In his Grand Piano Series position, he has the free rein to apply all that teaching talent in Naples, conduct hands-on after school PianoLabs for local elementary school students, and engage audiences with anecdote-peppered performances.

Soukhovetski’s chosen partner in his upcoming recital is brilliant young violinist Jacqueline Audas, who joins the Seattle Symphony at the start of their 2024 season. A worldwide soloist and laureate of several competitions, Audas was also an early recipient of the coveted Arkady Fomin Scholarship Fund, now partnering with Grand Piano Series to bring her to Naples. At the Peabody Institute, she studied with Vadim Gluzman, fund co-founder with Angela Yoffe, and, earlier, with Fomin himself.

Jacqueline Audas

This first of what will become a series of Narrative Musicales is precisely as its title promises: an hour-long, intermission less evening concert that intertwines the music with gossipy tales of the composers’ lives and times.

In this case, the time and place is Belle Époque Paris, a gilded turn-of-the-century musical and cultural mecca.

The composers — Eugène Ysaÿe, Claude Debussy and the then-older-guard César Franck — were such good friends that the last of the program’s selections, a sonata for violin and piano, was a wedding gift from one (Franck) to another (Ysaÿe). Debussy, in turn, dedicated a string quartet to Ysaÿe, though this Narrative Musicale features his sublime “Clair de lune” for piano.

“You can hear their friendship, interconnections and mutual influences in the music,” said Soukhovetski.

“I want the audience to feel they’ve really gotten to know these people. The more we know the 3-D world in which we all live as humans, and in which creators create, the more rewarding the experience of listening to music.” ¦