Mao Fujita, Momo Kodama: two Japanese who escape what I could reproach Asians for the other day: uniformity. Magnificent performances. And Pierre Hantaï, the magician of the harpsichord, so in his place in the abbey of Silvacane. Story of some happiness, under the heat which, more and more? (again) wins.
Momo Kodama
(long raspberry dress with dark blue stripes, pearl pumps)
Another woman among the “pianists of the 11th hour” but that is also due to the program, this Tuesday August 2 Bertrand Chamayou, who had played the day before in the large park – “only” the quintet with piano of Schumann with the Modigliani Quartet- came to defend in the same small room some of the Twenty looks at the Child Jesus that he has just recorded (not yet had the opportunity to hear his CD of this monument)
Momo Kodama C) Valentine Chauvin
Messiaen of course: we limit risk-taking, perhaps post-Covid, by dreaming of the two hours of these twenty looks in the park, the cicadas are killed by admiration and the public fascinated themselves. And of Momo Kodama also playing there the (even) longer Bird catalogs of the same Messiaen, birds of which she chirped only 7 of the 13 listed by Messiaen, the brilliant musician-ornithologist-poet.
“Pépia” is obviously reductive. But Kodama offers us before each listening the formidable key which enlightens our ears on what Messiaen undertakes. Because we don’t just listen, we imagine, thanks to the magnificent texts written by Messiaen himself, which paint a dazzling picture of the setting where the birds in question frolic. Poet-writer texts which, unfortunately, Kodama tells us, are only written on the scores. Unless in a collection of the composer’s texts…
Momo Kodama C) Valentine Chauvin
A sound board of birds
And for example, when we hear the stapazin wheatear where the black wheatear, the first that stands on the stones (from the Côte Vermeille) all red silk and black satin, the second on the background of sapphire blue or Nattier blue sea, silvered with sunshine, you can also hear, near Collioure, the incessant ballet of land and sea birds mixed together, crows and cormorants, seagulls and, when night falls, a memory of the spectacled warbler. On the contrary, a gust of wind on the piano indicates that the laughing wheatear is joined by the ruckus of the waves where the rooks howl. Nothing to do with the discreet lark Lulu which, in the mountains of Forez, dialogues at midnight with the nightingale, different song, different tonality, song which dies out by trills.
A score which, in the assault of the birds, their mystery (the alpine chough, male bird flying over the precipices of Oisans or La Meije), their secret (the tawny owl, wisdom and supernatural, its lugubrious and painful song, vague and disturbing), their dazzling and musical presence (this bluebird whose evocation is pure Messiaen before being pure bird), can also allow us to escape as when we are surrounded in nature by these distant or close but repeated cries towards which, all of a sudden, we tend the ear. And Momo Kodama, as a high priestess, a sort of Athena, plays this with energy, endurance, splashing with poetry and dazzling, as you choose, this oh so formidable score.
Mao Fujita C) Pierre Morales
Mao Fujita
There it is, the Japanese, and no doubt Asian, revelation of tomorrow and already today. We had been warned by a colleague, Japanese precisely, who praised all the merits of this 23-year-old boy who has not yet played much in France. His problem? He won 2nd prize at the famous Tchaikovsky competition where our Alexandre Kantorow had the 1st. So that with us there was only for the national hero and not for the unfortunate Fujita. Who has so much talent. Not the same. Different facilities. But at the end of the concert, received an ovation, Fujita left with a very large fan club of music lovers present.
A look of a monk… Shintoist
He enters, all in black, with small steps of… monk, strange bowl cut (in the style of Name of the rose) and huge smile. And Chopin as we had not heard for a long time: the two Nocturnes from opus 48, with a sweetness and a poetry at the same time as a rather unusual sharpness of touch. The 3rd Ballad also escapes this onslaught of virtuosity that we now hear so often, and it is not for lack of means. Same sweetness, intense sensitivity, the second theme as if taking us on a perpetual circle by reaching out to us.
Mao Fujita C) Pierre Morales
Then intelligence itself: Brahms and Schumann connected by Clara. the Theme and Variations adapted by Brahms from his 1st String Sextet (which we had heard at Luisada’s the day before), a theme presented in its somewhat Grand Siècle monumentality. The difficulty with Brahmsian variations is that they often differ imperceptibly, like a dappled sky whose shades of gray are indefinable. Fujita is aware of this but does not always apply it.
From Clara to Robert
Clara: the Three Romances opus 21. We give up in front of the first, whose dreamy melody escapes into unexpected, truly personal spheres. And we ask ourselves a question, perhaps stupid: is a man who plays a female work going to seek the part of female sensitivity which is in each male. Question to ask when when Argerich plays Beethoven it does not even touch us!
The two others Romance are also beautiful, without having the originality of the first. In the last the fingers run as in Chopin. And now, without warning, Fujita launches the 2nd sonata of Robert by linking her directly to Clara, by playing her as fast as possible as Schumann himself asks (So Rasch wie möglich) a little at the expense of touch this time. It’s dazzling, perfectly held in the speed it imparts (with the softness which is really its mark in the slow movement), but also in a kind of joy which is still that of a lover – yet this sonata is often played, in its much darker key of G minor…
Mao Fujita C) Pierre Morales
23 years of great talent
Fujita, suddenly, with his ease and his choices fully assumed, can still, he is only 23 years old, round off the sound which sometimes sounds dry in its virtuosity. We will have the same feeling in the Mozarts that he gives in encore, with finger precision and impressive virtuoso ease – he is preparing a complete sonata. Then an extract from a Bach partita, the rare Minuet on Haydn’s name by Ravel. Do you play Ravel? we ask him. We understand from his pout that no, not really. Ah! if. Couperin’s Tombereau. And Gaspard of the night? – No. Too formal.
The only false note, concerning one of the most brilliant scores in the history of music (Lucas Debargue will confirm to us, and we agree) But we are 23 years old, we are rotten with talent, we still have so much to learn.
Pierre Hantaï C) Pierre Morales
Pierre Hantai
Two hours before, the great harpsichordist, at Silvacane, gave a tribute concert to his master Gustav Leonhardt. Fascinating interventions by Hantaï on Bach before playing it, the hidden, esoteric and mystical signs, which we ended up discovering (not long ago) in, for example, the great chaconne of the Partita for violin BWV 1004. This Prelude, fugue and allegro for a form of disappeared harpsichord with gut strings. The Jig and its double for harpsichord-lute. And transcriptions of pieces for lute, cello or violin by Leonhardt himself. In short, almost a Bach concert without Bach but all the same with Bach. And the dazzling virtuosity, authority, presence, of a Hantaï who turns his instrument into a sort of baroque orchestra – like the piano, later, could become a world-piano. And this chaconne which still resembles something other than in its violin version, intense swarming of music which draws closer to God.
Like the birds. We come back to Messiaen, that other mystic.
Concert Momo Kodama: Messiaen ( Catalog of birds) August 1st
Concert Mao Fujita: Chopin (Nocturnes opus 48, Ballade n° 3) Brahms (Theme and variations) Clara Wieck-Schumann (3 Romances opus 21) Schumann (Sonata No. 2) July 30.
Concert Pierre Hantaï: Bach (Prelude, fugue and allego BWV 998; Overture in D minor from the Suite for Lute BWV 995; Sarabande and Bourrée in D minor after the Partita for violin BWV 1002; Gigue and its double BWV 997; Partita in G minor after the Partita for Violin BWV 1004) July 30