At the Rond-Point theater Laetitia Casta plays the great Romanian pianist Clara Haskil but also the characters who have crossed paths with her life. A “not quite alone on stage” since Casta is accompanied by pianist Isil Bengi.
An hour and a half, and Laetitia Casta’s performance is already within this duration: embodying Clara Haskil, also embodying (by a change of tone, a serious tone) the other characters that Clara Haskil has met during this life, almost 66 years old. , which ended in such an absurd manner with a fall in a staircase at Brussels station on December 7, 1960. The pianist died a few hours later in the hospital.
The show starts like this, Laetitia Casta curled up on the ground, in the twilight, and who is reviewing her life – while waiting for help. Or death ? A fairly classic construction that Serge Kribus, the author (who is also an actor), carries out, succeeding in constructing an endearing biography on a woman who has known, of course, many difficulties but whose existence, beyond the course classic by a magnificent performer, is not full of spectacular events.
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But the first virtue of Kribus, for us, is this: to bring back into the light, and for a theater audience who are not necessarily music lovers, the name of an artist whom amateurs cherish but who, already belonging to in the history of interpretation, is not necessarily among those that are given priority. Especially (and the piece does not dwell on it) as Clara Haskil has recorded little, as audible testimonies of her genius are rare.
One says genius, term used by Charlie Chaplin who was her neighbor in Vevey, in the Switzerland of which she had acquired the nationality in 1949 (“In my life I have met three geniuses, Winston Churchill, Albert Einstein and Clara Haskil “) This Switzerland which had welcomed – picked up – in 1942, she, the Romanian Jewess whom her statute did not protect at all, succeeding in crossing the border from the free zone very shortly before the occupation of this one by the German troops. . And Alfred Cortot, who made rain and shine in the musical field under Vichy and who had been his teacher at the Paris Conservatory 30 years earlier, had not lifted a finger to help Clara escape.
This episode, curiously, is passed over in silence by Serge Kribus, whereas it is perhaps one of the most dramatic of the life of Haskil. The text, which lingers a little too much on the young years of the pianist, skilfully mixes the little facts that make up an often thwarted vocation and the strange fate of a musician recognized very early on as exceptional but who will struggle infinitely between the two wars to find concerts which would make it live, in front of a few patrons – the rich Madame Hélie, the Princess of Polignac – and the love of the Swiss public (again!) to survive with difficulty.
Glory, for equally mysterious reasons, would come after World War II, so Haskil’s dazzling career lasted only a decade, a Haskil acclaimed everywhere between 1950 and 1960, until fatal day when she came to Brussels for a recital with her great Belgian friend Arthur – Arthur to whom his final thoughts go, who is not Arthur Rubinstein but the violinist Arthur Grumiaux: these two have left admirable records of sonatas for violin and piano by Beethoven and Mozart…
Of the reasons for this belated glory, such as this precocious ignorance, we will know nothing. Otherwise the intuition of Laetitia Casta who speaks of the humility of a woman who has never really believed in her talent, and moreover amazed at the fascination towards her with a Chaplin. But this is perhaps reductive. Perhaps it is simply, as we see with many artists, the feeling, while you are being acclaimed, that one could have played much better so that, immersed in the ideal of notes and the music, you hardly pay attention to the cheers, you don’t even hear them.
Youth before: a poor and non-musician family from Bucharest, a scholarship given by the Queen of Romania, the departure for Vienna, an obligatory stopover in this part of Europe to learn music even better, then for Paris, a place even more prestigious (but not necessarily more a musician), with Uncle Avram who will support her, then mum (daddy is dead) who joins them. In all this part, daily life, beautifully described, the warmth of a family, perfumes, dreams between sisters, at the limits of the West and the First East. And then, when it could have taken off, the war, a dangerous scoliosis that must be treated. Clara will not play for 6 years. And so much water, when it wants to return, has passed under the bridges of the Seine, the Danube or the Black Sea …
It is not necessarily a text for music lovers and that’s good. But sometimes too bad. We are sometimes in small details which do not add much and which slow down the rhythm, without really advancing musically. And Laetitia Casta, who puts a very beautiful sensitivity in the incarnation of Haskil … and his family, struggles a little (especially at the end, and this is also due to the sentences of Kribus) to escape the register “eternal young girl at barely left the Conservatory “…
On the other hand, the actress keeps the audience constantly by her mere presence on stage by talking to her about a character unknown to her (most of the time). It is supported by a staging that sculpts the lights like successive geographical locations, which also includes the pianist Isil Bengi, a character in her own right who has two pianos. Bengi plays Bach, Beethoven, Liszt, Debussy, Schubert, Bartok with the same conviction. And, of course, Schumann and Mozart of whom Haskil left miraculous testimonies.
Precisely: we will end with a confidence in the form of regret. You can’t listen to Haskil’s last record, that of the Concertos in D minor and in c minor of Mozart which she recorded a few weeks before her death; and, as if she had a presentiment of something, this disc where Haskil talks to the angels remains forever one of the most beautiful in the history of music, of a simplicity, a clarity, an emotion, overwhelming. It is a pity that, no doubt for questions of rights, one does not hear, for a short moment, Haskil herself playing. At least thanks to Kribus, Casta and the others for bringing her back to light.
“Clara Haskil, prelude and fugue” by Serge Kribus, directed by Safy Nebbou
With Laetitia Casta and Isil Bengi (piano).
Rond-Point Theater, Paris
Until January 23.
And then some dates in the provinces: Vannes (56) on January 30, La Ciotat (13) on February 2 and Chartres (28) on 4. Then, again in February, Switzerland and Greece