Dutch pianist and pianofortist Ronald Brautigam will sound for the first time on Tuesday the new acquisition of Bourgie Hall, a pianoforte made in 2020 in the United States by Rodney J. Regier. This recital of works by Schumann, Mendelssohn and Schubert will be his very first in Montreal.
Ronald Brautigam knows Quebec for having come to the Festival de Lanaudière in 2010, then in 2013. This fascinating musician is an artist as comfortable on modern instruments as on period instruments. He has moreover engraved in less than ten years two complete Beethoven concertos in order to explore the sound universes offered by the different types of instruments. His recordings, published by the Swedish label Bis, are often references, for example, the complete sonatas of Haydn or Beethoven as far as the pianoforte versions are concerned.
Austrian inspiration
Built specifically for Bourgie Hall, the new pianoforte is inspired by instruments designed by Viennese makers Conrad Graf and Ignaz Bösendorfer dating from the late 1820s to 1840s.
“Appreciated for their soft and delicate sonorities as well as for their ability to produce a wide range of nuances, they are instruments that Beethoven and Schubert knew in particular at the end of their lives, Chopin during his visits to Vienna, Robert and Clara Schumann , as well as Mendelssohn”, Bourgie Hall tells us.
Ronald Brautigam, even if he is a faithful of the instruments of the organbuilder Paul McNulty, knows the pianofortes manufactured by Rodney J. Regier. “I’ve heard a lot about the instrument. I played [sur] Regier’s instruments, one in Lanaudière, but also [sur] one of the copies of Conrad Graf in the Netherlands. So I know his sound philosophy,” the pianofortist tells us.
To compose the program, Ronald Brautigam first paid tribute to Isolde Lagacé. “Mme Lagacé heard my record of Romance without words by Mendelssohn. She really liked this recording and did me the honor of asking me to inaugurate this pianoforte. Of course, I included some Romance in the program. He then called Rodney J. Regier to ask if the instrument would be suitable for the works of the young Robert Schumann. The postman having answered in the affirmative, we will hear the Fantasiestücke opus 12. In the second part, the sublime Sonata D 960 of Schubert, who is notoriously entitled to a revenge in this room, since it had been programmed there by Khatia Buniatishvili.
Delivered in October 2021, after a few months of delay due to the pandemic, the instrument was to be inaugurated in January 2021. Then played several times afterwards, in particular, in March 2021 by Kristian Bezuidenhout with Anne Sofie von Otter in a recital also passed profit and loss in the dustbin of history and the pandemic.
The inaugural “take 2” was to take place on October 24, 2021 with Andreas Staier, who had to cancel his presence for health reasons. So here we are, in April 2022, at this third attempt at inauguration with, again, Ronald Brautigam, the “inaugurant” initially anticipated.
Color games
If Ronald Brautigam speaks of “sound philosophy”, it is because each factor has a style. “Some prefer to take their copies to the harpsichord, less colorful in a way. My friend of thirty years Paul McNulty worked for Steinway. He therefore knows modern pianos very well and tries to approach on his copies the colors that can be found on modern instruments. They are very “multichromatic” instruments, if I may say so. »
“Furthermore, there are instruments that are just piano and strong, without many layers of nuances in between. I am looking for a wider palette, because I am convinced that Mozart and Beethoven did the same, judging by their orchestral works. »
In his complete Haydn sonatas, Brautigam limited himself to one instrument. One wonders if it was of his own free will. “Now I would look for different instruments. But it was the beginning of the collaboration with Bis and the economic constraints prevailed a little on the other considerations. Bis wanted to limit the risks at the time. Today, of course, I would take for the London Sonatas an English pianoforte or a copy of such an instrument. »
Ronald Brautigam understands that we would like an instrument adapted to each sonata, but that is not realistic. “Mozart sometimes played his sonatas on organs: he was even more flexible than us,” he says.
His choice of instrument is not always historic. “For my disc of concertos by Mendelssohn and romance without words, I didn’t use the instrument that necessarily sticks best to Mendelssohn, historically; I took the one whose sound seemed to me the most suited to the sound ideal I had in mind. »
Brautigam is a follower of copies, out of pure pragmatism. “There are beautiful historical instruments in museums, but they cannot move. Also, while the sound may sound wonderful to you, keep in mind that they are 200 years old and the mechanism is likely to have flaws. This or that note will respond less effectively. »
Two universes
Ronald Brautigam is the only artist to have engraved Beethoven’s concertos on modern piano and on pianoforte. “I recorded the first cycle on modern piano. One day I gave a concert in Norrköping with Andrew Parrott and it was so conclusive that we recorded there. Especially since, for a Swedish label, recording 50 kilometers south of Stockholm is very practical. Andrew Parrott coming from the world of early music, he had a lot of good interpretative ideas. »
Brautigam does not deny anything: “I like this cycle very much, but I also wanted to record it with a period instrument where the question of the balance between the soloist and the orchestra arises differently. The orchestra takes on greater importance here, because the modern piano is always present, while the pianoforte can merge into a form of chamber music. »
In concert, these balances are almost impossible to achieve correctly, because the rooms are always too big and the pianoforte tends to disappear too much. “The only way to be heard is to hammer things like an idiot, which doesn’t help the music,” laughs Ronald Brautigam. But this was already the case in Beethoven’s time: he had asked Czerny to play the Concerto noh 4. Czerny had refused, saying: “I won’t be heard”. This is why, in the eyes of the artist, the recording, where one can play with the balance, is a blessing.
Like The duty recently looked at how to record the piano, it is interesting to know that in this case, for the version with modern piano, the instrument was placed in the middle of the orchestra, without a cover, in order to to melt it a little more, whereas for the version with pianoforte, the sound engineers detached the instrument from the orchestra. “Engineers are always afraid that microphones dedicated to the pianoforte pick up orchestral sound. They want to keep the sound “clean”, so they tend to place it at a distance, which, for me, increases the difficulty of reacting musically with the orchestra. »
Ronald Brautigam will record Schubert’s ultimate works next summer. In April or May, he will go to Paul McNulty to choose an instrument. “Paul McNulty has several copies of Graf pianofortes. It won’t be a problem for me to take the same instrument to play everything, because it’s the same sound ideal for the same period of composition. It’s simpler than with Beethoven, who changed instruments every year. The good thing about Grafs from this era is that they have four or five registration pedals, so you can choose your colors like an organist. This is essential in the eyes of the artist, because “the delicacy counts enormously”.