The Importance of Being HIPP...
Sébastien Melmoth | Hôtel d'Alsace, PARIS | 11/15/2009
(5 out of 5 stars)
"The Importance of Being HIPP...
Historically Informed Performance Practices (HIPP) seem to be regaining the interest of aficionados as HIPP artists have refurbished old instruments, built new instruments modelled on the old, and developed better techniques of HIPP instrumental articulation and recording--since the earlier days of HIPP in the 1980s when the poor sounds of both instruments and recordings were off-putting to many would-be enthusiasts.
One of the most innovative and talented current HIPP artists is Belgian Jos van Immerseel who found an immaculately preserved 1897 Érard baby grand with a sostenuto effect pedal mechanism which well corresponds the execution requirements of Debussy's morceaux wherein singing treble lines are featured over sustained bass notes.
Van Immerseel implements the Érard with a very light `finger-based' technique achieving moderate HIPP playing times when compared (for example) to the famous Prélude set of modernistic recordings issued by Krystian Zimerman.
The HIPP realizations of van Immerseel and others on these remarkable 19th Century instruments reveal a `time regained' sound-world of half-tints and tertiary colours bathed in a limpid luminosity of diffused clarity conjuring imagery of both the perversely odd Fin de Siècle and the benignly beauteous Belle Époque.
Experience:
César Franck: Harmonium 1850 Érard piano & 1865 Alexandre harmonium
Chopin: Nocturnes 1845 Broadwood piano
Bruckner: Piano Works 1835 Bösendorfer pianoforte
Hyacinthe Jadin: Sonates pour pianoforte 1830 Schott pianoforte
Karg-Elert: Works for Harmonium, Vol. 1 1913 Mustel harmonium
Lefebure-Wely:Suites for Harmonicorde 1880 Debain harmonicorde
Pièces per harmonium 1891 Mustel harmonium
Chopin: Complete Mazurkas II 1855 Érard piano
Brahms: Clarinet Sonatas, Op. 120; Vier ernste Gesänge. Op. 121 (arr. for piano)
1901 Steinway piano & 1905 Oehler clarinet
Vierne: Organ Symphonies Complete 1890 Cavaillé-Coll organ
."