Marking the 150th anniversary of Maurice Ravel’s birth, Jean-Efflam Bavouzet is touring the composer’s piano music.
Over the course of three hours with two intermissions this recital was ravishing. Bavouzet has recorded Ravel’s music twice – for MDG in 2004 and for Chandos in this anniversary year. Both are masterful, but to hear him perform it in a concert brought the full range of pianistic expression – with all its colors, sensuality, and drama – more vividly to the fore.
Taking a mostly chronological route with a few minor deviations, the evening opened with the rarely heard Sérénade grotesque. Written when Ravel was in his teens, but unpublished in his lifetime, its harmonic dissonances and Spanish-influenced rhythms foreshadow many of his future compositions. This and Menuet antique were dispatched with striking precision and clarity. The slow, processional tempo of the delicate Pavane pour une enfante défunte – better known in its later orchestrated form – was particularly moving. After raising his right hand to halt the ensuing applause, Bavouzet shifted directly into Jeux d’eau, highlighting the music’s intricate detail and vividly evoking the imagery of light dancing on sparkling water. After an uncommonly graceful interpretation of the Sonatine the first section of the program concluded with a deeply atmospheric rendition of Miroirs. Bavouzet brought out the unique character of each of the five movements but was especially effective at capturing the tearful solitude of ‘Oiseaux tristes’ and the supple crests and flows of the water in ‘Une barque sur l’océan’.
Though listed in chronological order on paper, in performance Bavouzet re-arranged the sequence of the three pieces in the middle section to create maximal drama. Opening with the touching Menuet sur le nom d’Haydn, he moved directly into Valses nobles et sentimentales, playing the eight movements as a flowing, uninterrupted sequence that pulled the listener into a dreamscape of glittering color and whirling motion, before softly fading into silence in the ‘Epilogue’. The extraordinarily powerful account of Gaspard de la nuit was one of the highlights. After a radiantly flowing ‘Ondine’, the persistently tolling B-flat of ‘Le Gibet’ was a hypnotic presence within the ambiguous harmonic landscape, creating an unsettling sense of relentless doom. Bavouzet’s most spectacular playing came in ‘Scarbo’, where he navigated the stupendous challenges of the mysterious movement with brilliant virtuosity.
Two character-pieces in the styles of Chabrier and Borodin, and the highly refined Prélude – were performed with style, and Bavouzet closed with a cleanly articulated, serenely poised Le tombeau de Couperin. Emphasizing the music’s buoyant, reflective qualities, he navigated the opening ‘Prélude” with astonishing agility, and shaped a wonderfully delicate ‘Fugue’, but it was his electrically energetic, technically precise treatment of the fiery final ‘Toccata’ that most impressed.
For an encore, Bavouzet offered Ravel’s own piano reduction of La Valse. Sounding even more frenzied than in its original orchestral version, this stunning rendition brought a night of dazzling pianism to a powerful end.
