Franco-Haitian pianist Célimène Daudet made her Quebec debut on Wednesday evening at Bourgie Hall with a program featuring the best pieces from her CD. Haiti my love and leading, via Scriabin, to the 2e Book of the Preludes by Debussy. The musical evening was very interesting, but the pianist did not really understand the context of her concert and the audience she was addressing.
But what do we teach talented young girls from good families? Why didn’t Célimène Daudet find someone who explained to her that a concert like hers couldn’t be like that? Not in Montreal. Not in front of a mixed audience, largely made up of an audience from the Haitian diaspora with little experience in piano recitals. We are not at the Théâtre des Champs-Élysées in front of the people of the 16th arrondissement of Paris, at the Philharmonie de Berlin or at Carnegie Hall. Here, the artist speaks to people, talks to them, tells them stories!
Moreover, we are in 2023 and, outside these major centers, the “high mass” where an artist dispenses his science ex cathedra to an amazed crowd who distinguishes with a snap of his fingers Heathers And Canopy from Preludes debussystes, it is a bygone concept in terms of “entertainment”. Classical artists too often forget that they are selling a ticket for entertainment. This can, of course, be serious, but it competes with other forms of entertainment (cinema, television, theatre).
sound piano
In short, it was not “the art and the way” last night, hence our title. What should have been done, of course, was a sort of paraphrase of the article in the Duty of Tuesday by challenging the public, explaining to them the origin of Justin Élie’s sweet nostalgia, talking about the influence of dances at Saintonge and Lamothe, drawing a parallel between Loco of Lamothe and the mysticism of Towards the flame by Scriabin, and recalling what Feuillet d’album owes to Chopin. Project the titles of Preludes de Debussy on the back wall during their performance would also have been an asset.
You didn’t have to be a diviner to imagine that a concert Haiti my love was going to attract an audience of unaccustomed people who shouldn’t despair of the classical concert… The remark applies as much to the pianist as to the audience.
As far as artistic criteria are concerned, Célimène Daudet immediately favored a very “sounding” piano, with generous use of the pedal, a bit as if the whole concert had been calibrated to the resonance needs of Canopy.
Célimène Daudet knows very well the requirements of all her repertoire. What surprises a little in its Preludes is that she fully assumes that the pianissimos hardly go below the nuance piano. But the dynamic ratios are correct (General Lavigne — eccentriccrowd favourite) and when the sound has to die (end of Canopy), the pianist does it very well.
Above all, what Célimène Daudet innately possesses is Debussy’s sense of movement. The musical flow is not artificial or jerky, but flows very naturally as evidenced by the suppleness of Ondine or Fireworks. Oppositions are fair, too.
All this was therefore very beautiful, but as the part Haiti my love was completed at 8 p.m., the public present, very disciplined, attentive and very polite, largely deserved a little reminder tribute to an island joyful in its heart and soul. That too is the way here, to say “thank you for coming; I would be happy to see you again”. For the emotional intelligence of the artist, we will therefore come back.