A few times a decade emerges, here or there, an artist of whom we knew nothing and who imposes himself in a few notes as an essential player in our musical universe. It happened with pianist Christian Blackshaw or tenor Benjamin Bernheim. An identical shock has just been reserved for us by a 46-year-old French pianist, Jean-Baptiste Fonlupt.
A record from the superb La Dolce Volta label. From a distance, the cover does not lack audacity. Tribute to Serge Gainsbourg? An artist smoking a cigarette? Sacrilege: hide this scroll that cannot be seen! Our gaze then approaches the image, and it is white orchids that we see escaping from the hand of Jean-Baptiste Fonlupt.
The illusion is perfect; the image, vertiginous. To see, by looking closely, what one did not think to discover and, for the one who creates the image, to open up unexpected poetic universes. All of this is a perfect metaphor for what happens on this record, where the slightest corner of a phrase, the slightest transition or resonance can become a source of dazzling.
Orchestra and vocals
Jean-Baptiste Fonlupt is a narrator who creates atmospheres. And it’s all in the score… But his spirit is visionary and, miraculously, the fingers manage to recreate these visions in this recorded program of music inspired by ballet: Three movements of Petrushka by Stravinsky, The waltz and Noble and sentimental waltzes by Ravel and 10 pieces of Romeo and Juliet by Prokofiev.
The duty wanted to know who this unknown pianist was and what motivates him. “I try to think of the piano as an instrument of colors and to evacuate all the effects, all the tics, which resemble pianism”, says Jean-Baptiste Fonlupt.
“For this disc, I was inspired a lot by the orchestral versions and I worked with the orchestral scores, because, when you have 80 musicians, you don’t do anything in terms of rubato, breathing , changes in tempos, otherwise people don’t play together. »
“In my way of playing, my two inspirations are the orchestra and singing”, continues the pianist. “Chopin said to his students: ‘If you want to play my music, you must be able to sing it.’ The melody, I work on it by singing it or by imagining a wind instrument. If I think of a string instrument, I imagine the difficulty of certain intervals, the need for changes in bowing. I’m trying to convey something very organic at the level of singing, of breathing”, synthesizes the artist who is looking for a kind of orchestral “playing together” all by himself.
“Apart from Chopin [malgré quelques mélodies et une sonate pour violoncelle], all composers have written for instruments other than the piano. They therefore have a vision of music that goes beyond the piano. The work of the pianist is therefore to go beyond the piano and to imagine the work, even with Chopin, as if it were sung or orchestrated”, summarizes Jean-Baptiste Fonlupt.
From Paris to Moscow
The artist, who does not want, or dare, identify with any pianist, was a pupil of Bruno Rigutto in Paris, Yonty Solomon at the Royal College in London, Michael Endres in Berlin and Elisso Virssaladze in Moscow. “In a very condensed time, there are a lot of very different courses, and I told myself that in all of this, I had to find my way. In his training, Jean-Baptiste Fonlupt also considers his long musical listening, not only of piano music, but of symphonies by Mahler, operas by Mozart, Wagner and Strauss and melodies.
Despite his attention to singing, Fonlupt never dreamed of becoming a collaborating pianist. “I didn’t want to do it as a career. I may not have met the right person…” he says. He focuses instead on music for piano alone, with a “repertoire of the moment”. “The question of the core repertoire is very difficult. It is true that I searched the romantic repertoire a lot. But doing everything in Schumann, Chopin, Liszt and Brahms takes a lot of time. My heart leans towards the romantic repertoire, but I’m sad when I can’t play Bach and Haydn, with whom I have a special affinity. »
Jean-Baptiste Fonlupt admits to dreaming of recording sonatas by Haydn. We hope that this disc will seal a lasting collaboration with La Dolce Volta, whose sound ethics and product quality finally meet the art of this great pianist. Because Jean-Baptiste Fonlupt is not here at his first recording. The others, we hadn’t seen them, made by record companies unknown to the battalion, some recorded in public. Our joy to discover it listening on demand in the Fancy of Schumann and the Sonata de Liszt died out after a few notes hearing the dreadful saucepan he was touching.
Caviar is not served in paper plates with plastic spoons. At 46, Jean-Baptiste Fonlupt finally got the setting he deserved. Hopefully, this will propel a career that warrants our attention and highest regard.