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Review: Debussy: Complete Works for Piano, Vol. 2

Source: Fanfare Magazine
Debussy: Complete Works for Piano, Vol. 2

My meeting with Jean-Efflam Bavouzet is to take place at the Solti Studios, set in a comfortable suburb of North London. The place is a haven of peace and tranquility, and as I am early I get a chance to quaff coffee while looking around: a marked-up copy of the Bach Saint Matthew Passion with Solti’s markings stands out.

On arrival, Jean-Efflam Bavouzet greets me warmly. He is a man of effusive enthusiasm. It is unclear, perhaps, whether his enthusiasm for life is an offshoot of his enthusiasm for music, or vice-versa, for throughout our (extended) interview there was never once a hint of cutting corners for an answer.

It seems only right that we begin by discussing Solti and his part in Bavouzet’s rise to prominence. Sir Georg Solti was instrumental in bringing Bavouzet to the attention of the public, planning a performance of Bartók’s Third Concerto on a program alongside Mahler’s Fifth. This came as something of a shock, considering that the Maestro had explicitly said, “I like your playing, but don’t expect too much” when they first met. Bavouzet takes up the story: “This was around 1996, and we were supposed to perform the Bartók in January 1998. That was so generous, especially considering that in this business there are many projects suggested after you play, so many waved under your nose. He was absolutely the opposite. He wanted me not to get excited. Then one day, ‘baff!’” (“Baff” is a lovely, typically French ejaculation from Bavouzet.)

Unfortunately, Sir Georg died in between the earlier meetings and the concert, and it was left to Pierre Boulez to stand in. But there was a hitch: “When Pierre Boulez came for the concert, of course the push he [Solti] wanted arrived, for which I am very grateful. My name was not written anywhere; it was an addition. On the program was only Mahler’s Fifth, because all the programs were done so much in advance. The last time I saw Solti was in June 1997; the concert was for January 1998. The programs were already printed, so my name was nowhere!”

All of which led naturally to a discussion of Bavouzet’s admiration for Boulez. Of Boulez’s music, Bavouzet has played the First Piano Sonata, but is “not yet ready for the Second. . . . The First Sonata was a shock, but I had the feeling I understood it at first hearing. When I had to work on the piece, I do not know what I heard. . . . It took me many years to be able to program it in concert, and then I was ready enough to play it for him. He was illuminating; he made it very clear for me.” I suggest that on that first hearing it was the internal cogency of the piece that he heard.

“Actually, if you ask is this note C or D, he does not remember, because—as he said very clearly—as he composes, he is moving in the forest, but the forest is closing behind him again, so he cannot find his way later. It was much less intellectual. He is an old man now, in his eighties, who is looking at the piece of a 20-year-old composer. He wanted the gesture. I remember the Toccata, which is played at metronome 150, so incredibly fast. I wanted to play it correctly, but Boulez wanted it faster and faster. So I said I could not guarantee the notes. No problem. He took it to a speed even faster that what is written but it made so much sense. Also for the rubato, he wrote such complex rhythm, and at the end he wants the gesture.” Boulez is a fine pianist himself, is he not? Bavouzet’s answer is tellingly perceptive: “The way he conducts, it is obvious it is the hand of a pianist.”

This was not our first attempt at an interview. We had had a cancellation, and the first question on contemporary music I had originally scheduled regarded Stockhausen. Of course, Stockhausen died just a matter of days before this interview, which gave the question so much more meaning. “My contact with Stockhausen came from my childhood because I grew up in a town (Metz) where, in the 1970s and 1980s, there was a very big contemporary music festival, probably one of the most important in Europe. I heard Kontakte many times, and all major figures would come: Cage, Boulez, Messiaen many times, Kagel, Ligeti. I remember especially some concerts of Stockhausen, one in which he had a group of several hundred young kids. At one point it went out of control. Stockhausen, to make peace, said, “You should listen to this, because if you can hear two separate levels of sounds at the same time, you are much more intelligent than the one who can hear only one.” Then the children began to listen in an active way. Also he said, “Don’t use your ears as trash.” Always be very careful of what you hear. And I cannot come to France, New York, and the U.K. (not in Japan), where on stations you have announcements from speakers, and hear this and not think about Stockhausen!

“My direct contact with him was of two pieces: first of all I played Klavierstück IX, a piece I chose for my New York and Paris debuts, around 20 years ago; and I have recorded Refrain, a piece for piano, celesta, and vibraphone (I was playing the celesta part). The score is written in circles, and there is a bar, the refrain. The piece is about 11 or 12 minutes; it took us 18 or 19 hours to read the piece from beginning to end. It is a new concept of writing. Everything is very precise but the rhythm is in relation to the resonance and with how big the note is written in the score. Stockhausen had an incredibly rich personality in many, many ways . . . his gigantic opera project, of Licht, which we heard—that was the last time I saw him—in Paris, (Donnerstag).”

I ask Bavouzet about Stockhausen’s star-child ideas. Lots of “ooorphs” and “huffs” and “oomphs.” Then, “Leave him with that. This part of his private life, this doesn’t interest me at all. I think much more interesting is when he was making experience from his improvisations, for example, and the written indication in the score was ‘play in the rhythm of your smallest particle; play in the rhythm of the cosmos.’ This interests me. The fact that he pretended to be born on Sirius—pft!” Further down the modernist road, I mention Ohana. Boulez and Ohana did not get on: “At one point I could practice at Boulez’s house in summer in Provence, and in September I had the keys to Ohana’s house. But I could not put the keys in the same pocket, otherwise I would burn!” Ohana is a composer that interests me personally. “They had completely opposite approaches. Ohana was instinctive. Of course there is the influence of Messiaen. I would call his music a strong perfume that floats in the air. You never know really where it goes—it doesn’t matter. Out of the 12 Études, five or six are really great, great pieces.” I suggest some Ohana in London; Bavouzet is receptive, adding that he finds the Piano Concerto a great piece that he is trying to program in the States. Takers, anyone?

And Messiaen himself? “I never played much of Messiaen, but I think this is a composer who, as a pianist, you must touch at some point. I am learning Turangalîla, which I will play in January 2008 in Berlin. This technical approach of all these chords, the mental gymnastics it needs is really phenomenal. It is true that Messiaen’s music has such a strong voice—you hear three seconds, and you know it is Messiaen.”

I now want to approach the subjects of analysis and intellectualism, especially in relation to the Debussy recordings for Chandos. “When you play a piece, you show your analysis of it. I need to see how the piece is made, to be in the shoes of the composer. And that is why I encourage my students to improvise, or to write their own cadenzas. . . . when I transcribed Jeux for two pianos, it took me so long and all the mistakes had to be corrected. It increases one’s respect for Messiaen, where there are almost no mistakes in the scores.”

Does this spirit of enquiry towards the music extend to manuscript study? For the Debussy recordings? “Yes, I have the facsimile, but in Debussy you don’t learn so much studying this because they are very clean. What you learn from a manuscript is all the things that were erased. The most famous example is the end of the Liszt Sonata, when it was supposed to end with a big chord, or Haydn, the F-Minor Variations, when you see all the different stages of composition and at the end what we have now is the fifth level—this is very interesting.”

Another way of approaching the score is previous recordings. I mention Gieseking and his reaction is the repeated word, “Cortot. Cortot, Gieseking, Michelangeli. I am happy when I hear a colleague. This is a win-win situation. I am very happy because if the colleague plays better than I do, I am happy for the music; if worse, then I am happy for myself! So when it is musicians from the previous time, major figures like Gieseking, what is very interesting is to hear also the development of Gieseking’s approach to Debussy. I have some early recordings of his where the tempos are much faster. And Arrau, of course. It is very important to hear the heritage. These days, when you have all these recordings and all these great masters, we can hear these recordings and ask, ‘What did Maestro Solti think about this piece at this moment? What does he want to show me?’”

And Debussy’s idea of putting the titles at the end of the Préludes? “I find it coquetry. Debussy wanted to choose another way, to make it a little more original, so at the end, preceded by three dots, meaning, ‘might be this . . .’—but of course, how can you now listen to ‘Cathédrale engloutie’ and not think of Cathedrals?”

I loved the fact that in Bavouzet’s recordings he is unafraid of brash sounds. A lot of people wrap Debussy in cotton wool. “How can I be afraid when the composer requests especially at some points violent? Violent is also in Jeux. It is like in Chopin when he asks for tutta la forza; a pianist who would not give all the power when the composer especially requests all the power misses the point.

“I consider Debussy one of the most emotional composers I can think of. I was not close to this emotional feeling at the beginning of my studies of Debussy. Now, there is a kind of tornado of feeling every time I hear a Debussy piece. No composer, not even Ravel, can come even close to that; the only one would be Wagner.” (“Now there we agree,” I say.)

When you play, then, do you think orchestrally? “Of course.” I refer to the horn calls in “Puck,” but Bavouzet directs me to the explicitly directed ones in “Les sons et les parfums”: “The transcription of Jeux brought me to another consideration of the relationship of piano and orchestra. Maestro Ashkenazy called me the other day because he wants to record it.” This is to be on the Japanese label Exton.

I want to talk about the “extra” Bavouzet added to the Préludes, the “Les soirs illuminés par l’ardeur du charbon.” He is quick to correct me: “It is not an extra if you record complete Debussy, this is a piece that is published. It is funny, sometimes you do something that you feel to be absolutely natural, and the response is, ‘What a great idea to do something so exceptional.’ It made sense for me to put it with the book of the Préludes because you have some quotes, a little bit of “Tierces alternées,” a little bit of “Les sons et les parfums.”

Bavouzet’s teacher, Pierre Sancan, forms a link to Debussy, as he was in turn a pupil of Busser. I am keen to know more: “Sancan was really my mentor. He taught Béroff, Collard, Pommier, El-Bacha . . .”—And here was the question I really wanted to ask: wasn’t Sancan a pupil of the great Yves Nat? On Nat, Bavouzet says, “Some of the Beethoven sonatas are not—for me—better recorded.” I feel like cheering. I hold the EMI France 15-CD box of Nat as one of the jewels of my personal collection.

What was Sancan’s particular method of teaching? “Very hard to describe because there was never a pattern. He would consider the aspect of a pianist in general, considering the entire body, not just the position of the hands and the arm, as it was before in the French school, with Marguerite Long. Very influenced by the Russian School, and because of his approach to music as a composer [he won the Grand Prix de Rome and composed operas, ballets, and a wonderful piano concerto]. Many times I would come to the class and he would be alone at the piano, improvising. I would sneak in. Now I begin to use improvisation as a teacher. When you see that the student does not understand a modulation, or an isolated chord, Sancan would play the usual version, to make you understand that the composer had this solution available but chose another one. He taught with very, very good taste.” (This last is, tellingly, repeated by Bavouzet.) Bavouzet mentions Sancan’s recording of Schumann Papillons, and adds, “There is his marvelous D-Minor Mozart Concerto with Haitink. . . . Without him, I would not be able to understand Debussy the way I understand it now. At the time I was his student, I did not understand half of what he was trying to teach me. For Ravel, yes, I understood immediately. Ravel was immediate for me.”

So what will happen after the Debussy project? “We have planned the complete Bartók concertos [with Opera North Orchestra and Richard Fairness]. In the solo repertoire we can continue in the French manner with some not-so-well-known composers, I would love to return to Haydn, possibly some Schumann. Why not Russian repertoire? We will see.”

I comment he has quite a scope at Chandos. He effuses about the recorded sound: “It is a dream.”

For the U.S. market, Bavouzet asks me to say a few words about the organization that “really helped me a lot in America, Young Concert Artists. For me it is the competition I respect the most because there is no ranking. Only winners. Either you are winner of YCA or (pause) you are not. But you don’t have this absurdity of first, second—and secondly, they take your career for the long term. They commit themselves to developing the career of the winner. At the end, Maestro Solti gave me the phrase, ‘There is always room at the top.’ So the pyramid is like this” (pointing to a tip) “but at the top it goes like this” (gesture of opening out). There is always room for beauty; there is always room for great performers.” I point out one never remembers the second prize-winner. “And at the end you find it is the third or fourth prize [winners] that are making the long-term careers. And of course today—shake that tree”—he points to a tree in the lovely garden—“and there are five pianists coming out.” Well, maybe (don’t try it, you never know who may fall out), but few pianists surely exhibit the combination of enthusiasm, intellect, and technique that mark the playing of Jean-Efflam Bavouzet.

This is Volume 2 of Bavouzet’s unfolding Debussy series for Chandos; Volume 1 was reviewed by Alan Swanson in Fanfare 31:2. The recording quality Chandos accords Bavouzet is simply staggering in its clarity and space (the disc was recorded in Pottton Hall, Suffolk. Ralph Couzens acted as both producer and engineer). Moreover, the Steinway piano is exquisitely prepared, and seems ideally suited to convey Bavouzet’s wide variety of touch.

As he indicates in the interview above, Bavouzet relishes the sheer scope of emotion contained in Debussy. Tissue-paper delicacy is there (try the somewhat Chopin-derivative Valse romantique, composed around 1890), as is the more dynamic Debussy Bavouzet refers to above. The unbuttoned close of L’isle joyeuse demonstrates this latter quality perfectly.

The first piece we hear is the Ballade of the early 1890s, a piece that originally carried the title of Ballade slave. Bavouzet finds dark undertones and persuades us that this is a piece worth repeated airing (something the booklet annotator, Roger Nichols, seems less sure of). It opens the first group of three pieces (Bavouzet explains his programming in a note); a second group of three closes the disc. The Valse romantique, mentioned above, is an easy-on-the-ear follow-on, before the Danse (originally, Tarantelle styrienne) leaps infectiously into earshot. Bavouzet makes a considerably stronger, and more graceful, case for the work than does Gieseking in the rather careful recently released live Stockholm account from 1948 (Medici Masters MM017). Gieseking is rather relentless, and his phrasing lacks a certain natural grace.

The Images oubliées of 1894 is intensely interior music (the composer described this as “conversations between the piano and oneself”). The second, “Dans le mouvement d’une Sarabande,” begins a line of pieces marked by their dignity and time-suspended ceremony, while the final movement chatters away (brilliantly, under Bavouzet’s fingers), basing its material on a popular French song of which Debussy was much enamored. Bavouzet brings a commendable amount of wit to his performance. Noriko Ogawa, as part of her Debussy recordings for the Swedish company BIS, was utterly charming in this set of miniatures (1105). But it is Bavouzet who projects that ounce more of character.

The arrival of Estampes in the program brings us to infinitely more familiar territory. The last time this piece came across my path was in a spectacularly disappointing disc by Anton Nel on Artek (my review appeared in Fanfare 30: 1). My word, what a difference! If Nel missed the Impressionism completely, Bavouzet presents that aspect of the writing fully but then transcends it. The slinky, misty Habanera of “La soirée dans Granade” is the perfect foil for “Jardins sous la pluie,” a graphic emotional journey from a piece whose title would hardly suggest it.

Interestingly, Pour le piano contains, as its second movement, a reworking of the Sarabande from Images oubliées. Good to have them both on the same disc. More interesting, arguably, is Bavouzet’s laudably robust way with the Prélude, while his steely-fingered opening to the concluding Toccata announces a whirlwind of a finale. Yet this whirlwind is carefully choreographed, with middle voices carefully retaining their integrity.

The final trio of pieces dates from 1903/4. Masques begins an explosion of rhythm. Contrasts are huge here, as if all is not what it seems. L’isle joyeuse is given a magnificent reading, not quite displacing Van Cliburn in my affections (reviewed by Susan Kagan in Fanfare 28:1) by just missing the exultation of the final pages but nevertheless fully up to the standards of the rest of Chandos’s notable present release. Finally, D’un cahier d’esquisses (1903). This whisper of a piece, as elusive as a sliver of smoke, constitutes a haunting conclusion to a memorable disc.

Fanfare: COLIN CLARKE (Feature Article)

Jean-Efflam Bavouzet’s second installment of Debussy’s piano works features bracing pianism in Pour le piano and a most subtle interpretation of the three wonderful Estampes. It would be difficult to find a more joyful, spontaneous-sounding, and polished performance of Schubert’s Trio in B♭ than the live one by Lars Vogt and colleagues, beautifully recorded at the Spannungen Festival in Germany. Cynthia Raim’s Schumann discs include some of the composer’s most challenging works, and the playing is as poetic as it is technically accomplished. The reissue of Annerose Schmidt’s Schumann recordings from the 1970s is most welcome, especially for her striking interpretations of the Fantasy and Carnaval. Katia and Marielle Labèque bring all the necessary colorism and virtuosity to the demanding works by Stravinsky and Debussy, among the finest versions in the catalog.

Fanfare: Charles Timbrell (Want List Citation)