Bourgie Hall will mark, on November 4 and 5, the centenary of the birth of György Ligeti, one of the most important music creators of the 20th century.e century. The French pianist Pierre-Laurent Aimard, close collaborator of the artist who died in 2006, will be the guest of honor at this mini-festival.
“It was my responsibility to celebrate this year in the most present way possible,” says the performer, contacted just before his flight to Amsterdam to play the Concerto by the Hungarian composer, one of the many stages of an intense Ligeti year.
“I knew him when I performed his works and he was there to advise his performers. It started when I was about twenty years old and I was a member of the Ensemble intercontemporain. This continued and he began to compose pieces which I regularly premiered. So I was in the front row, I had the task of understanding them and making them understood. It was a wonderful opportunity for a performer to work with such a fertile creator,” recalls the pianist, who recorded the complete reference works of Ligeti for Sony in the 1990s.
Could there be a bit of Pierre-Laurent Aimard in Ligeti’s scores? It is not uncommon, after all, for a composer to seek advice from the performers of his works.
He was a great master who knew perfectly well what he wanted to achieve and who didn’t need anyone. We can still help the creator to better specify certain things (tempo, sound, etc.). We can be there as a kind of mirror as faithful as possible, but the creative gesture is the one who does it.
Pierre-Laurent Aimard
This creation was nourished by a life journey as rich as it was disastrous. “He was an extremely singular being, who had a very great fantasy, an overflowing and very original imagination, and a deep sense of his independence,” explains the pianist, evoking in passing the difficulties (to put it mildly) suffered by this Jew having lived successively under the Nazi and Stalinist regimes, before fleeing to Austria.
“He always carried this tragic dimension within him. There was a dimension of extraordinary freedom of the spirit and, at the same time, the dimension of a weight and darkness of existence which was very strong, very present,” adds the specialist in modern and contemporary repertoires. .
“Reconciling current affairs with heritage”
In Montreal, Mr. Aimard will look into the Musica ricercata and a selection ofStudies of the Hungarian composer, whom he will bring into dialogue with Trifles of Beethoven – another radical, he says – and studies of Chopin and Debussy.
I was always in this equation of knowing how to reconcile current events with heritage. This has always been the meaning of all my musical activity.
Pierre-Laurent Aimard
Has his conception of the Ligetien piano changed over the past 30 years? “Over time, we become richer, we think, we work, we discover more layers,” believes the pianist. I think we have better control over an interpretation as well. But at the start, I had information which was at the source and which I tried to collect in the most exhaustive way possible, so there may be an enrichment, but not a real change, in my opinion. »
The conception of pianistic sound is one of the invariants in the career of the musician, who says he seeks not a “beautiful” sound, but an “adequate” sound. “When a composer is expressionist and he works with the human cry, it is not about beauty, it is about the power of expression, the adequacy of the sonority with the gestural intention, summarizes Pierre-Laurent Aimard. Consequently, there are as many types of beauty as there are conceptions of beauty. It is the plasticity of our working tool, which is sound, which in my opinion makes the richness of our activity. »
The Ligeti minifestival, consisting of a conference and three concerts, takes place on November 4 and 5 at Bourgie Hall.
Bach in dialogue with today
Given the cancellation of the John Eliot Gardiner concert, which was to take place yesterday, it is the excellent American cellist Alisa Weilerstein, wife of Rafael Payare, who will inaugurate the Bach Festival with Fragments. The project, spread over several years in six different programs, alternates the movements of Suites for cello by Bach with 27 works commissioned from composers such as Osvaldo Golijov, Thomas Larcher, Matthias Pintscher and Ana Sokolović. Everything is presented with scenography, staging and lighting effects. Montrealers will be able to hear the first two parts on November 10.
At the Maison symphonique on November 10, 7 p.m.
Jean Rondeau, completely hammer
Jean Rondeau is one of the most brilliant harpsichordists of his generation. For his return to the metropolis, the man who is sometimes compared to Scott Ross will swap plectrums for the hammers of the pianoforte in Bourgie Hall. The musician will present an anthology of pieces from his new record, Gradus ad Parnassumincluding extracts from Clementi’s homonymous collection, but also works from the Viennese classical “holy trinity” – Mozart (including the famous Sonata in C majorK. 545), Haydn and Beethoven – and the precursor Johann Joseph Fux.
At Bourgie Hall on November 15, 7:30 p.m.
Love and betrayal at the Montreal Opera
Many were able to hear theOrfeo by Monteverdi last summer at the Lanaudière Festival. Written at the end of the composer’s life, The coronation of Poppea also has pages of rare beauty, including the famous duet “Pur ti miro”. The work will be performed by the Opéra de Montréal at the Center Pierre-Péladeau under the direction of Nicolas Ellis and his Orchester de l’Agora. The cast, made up of former or current members of the Atelier lyrique, will notably include Emma Fekete (Poppée), Rachèle Tremblay (Octavie) and Ilanna Starr (Néro).
At the Pierre-Péladeau Center on November 18, 7:30 p.m., and November 19, 2 p.m.
From the great visit to Armenia
Much has been made of the visit of the Paris Orchestra and the Philadelphia Orchestra next March. In the meantime, Montreal will host the National Philharmonic Orchestra of Armenia on November 19 at the Maison symphonique during a tour that will take it to Carnegie Hall. The ensemble, under the direction of its leader Eduard Topchjan, will mark the 120the birth anniversary of Armenian Aram Khachaturian with excerpts from his famous ballet Spartacusas well as its Violin Concerto, played by none other than Sergey Khachatryan. There Symphony no 2 of Rachmaninov will finally highlight the 150e birthday of the Russian composer.
At the Maison symphonique on November 19, 8 p.m.