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Under the leadership of its director Jean-Philippe Wurtz, the Pianos, pianos festival is completing its second edition at the Théâtre des Bouffes du Nord. From the Walter piano (or at least its copy) cherished by Mozart to Claudine Simon's Pianomachine, it is the history of the instrument (and of the works conceived for it) that is approached from the angle of violin making.
Two pianos take pride of place on the stage of the Bouffes du Nord": a 1905 Pleyel for the music of Debussy and Ravel, and a Steinway D with all the modern comforts for the works in creation. Wearing a bun and a red jumpsuit, the pianist Maroussia Gentet, a brilliant winner of the 13ᵉ Concours international de piano d'Orléans, put eight pieces on her programme, admittedly rather short, two of which were world premieres.
The Steinway was prepared in advance for Solo by Bastien David: metal screws and wooden pegs between the strings (John Cage did this already in the last century) to make his instrument sound like a percussion orchestra. On the other hand, the e-bow (electronic bow) is one of his latest inventions, emitting a strange vibration in connection with the piano pedal: a ghostly sound that he invites us to listen to at the end of the tour. With scissors and tape in hand, Maroussia Gentet herself attaches aluminium sheets to the strings, promising unheard-of sounds that join the world of electronics in Pour les corps électriques .Franck Bedrossian also probes the entrails of this large instrument to bring out the "edge-less" music that interests him. The pianist is joined by Matvey Zheleznyakov in Rouge silence, omaggio Joseph Beuys, a slightly enigmatic musical theatre by Philippe Schoeller for four hands and two chairs, the scenario of which we would have liked to know. The sound of the Steinway is in no way perverted in Speech of clouds (2003), which has an elfin lightness under the performer's fingers. It is a sort of "scrambled chime", as the composer Gérard Pesson says, from which he gradually subtracts the resonances. The robust piano and the power that the pianist deploys inHèctor Parra 's Mimesis muséum, étude d'architecture n°2 (homage to Alvaro Siza) , given as a world premiere, cannot offer a more radical contrast. These are harmonic blocks that our visionary composer 'cuts' to project into space sound figures endowed with incredible energy that challenge our performer. The Steinway is at the back of the stage and the pianist faces the audience for Réminiscence, inviting this time the dancer Vahram Zaryan in a light tunic for a singular performance in which the body in movement attempts a plastic translation of Hèctor Parra's music and the performer's gestures.
The keyboard of the 1905 Pleyel piano is heavier, the treble does not have the brilliance of the Steinway and the keyboard is less even: but what a round and voluptuous sound under the fingers of the pianist who knows the instrument well and knows how to optimise its qualities! An instrument that makes us forget its hammers, as Debussy wanted for his music. The interpreter plays the 2nd book of Images, sumptuous pages in which the piano delicately blurs the contours and offers its warm colours: lightness of touch, homogeneity of tone and elegance of movement in Poissons d'or, which enchants us, as does Maurice Ravel's Ma mère l'Oye à 4 mains, which closes the concert, where Maroussia Gentet is joined by her colleague Claudine Simon.
The last appointment of the day at 7.30 pm invites Jean-Pierre Collot, eminent pianist (ex-member of the ensemble Recherche de Freiburg) in a programme as rare as it is demanding played on the Steinway D: hearing Jean Barraqué 's Piano Sonata (1950-52) in concert is always an event. The large-scale piece (40′), which is based on the serial technique, was written at the age of 24 and will be the only piano piece by the composer that Jean-Pierre Collot has recorded in its revised version. He chose to insert it between two transcriptions of Richard Wagner, two pages from Tristan und Isolde that Barraqué discovered just before beginning his sonata. Singular under the pianist's fingers is this way of approaching the Death of Isolde (Liszt's transcription) by erasing the melodic contours in favour of a shifting polyphonic texture that highlights all the components of the piano writing. The interpretation of the Sonata is no less fascinating, with a mind-boggling virtuosity in the extremely fluid first movement, almost a trickle of energy under the performer's fingers. In the second movement, the pianist's silences are astonishing, as the composer's written climaxes, and the length of these silences is accentuated by the pianist, weaving a most striking dramaturgy.
Jean-Pierre Collot follows with Barraqué's own transcription of the prelude to the third act of 'Tristan', one of the most beautiful pages in the musical literature, which he plays with great penetration, leaving the phrase in abeyance after the last notes of the English horn.
To be discovered until 18 March 2022, the exhibition "the piano, from the sources to the stage" at the La Grange Fleuret Music Library, Paris 8ᵉ.
Michèle Tosi
