After a quiet month of February, Bourgie Hall came back to life on Tuesday evening with pianist Charles Richard-Hamelin, a year after he masterfully played the Preludes of Chopin. A captivating recital that showed us another facet of an artist of breathtaking versatility.
Posted at 8:00 a.m.
As it happened this time under the aegis of the 3and Palazzetto Bru Zane Festival in Montreal, a European organization dedicated to the dissemination of the French repertoire, the musician had opted for Franck, Chausson and Ravel, an association of rare intelligence since it brings face to face the two main French musical currents of the turn of the XXand century: Franckism and Impressionism.
Franck’s 33-year-old cadet, of whom he was a disciple, Chausson evolved in the same line, even if he opened up more than his master to the new colors introduced in the 1880s by Debussy and others.
The some dancesopus 26, by Chausson form an ideal link between the Prelude, aria and finale of Frank and the Pavane for a deceased infant and the Tomb of Couperin by Ravel. Rarely performed, this notebook made up of dances such as the sarabande and the forlane is obviously reminiscent of the Tomb of Couperin, which also contains a forlane and other ancient forms such as the prelude and fugue and the toccata. Charles Richard-Hamelin has delivered an attentive, loving interpretation of it even in La Sarabande. The grueling final Forlane, however, lacked a bit of finish.
There, as in Franck, however, some questions of a stylistic nature emerge. The one who was nicknamed by his students the Pater seraphicus was a convinced Wagnerian. You have to get lost in his music as in the endless legato lines with which Wagner’s operas are filled. Musicologist John Trevitt is not far from the truth in speaking of Franck’s music as characterized by a “complacent heaviness” (self-indulgent massiveness). To speak of a “delicious thickness” does, in our opinion, more justice to the unequaled beauty of the music of the Pater.
Let’s be clear: Charles Richard-Hamelin offers a Franck inhabited with a thousand colors, at every invested moment. However, he inserts it more into a more classical tradition, Beethovenian or Brahmsian, let’s say, than Wagnerian, only half savoring his love song. It is no different in Chausson.
After the short break, the pianist goes to the other side of the mirror with Ravel’s impressionism, where he is more at home. The Pavane is full of simplicity and reverie, with an expertly tonal right hand and a keen sense of piano “orchestration”.
the Tomb of Couperin is the peak of the concert. The Prelude is far from the whirlwind of certain interpretations, being more whispered than hammered. The following Fugue is, for its part, illuminated by a soft opalescence, with almost unreal resonance effects.
In the Forlane, Richard-Hamelin seems to improvise, sometimes withholding such a note to slightly jostle the listener, an effect which however sometimes becomes a bit systematic. The central section, with its intangible pianissimos, forces us to strain our ears so as not to lose any of the Ravelian colours. If the Rigaudon lacks a touch of madness, the pianist manages to win us over in the Minuet and the final Toccata.
As an encore, the musician offered the enthusiastic audience his own transcription of the last movement of My mother the goose by Ravel in homage to the victims of the Russian invasion in Ukraine, then a Prelude noh 3 of Chopin absolutely out of time.
The concert resumes Thursday at 7:30 p.m.