The French pianist Alexandre Tharaud had obtained a carte blanche from the Bourgie hall on Friday. He used this opportunity to compose an original evening in three stages.
The “Carte blanche to Alexandre Tharaud” began at 7 p.m. with a reading session of his highly witty writings on his life as a concert performer, read by himself and Daniel Brière, punctuated by a few excerpts from Sequels of Bach played by cellist Joshua Morris.
After a bad initial adjustment of the microphone, we were able to understand what was being said, but the clarity of the amplification of the spoken voice – we remember Pascal Amoyel’s show – is definitely not the strong point of the Bourgie hall.
This small hour was very entertaining, with anecdotes and often very funny looks, for example on the page-turners, the coughers and the unwrappers of sweets.
Those who followed the entire musical journey were treated to a concert in the dark at 10:15 p.m., during which it was forbidden to applaud. The drafting of this report, among other things, led us not to continue the experiment to this end.
Exuberant
So there remains the Rameau-Schubert concert, with, in between, several short compositions by the pianist himself.
The dominant sensation of this one-hour concert was the liveliness, even the exuberance, of the pianist, visibly happy to be there. We heard it in The Savages Rameau bis, not chiseled as with Bruce Liu, but carried away and nourished by paws highlighting such and such original detail.
This momentum also had implications for the Suite in A minor of Rameau and the Impromptu op. 90 of Schubert, in particular the choice of the limit up to which the pianist would dare to push the sound dynamics. Alexandre Tharaud has chosen a very nourished, ample and generous sound, even in Rameau, delighting in particular in the variations of the “Gavotte and six doubles”. Ditto in Schubert, where the pianist has created much more just variety, swirling contrasts and fantasy in the Impromptu op. 90 as David Fray in his Klavierstücken last February at the same place.
Between Rameau and Schubert, Tharaud played pieces of his own, composed during the pandemic. These brief studies focus on rhythm, repetitiveness and sounds. It’s focused, eloquent and impactful.
The pianist no doubt appeased these happy outbursts in his later concert with soothing virtues. The idea of the triptych was, in any case, excellent.