We sincerely hope that music lovers from Quebec City, who heard Sergei Babayan in November, did not travel to Montreal on Sunday to hear the phenomenon again in the Legend of Saint-François de Paule walking on the waves of Liszt, the 32 variations in C minor of Beethoven and the grandiose Sonata D.960 by Schubert.
At 48 o’clock in the evening, Sergei Babayan has indeed changed the program to serve, in Montreal, the exact menu that music lovers in the national capital had heard two months ago. Exit Schubert and Beethoven, as well as the most subtle side of Liszt, for the benefit of Kreisleriana of Schumann and of a more caricatural Liszt, that of the Ballad noh 2. Bonus, on the other hand, with two proposals around the art of transcription: Busoni rethinking Bach and Liszt translating Schubert.
Demiurge
A word comes up almost in a loop and necessarily when we try to describe the art of Sergei Babayan: demiurge. Curiously, when researching the etymology, we come across the double meaning of “worker” and “creator of the universe” (demi-ourgos). Babayan is characterized in the sense of universe.
To distinguish him from ordinary pianists, we must speak of his sound production. It comes from the whole body. He therefore creates a sound universe, less striking, on Sunday, by an infinite variety than by an extraordinary power which immediately places his Rachmaninoff in a class apart.
There is, in this register, Yefim Bronfman and Denis Matsuev, but we find in Babayan a kind of kneading sound superior to Matsuev. To stay with the etymology, we will mention the concentration: “increase in intensity of the active principle of a solution”. What is striking in Rachmaninoff or Liszt with Babayan is precisely the intensity, even more than the decibels. The Studies-paintings op. 39 nbone5 and 1 were the culmination of this recital.
Babayan’s art cannot be reduced to sound production: in Schubert’s transcriptions there was a remarkable sound conduct and vocality through a skilful use of the pedal, but also a perfect mastery of dynamic inflections.
Babayan dresses Schubert in Lisztian art. Here, and especially in Gretchen am Spinnrade and Auf dem Wasser zu singenthe different returns of the melody become denser, and the pianist does not hesitate to opt for a very wide dynamic deployment.
The Schumann case
Even though Babayan is still an exciting pianist and inherently a great artist, it’s still not about taking everything at face value. The program opened with “Chaconne” by Busoni, taken from the Partita for Violin noh 2 in D minor of Bach and ended with Kreisleriana of Schumann.
A common point linked the two interpretations: a rather segmented look opposing sections with exacerbated contrasts. From this point of view, the chaconne was more Busoni, in his approach of a great virtuoso creating moments (the latter increasingly convincing in the last quarter of the work) than Bach. A “Bach approach” to things would be more concentrated, unifying, marmoreal.
This brings us straight to Schumann, Kreisleriana following strange “bugs” and interpreted as such, without looking for a link and, above all, no binder. Here, Sergei Babayan is careful not to abuse the pedal: he would be afraid to blur the diabolical side of all these notes. Because he rushes in the fastest and swoons (but without marshmallow) in the moments of interiority (” innig in the language of Schumann). But this dryness, this sonic settling “breaks” Schumann. The reversals are mechanical, pianistic, instead of appearing as mood swings, torments or surges of the heart.
Sergeï Babayan simply reminds us that Schumann is a composer apart, and that his chosen servants are rare. It may be a question of the day or a more or less surly piano. Sunday, at the Pierre-Mercure room, we heard an excellent pianist juxtapose episodes without finding the thread. On March 17, Benjamin Grosvenor will publish this formidable score on his new disc Decca. You can already start the pre-orders: lucky, we heard his recording in preview while writing his lines. And he just got it!