A little over twenty years ago, in the well-marked discography of Beethoven’s piano sonatas, a hitherto unknown pianist, Muriel Chemin, greatly surprised with three albums released by Solstice. The journey had suddenly come to an end and we hadn’t really heard from her. Here comes to us, at Odradek, a real integral, different but just as relevant. Who is Muriel Chemin, and what explains her art of immediately capturing attention and captivating the listener?
“The frustration was unbearable. To redo the integral was to arrive at a conclusion. Without having great pretensions, it was a personal requirement, because of my relationship with Beethoven which dates from my earliest childhood; a very special relationship that I cannot explain. “We found Muriel Chemin thanks to social networks to hear her express, almost intimidated, at the To have to her “infinite joy” in front of this box that she dares not listen to. “I did it for the editing, but when it’s over, you’re never happy. It’s not for nothing that Brendel recorded three complete Beethoven sonatas,” she admits.
A trauma
How does the “infinite joy”, personal, of Muriel Chemin concern us more than that of the interpreters of the ten integrals published over the past two years? This is where the miracle of recording lies, this process where everyone, from the rankless to the most upscale pianist, can dialogue with the listener.
One can, with Muriel Chemin, very simply from the first three sonatas, understand in the conduct of slow movements of 2e and 3e Sonata in which universe we are located, what is a musical narration and to what degree of sound refinement operates this pianist without a notable career, who seems to give us an appointment every 20 years to deliver a Beethoven that challenges us or shakes us .
Muriel Chemin: this name came out of nowhere when the French label Solstice published at the end of 2000 a volume 1 of a cycle of Beethoven’s 32 piano sonatas. A presence and an urgency imposed themselves with vehemence but without brutality in the last three sonatas and the Sonatas nbone 21, 22 and 24. Two other volumes of two CDs recorded every six months confirmed the major interest of this complete work in the making by an unknown artist. Then the course stopped abruptly.
We have so far only heard the irritated version of the publisher according to which the artist did not want to complete the cycle. Here is the other side of the coin. “When I started recording the sonatas, my son was very small and during the integral, I was pregnant with my second boy. I think it didn’t go over so well. I asked for a slightly longer period of time because I wanted to give birth. I never put a full stop. I don’t like to talk about it too much, because it was a painful period. The pianist stops there; we understand that it ended in court and that she will say no more, but it is obvious that the abrupt end of the interrupted first cycle was a trauma. The wound has healed: “The main thing is to have had the chance to do it again”, says Muriel Chemin.
For us, not really, because the artistic career in both cases is fascinating, but the cycle published by Odradek does not replace the first. The opposition of the two would have been as nourishing as that between the Beethovens of the young Brendel (at Vox) and those of the ultimate Philips integral.
Two universes
In 2000, Muriel Chemin played on a clear, open Fazioli piano, with fiery, quite angular playing. In 2022, the sound surrounds us as in a cocoon, with a more covered piano. “I didn’t choose to record on such a piano in such a place, but that’s me 20 years ago and me today, with my personal evolution and my tastes. 20 years ago there was reverb, it was brighter. Odradek and his manager, John Anderson, gave me access in their studio in Pescara to the finest Fabbrini Steinways in Italy (Mr. Fabbrini has always been Maurizio Pollini’s trusted tuner). The Steinway D from the Fabbrini collection is very beautiful, very warm, not flashy and corresponds very well to the sound I want today, less flamboyant, less exterior. »
In this integral, Muriel Chemin has put other things, these reflections of “the life that has passed”. Beyond questions of maturity and incessant work on the material, questions of musical text have arisen. “We musicians do meticulous craftsmanship every day. In fact, I had to change a lot of things in all the sonatas, because at the time of recording the Bärenreiter scores appeared in Jonathan Del Mar’s revision. I always worked on different editions. From a visual point of view, I used Peters a lot, but also Budapest Editions; Henle, a bible before Bärenreiter, and the Curci edition with tempo changes and fingerings by Artur Schnabel. For Muriel Chemin, the arrival of Bärenreiter’s scores was “a revelation, almost a shock”. “I started again an in-depth work to respect the indications. I was confronted with major changes in phrasing, and sometimes even in notes. All the reflexes of a life, gestures, phrasings, were modified as I reworked the sonatas for the complete. »
Throughout the integral, Muriel Chemin imposes her voice by the sound, the conduct of the sentences, the art of linking the ideas, the concentration of the subject, but the concentration that she induces in the listener, who begins to reflect on what he hears, in a sort of Beethovenian asceticism of profound coherence.
The art of the pedal
How does an unknown pianist, professor at the Venice Conservatory, manage to enter the big leagues in this way? “By playing less in public, I have more time to deepen things, because I’m slow in my work. Somehow, it was a chance, ”considers Muriel Chemin. “And the work of teaching at the Venice Conservatory helps, because we are always looking for solutions, strategies to solve musical problems. You learn a lot when you teach, because you always have to tweak and solve problems. My teacher, Maria Tipo, who was much more in career than me, always taught and said that she had learned a lot with her students. It’s true: you learn a lot by teaching. »
What we retain throughout the course, much calmer compared to the 19 sonatas of the aborted cycle of Solstice, is the creativity and the poetic sound. Muriel Chemin, who greatly admires András Schiff in Bach, admits that her models were Alfred Brendel and Maurizio Pollini. “In Paris, I never missed a recital and when they played two nights in a row, I went twice. I sat very close to the stage, because I wanted to understand how the mechanism of their sound worked, their way of putting the pedal. Muriel Chemin sees “the art of the pedal” as “a very important and often neglected science for sound”. “We can do magical things. I’ve done a lot of work in the last 20 years on stompbox effects, because it contributes so much to the search for tone. The ways of putting the finger and putting the pedal on must match. With the 3e pedal, we can respect Beethoven’s will, even if at the time of Beethoven, the pianos did not have the 3e pedal. In other words, I tried to respect the text as much as possible by using instruments that didn’t exist at the time. »
And if this integral succeeded in drawing attention to her, would Muriel Chemin want to resume a career, a bit like Sergio Fiorentino at the end of his life? “There, you are talking to me about a giant who did not have the career he deserved. Along with Arturo Benedetti Michelangeli and Maurizio Pollini, Fiorentino is one of the three titans of the piano. It is inaccessible; I’m so far from that level. I hope that this integral will bring me concerts, but not with bulimia. I want to have time to breathe, to deepen and live with the works with which I feel good. »