Last interview, with Adam Laloum, the young and brilliant pianist who won the 2009 Clara-Haskil competition, who moved us in Nantes with Schubert’s penultimate sonata.
Adam Laloum was in Nantes. The young French pianist (35 years old in less than a month), since his Clara-Haskil prize in 2009, is linked to Schubert as he is linked to Mozart, Schumann and Brahms (composers whom Clara Haskil often played) even if, he tells us, I still have so many composers that I want to explore, a Debussy, a Bartok. Both musical moments of Schubert that he proposed to us in Nantes were magnificently obvious, like this Sonata D. 958, one of the last three famous ones composed in the last summer of Schubert’s life, and on an unprecedented scale like the two that will follow. Laloum succeeds in particular, by dint of simplicity and sad clarity, in making indispensable this “fantastic ride”, this race towards the incredible abyss (we are in an engraving by Dürer, on a courier crossing the night) which ends the ‘work.
Schubert, the companion
He is a companion. It turns out that he was the one who accompanied me during my first year of piano, I was 10-11 years old, it was the 4th impromptu. And since then I think I’ve never left this music.
Intimate music
In conservatories young adults are expected to be brilliant and virtuoso. Schubert is quite the opposite. It is music that is anything but demonstrative, very interior, very intimate. Where virtuosity is present but refined.
Another musician C) Marc Roger / CREA
A particular music, yes, and which I had the chance to approach young. Often, it’s when you no longer need to show your means, your level, that you say to yourself: now I’m going to be able to measure myself against such deep music. I was able to do it earlier.
Impossible not to feel moved by the character…
But it’s music that you have to make your own, the more you live with it, the more natural you find playing it. As for me, it’s music that overwhelms me. He’s a moving composer, it’s impossible not to feel moved by this music and by this character. By his life, it must be said again. All his operas which he held dear and which have never been performed. The lieder too, magnificent, which he sent to Goethe (it was on texts by Goethe) and Goethe never replied to him. There would be many other examples to give, in spite of the friendship with which he was surrounded.
Storms that must be brought to life
Alfred Brendel also spoke of chaos about Schubert. There are storms in him that must be brought to life, made as beautiful as possible, emotions, a particular construction which, in Schubert, is also moving.
A finally clear explanation of the famous “sonata form”!
The sonata form is a little thesis-antithesis-synthesis. We expose a theme in one key, a second theme in another key, then what is called the development, the themes mix, there is a lot of agitation, the ideas confront each other; and then there is what is called the recapitulation, the theme returns, the second theme also arrives but in the original key of the first as if we were reaching an agreement between them. It’s all very theoretical, but composers very often apply it, sometimes in their own way. And often, with Schubert, there have been so many twists and turns that the recurring theme no longer has the same meaning because so many unexpected things have happened before…
Another musician C) Marc Roger / CREA
let the music be
Sometimes, when we’re working on a score, we’re in a sort of self-flagellation, we’re not happy, we’re really not happy; but when we arrive in front of the public, casually, there are things that take shape and that we had not anticipated ourselves; it’s sometimes useful to be in this form of passivity, to let the music happen. We then feel, for example in these great Schubertian movements which often last up to 20 minutes, mediators more than actors.
Despair and serenity, the Schubertian contrast
And this is peculiar to Schubert, that. It’s different, for example, with Beethoven. More… earthy. In Schubert there is this strange contrast between sometimes panting races towards the abyss and long, extremely serene beaches, I think that this is what troubles musicologists a lot: all that coexists, despair, great violence, serenity. I like to imagine that he was someone restless… but inside. He was not someone who threw tantrums in public or in front of his friends. He was someone who was very grateful for what life gave him, and at the same time with moments of terrible suffering. Certain sonatas, the last in particular, I have the impression that he wrote it to appease himself.
Perfection and the Sublime
We must also not let ourselves be taken in by him (by others as well) by works that do not seem perfect to us. They are not perfect in structure, unfinished, too long here compared to another movement. But first what is perfect? And with Schubert it may be imperfect but sublime. It is the feeling that prevails then, it is much stronger than the reason.
Adam Laloum in concert in Nantes: Schubert (2 musical moments. Sonata D. 958 in C minor) January 29