Béla Bartók’s 1937 Sonata was a watershed moment for the history of music: it was the first composition to place the piano on equal footing with percussion instruments. For the premier in Basel, Switzerland, the composer and his wife played the piano parts and their page turner, future maestro Georg Solti, could hardly believe his ears. Not long after, Bartók’s life was upended: for political reasons, he was forced to leave Hungary for the United States. Though he had been celebrated in Europe for his pioneering mind, he struggled to make a name for himself in the US. He died there, ill and penniless, in 1945.

Following the Journey to Ukraine concert and the travelling opera Bluebeard’s Castle from last season, pianists Oleh Kopeliuk and Ihor Sediuk have returned to Lille, Kharkiv’s twin city. Kopeliuk and Sediuk created this programme at a time when their own trajectories had been upended. Bartók is joined by two exiled romantics — Chopin, who was forced from his native Poland, and Liszt who left Hungary voluntarily — as well as by two major figures of contemporary Ukrainian music: Lyudmyla Shukaylo, who has been in exile in Egypt since the beginning of the war, and Dmytro Malyi. A new composition by Malyi, commissioned by the Opéra de Lille, will premier during the concert.