Jean-Ephram Bavouzet faced both good and bad news in 1989.
this French pianistbut still on its way as The New York Times review By that time, he had been dubbed “the solemn modernist” and signed his first recording deal with a small impeccable label.
At the same time, however, his right hand had been diagnosed with functional dystonia. It’s a painful muscle condition that has ruined the careers of many musicians.
Bavuse, unable to dig into the octave as he usually does, had to give up hope of recording Bartok. what do you do instead? He ultimately chose Haydn, his four or his five piano sonatas that were in the repertoire at the time. It was the only music he could still play.
Cleanly pronounced, a little cheeky, its light-hearted tone that takes the composer seriously but never too seriously recording It was amply summed up by the title of the booklet notes his fellow pianist Zoltan Kocsis wrote for this release: ‘Haydn without a wig’.
Thirty years later, Bavouse, 59, delivered the 11th and final volume of Haydn’s 62 Sonatas on the Chandos label last month on a much larger scale with the release of its glamorous, frenzied and glorious compilation. exactly the same as A set of variations and a few other pieces thrown in to enjoy it.
13 years in the making and an addition to the already equally excellent discography Debussy When Beethoven, Bavouse’s Haydn is unparalleled in its enthusiasm and wit. But it’s also substantive, informed, and highly rewarding.
Bavouse said in an interview: “Out of the 62 sonatas, there are probably 25 indisputable masterpieces, which are played in the concert programme. Not enough, but still. But nothing brings me more joy than discovering lesser-known sonatas and bringing them to life.”
The spirit of discovery reinterprets one of the almost symphonic and resounding sonatas from Haydn’s time in London in the early 1790s, or revitalizes the subtle two-part partitas or divertiments of the late 1750s. It fills every bar Bavouse records, whether or not it is transformed.
“Haydn wrote all these sonatas almost like a laboratory of musical experience, the IRCAM of the time,” said Bavuse, referring to the French avant-garde institute founded in 1977 by Pierre Boulez. what works
Owing to the decidedly forward-thinking Bavuse heard in Haydn, Bavuse’s piano works compare poorly with his string quartets and symphonies, all but the composer’s latest or greatest piano works. It has become a particularly valuable antidote to the view that it only provides. Written for amateurs who need to appreciate “all historical sympathy” now, as pianist Charles Rosen, Haydn’s interpreter. himselfwrote in “classical style”
“When he was a student at the Paris Conservatoire in the late 70’s and early 80’s, Haydn was the sort of composer who would think of playing Beethoven’s sonatas unless he was fully equipped to master them. It was too easy, so to speak.
But Bavuse was convinced otherwise when he heard Sviatoslav Richter perform four sonatas at the Abbey of La Grange de Mesley near Tours, France. Richter’s repertoire includes 19 of his sonatas and counts the composer among his favourites.
“Lord Haydn, I love you!” Richter I have written Privately in 1971. They are lukewarm towards you. This is very unfortunate. “
Bavouse, who recalled taking Martha Argerich’s mother to the performance, said: The revelation was that by the time the concert was over, we were completely fed up with the centuries-old gesture of music. I did. It was incredible to see Richter play Haydn on stage. “
From Richter, Bavuse borrowed the hobby of playing Haydn on a Yamaha piano. “I like the analogy of Haydn shooting an arrow into the future,” he said.
Those arrows may hit and not go very far. The slow movement of No. 50, numbered by scholar H.C. Robbins His Landon, Largoe His Sostenuto in D Minor, looks straight at Beethoven’s cognate. 10 No.3; The dramatic opening of the 33rd in C minor, one of the most intense of his early works, puts you in the anguished sonic world of Schubert’s final sonata.
However, in other works Haydn shows the longbowman’s range. The moderato on number 44 F turns to Prokofiev on repeated notes. His 12th trio in A found the pianist so close to Chopin or Scriabin when practiced at half speed that he recorded it as such as an afterword to Volume 5.Adagio from Piano Concerto in G major Recorded As a side project with Gabor Takacs-Nagy and Manchester Camerata, it nods to Poulenc in its cadenza.
If Bavouzet were free to tackle a bit of anachronism when the time was right, Paul Badura-Skodahis Haydn is a little more spontaneous than that Paul Lewis’ strict rigor or by Marc André Hamelin The awe-inspiring courage makes their most admirable recent recordings possible—that is because, especially in their early works, the composers have left the pianist with many choices.
“Now that I have it all covered, what I miss most is the joy of discovering one of the early sonatas. There are no indications there, very easily read visually, but you can get started, there’s a feeling of a bottomless well working on it.
In other words, recording a Haydn sonata is not quite the same as recording a Beethoven sonata. Beethoven’s sheet music is relatively straightforward about how it should be played, but of course there is room for interpretation. Haydn is even less.
“You try to dig,” Bavouse continued. Interpretations are shaped by using your tastes, instincts and knowledge to make it as interesting as possible. We have the joy of making it happen with every imaginable tool. “
Sometimes the question is work-specific — for example, how to interpret the insanely short finale of No. 41, Bavuse has to do something else on the day Haydn writes I imagine suddenly decided that — but the pressing problem is common.
Then there is the question of whether to use the repeats shown in the second half of the sonata-form movement. This is a practice that Haydn adhered to but that his successors sought to avoid. The ending is effectively played twice. After consulting scholars Laszlo Sommfaye and Marc Vignal for historical accuracy, I found that Bavuse repeatedly moved symbols for the sake of flow.
One aspect of the choice that went with filling Haydn’s void convinced Bavuse that these works are much more profound than they often give credit for. Another great defender of the composer, “It is easy to forget the solemn adagio. Alfred Brendelone time I have written “Derived from Haydn” in an article about Schubert.
If the Joker’s Haydn is shown enough here, Bavuse said the pauses he often uses before giving a punchline could hint at something much deeper.
“They can be read as a pause to influence what comes next,” he said. He pauses because he’s in a moment of introspection with doubt, which of course gives him a completely different, almost philosophical attitude to this constant energy.
For later sonatas, according to Bavouse, this is the first movement of E minor No. 43, which requires 14 pauses, and the finale of the final sonata No. 62 E flat major. Aside from the little allegretto he offers as an epilogue, it’s the last piece programmed in his collection and keeps you pedaling with dreamlike nostalgia for his longtime work.
“The job is absolutely glamorous, but it is also a challenge and even a risk for the performer,” Bavuse writes all these decisions in the booklet notes of Volume 6, defending his mini-cadenza. No.36’s Jolly Finale turned dark for a moment.
“He must, more than ever, create his own world, his own logic. Don’t push yourself too far,” continues Bavze. “The more my work progresses through this course, the more nearly infinite horizons of interpretation possibilities open up before me, and they are all valid.”
And this project confirms that it is one of Haydn’s many elations.