Anne Queffelec is at the crazy day in a somewhat special program, all of Schubert’s works for piano 4 hands, which she shares with the pianist Gaspard Dehaene, her son. She also played Beethoven’s last two sonatas. Encounter.
We would gladly use the expression Grande dame of the French piano if she weren’t so overused. Anne Queffelec, in any case, deserves this title, and first of all by all the giants she approached with the same happiness: Bach, Handel, Mozart, Beethoven, Schumann, Debussy, Ravel, we forget some. Does she have a special connection with Schubert? We heard her in the 4-hand repertoire of the Viennese, which she defends as an essential part of Schubert, with Gaspard Dehaene, her son. That afternoon, it went from the pompous (parodically?) Great Heroic Marchand for the coronation of Tsar Nicholas I to charming Landler, to the famous military marches or upsetting Fantasy in F minor.
Fantasy which Anne Queffelec reminds us is from the end of Schubert’s life, which allows us to hear it better, or with another listening: this melody so melancholy and so moving, a farewell which is still a journey. She still likes as much, rare among her generation, to say a word about the works to the public, because adoes not work is a living material, it must therefore also be brought to life already a little, before interpreting it.
Anne Queffelec C) Marc Roger
Schubert from the beginning
My father (the writer Henri Queffelec) had a passion for The Winter Journey, we listened to it as a family, we knew it by heart. Schubert was already present in my childhood, in my early youth.
But at the Conservatory, in those late 60s early 70s, we didn’t play Schubert, apart from a few Impromptu. His music was relatively ignored. We played Beethoven, Schumann, Brahms already, not Schubert.
It was when I went to Vienna for my studies, there I heard Alfred Brendel, took lessons with him, with Paul Badura-Skoda too (pianist best known in France as an accompanist, and who recorded all the Schubert sonatas ) And it was there, with them, thanks to them, that I was amazed and truly discovered Schubert.
A tragic feeling sometimes lit with a smile
He is an extraordinarily complex being. Totally inhabited by the tragic feeling of life. The king of alders, so sad, and he is 17 years old. He gives me the feeling of a tightrope walker above an abyss; but I would also find it a pity to see him only tortured. Because he also loved walking, playing music, going to the theatre. Joy was therefore not a feeling that was foreign to him. In the piano there are smiles, there is even mischief, in this also sharing music with friends. I therefore see him as an eternal young man who has nevertheless succeeded, in so few years, in embracing the whole human condition in his music.
Devoured by his work
But I think he must also have had foreknowledge of the speed of his passage on earth. At the same time, I can’t help thanking destiny that Beethoven, whom he admired so much, died in 1827 because at that moment something clicked for him. The Titan is no longer there; and then, in this year and a half that he has left, we have sketches, pieces of the theme that he jots down on any scrap of paper. We should also speak, as with Mozart, of his extraordinary melodic genius. Schubert is a geyser of melodies, an inexhaustible fountain.
A few years ago Anne Queffelec in full explanation C) Frank Perry, AFP
He is going to die, he probably guesses it, but also, another paradox, there are testimonies from his friends who say he has lots of plans, he is starting his runaway lessons, there are moments of happiness or pleasure where he “believes in it”. But he is probably also partly dead from exhaustion because, when you think of this year and a half, everything he has put down on paper, copied, imagined, finalized, is astounding. He shouldn’t be sleeping. Mozart wasn’t sleeping either…
What’s more, he didn’t have a livelihood, he became a teacher, he lived off the hooks of his friends. He ended up devoured by his work.
A genius who does not crush
He’s a genius who doesn’t crush, he’s a very fraternal genius. Beethoven is an inexhaustible source of energy, which should be prescribed by all doctors, especially at this time. But we have the feeling that Beethoven covered his way, a bit like we say in Passion according to Saint-Jean from Bach: It’s done. Beethoven, it’s done. The path has been traveled. Schubert, the path could still have continued. Despite the desperate sweetness of his final works, where we don’t know if it’s appeasement, resignation. And there is also a feeling which is very Schubertian, and which I do not find for example in Beethoven, it is terror… There are, going through his work and not only the piano, visions of nightmares à la Hieronymus Bosch.
Schubert, a sleepwalker
He is labyrinthine in his work. This is what Brendel says: Schubert is a sleepwalker. In Beethoven there is always the consolation of structure. This is what makes it so difficult to play. Because sometimes we come back to optimism. The Schubertian landscape, in fact, does not stop rocking.
How to play 4 hands: Gaspard Dehaene, Anne Queffelec C) Marc Roger / CREA
Beethoven and Schubert
Today there are repertoires that I approached with great pleasure but, from now on, I no longer want to return to them. Others, on the contrary, are for me spiritual nourishment, almost metaphysical: Beethoven’s last sonatas, and Schubert, the last sonata, that’s one of them. This is also why I am delighted to bring them together, even if it may seem obvious since Schubert admired Beethoven so much, as we have said, not to forget that he was one of Beethoven’s coffin bearers.
The contemplative dimension
These nourishing works are also works that have a contemplative dimension. Not non-stop. But there is a tussle there with to be or not to be. It also happens with Mozart, in the concertos. And that can put you in contact with areas of yourself that you had left aside, a little fallow. It was a feeling Rilke had when faced with a sculpture by Michelangelo, when faced with inexhaustible beauty, and he writes that it turned his life upside down.
Towards a fulfillment
The work of the last Beethoven sonatas, of the last Schuberts, is almost a duty towards myself. It is (I think even more, at this moment, of the 32nd of Beethoven) the strength to say to oneself: yes, by doing this job, that’s what I was really looking for. And of course, yes, Schubert’s last sonata or the G major sonata (the D. 894), that’s also part of that accomplishment.
Anne Queffelec at the Folle Journée de Nantes: Schubert’s piano four hands (with Gaspard Dehaene) and in recital on Sunday January 30 at 6 p.m.: Beethoven’s last sonata, Schubert’s last sonata.