinck and Chopin with The Celestial Railroad by American modernist Charles Ives, who celebrates his sesquicentenary in 2024.

Over the last year, Aimard has performed a similar program, with acclaimed results. In its review of an Aimard recital in February, the San Diego Union Tribune wrote: “A fantasia has no predefined structure. There’s no guarantee that a melody you hear in the opening measures will ever come back again. Classical music thrives on departure from a theme and a return to it. The unpredictability of an evening of fantasias could have been challenging, but Aimard’s technical mastery and inspired musicality produced a gratifying concert revealing surprise after surprise.

“Anchored by four fantasias by Mozart, the program included examples by Jan Sweelinck, C.P.E. Bach and Beethoven. Each half ended with an unfamiliar 20th-century work — Musica Stricta by Andrei Volkonsky for the first, then Fantasy on Iambic Rhythm by George Benjamin for the second.

“A request for no applause between pieces on each half created two chimerical compositions, each glued together at times by pitch connections between the individual works. Mozart’s Fantasia No. 3 in D Minor, K. 397, ended with a loud D major chord. Sweelinck’s Fantasia Chromatica immediately followed, opening with a softly repeated D, as if an echo of Mozart’s final chord.

“Some believe that Beethoven’s rarely heard Fantasia, Op. 77, is the closest that modern listeners can come to hearing him improvise, a talent in which he was unsurpassed for his time. Aimard ably carried us along through Beethoven’s twists and turns.

“George Benjamin is best known these days for his operas, but last century he was primarily an instrumental composer. His Fantasy on Iambic Rhythm was his first work to break away from his early infatuation with spectral composition. He took the general idea of short-long rhythms and crafted a 13-minute-long piece notable for craggy counterpoint and suggestions of tonal harmonies in an otherwise atonal context. ... It was a fitting end to an evening of mercurial music and connections across centuries. Throughout, Aimard’s technique and musical insights excellently illuminated a fascinating, unforgettable concert.”

Likewise, after one of his fantasia programs at London’s Queen Elizabeth Hall, Seen and Heard International observed: “Recitals by Pierre-Laurent Aimard are never going to be less than fascinating. His quick mind and questing spirit see to that. ... If only all piano recitals showed this level of commitment to ideas, to the music of our time, to connecting threads across centuries.”