We do not come out unscathed from a Sergei Babayan concert. Those who have attended his complete version of the first book of Well-tempered keyboard Thursday evening at St. James United Church, as part of the Bach Festival, will probably long remember his own way of appropriating this collection that conductor Hans von Bülow called the Old Testament of the pianistic repertoire.
Let’s talk about the irritants first, which have nothing to do with the Armenian pianist. As the musician is used to playing with a single lamp illuminating the keyboard, the spectators were greeted in near darkness, which certainly raises questions of safety, but also makes it difficult to find a place.
The public, massed in the central nave with four – sometimes five – people per bench, would have benefited from being further distanced by occupying the immense side stands. We guess it was difficult for logistical reasons, but we would have avoided the heat and reduced the impact of unwanted noise, which can be heard from afar in this kind of acoustics.
The slightest friction of the coat or the slightest whisper interferes in the ceremonial created by Babayan. And that’s not to mention the refrigerator-style noise that was heard during the preludes and fugues in mid flat minor and in the middle finger, or the clicking of small glass bottles containing a message from the guest artist handed out to listeners.
That said, despite the hardness of the wooden benches, the place is ideal for this kind of recital, the acoustics having enough openness and precision to let the sound of the instrument flourish.
And what a sound! From the famous Prelude in C major, we think we are dreaming when we hear what comes out of the piano. The artist creates a sort of sound halo giving the impression that the piece is played with only one pedal. There is never any harshness in his playing, even in pieces played loudly – like the Prelude in C minor – unlike that of his compatriots – of the Soviet era – Sviatoslav Richter and Tatiana Nikolaïeva, who engraved the work with a sometimes heavy foot.
At the start of the Fugue in a minor, we have the impression of hearing a mouse play, but the sound gradually swells and the mouse becomes a lion. In the Fugue in E flat minor, we savor the precise sound control in the statement of the subject.
Polyphonic control is always absolute. In the fugues, Babayan distinguishes very well each entry of the subject, as in the one in if flat minor, where it emphasizes the first note of each entry. In certain rapid preludes, the musician takes us through unexpected detours by bringing out a line that is rarely brought to light, as in those in do and in D minor.
A character of its own
The pianist does not only impress in terms of sound and dynamics. He succeeds in giving each song its own character, in some cases going as far as a true reinvention that would almost make Glenn Gould pale. He thus takes the tradition against the grain by playing the beginning of the Prelude in E flat major like a digital exercise when many take the time to sound each chord. Ditto in the Prelude in B flat minor, usually interpreted as a lament and to which Babayan gives a completely different tone. On the contrary, it slows down the Prelude in D major when others make it a toccata.
At other times, it is shifting accents that give a little jazzy touch reminiscent of the recording of Friedrich Gulda, as in the Prelude in C minor and the Fugue in E minor.
And the pianist knows that he is playing on a piano and not on a harpsichord, not only by the widespread use of the resonance pedal, but also by some little tricks, like this idea of doubling the bass in the Prelude and fugue in E flat major.
Only reservation: the tempo of Prelude in G major, taken at an absolutely crazy pace, to the point of rendering the speech unintelligible and putting it aside.
Having chained the pieces more or less attacca (that is to say without interruption), the pianist ended his liturgy by letting the last chord of the final fugue die out, which he had just played with indescribable emotional density. . Too bad someone from the audience started applauding before the end …