A real French Pianistic Real Deal: Top Notch, Amazing, Poeti
Dan Fee | Berkeley, CA USA | 08/26/2008
(5 out of 5 stars)
"Jean-Efflam Bavouzet is a new keyboard artist name to me. Apparently he has started taking concert halls by storm, first in Paris and Rome at the invitation of Sir Georg Solti who was guesting at Orchestre de Paris at the time, with the substitution of Pierre Boulez when SGS died. Now Bavouzet is appearing in USA as well, including stints with Boston where he made a fine impression.
If you get a chance to hear him live, the swell of sudden musical reputation says, Take it. By all means.
Now to these Debussy recordings. What to say?
Wow, is the word. My Debussy exemplars include the likes of the magisterial Italian Arturo Benedetti Michelangeli, the Czech Ivan Moravec, the American Paul Jacobs, and that sleeper Russian American Sergey Schepkin. Bavouzet easily joins this select group, or whatever select group of pianists you might care to conjure for a fav or desert island Debussy packing list.
This French guy manages a magical combination of Michelangeli's hard, clear lines and musical mass with Moravec's poetry and color, thus bridging the two supposedly distinct poles of the piano's physical approach to what the composer meant and wrote. Like Schepkin or Paul Jacobs, one imagines one is hearing just a genius touch of modern, ironic distance and an awareness of hidden, intuitive musical structure, such that Bavouzet gives glinting lights to all the musical line and color which comes across as precise, rather than over-heated or saturated as if Debussy were subsumed by, say, Scriabin. This piano's poetry is such that - as the cliche goes - Bavouzet reveals the art that conceals art.
This is lots, yet Bavouzet's Debussy is also utterly natural, convincing, spontaneous.
The player's repertoire is said to contain the complete concerti of Bartok, Beethoven, and Prokofiev, as he breezed his way through all five Prokofiev concertos in Novgorod for starters. If there was any leading candidate for a new complete recorded set of the Prokofiev piano concertos, hopefully in super audio surround sound, suddenly Mr. Bavouzet sounds like the real deal. This listener would truly like to hear Boulez at the helm of the Orchestre de Paris with Bavouzet riding the finest piano Paris can provide, freshly tuned.
One suspects the Russian to French deep connections - think Prokofiev, Shostakovich, Stravinsky, Diaghilev and the Ballet Russe, and conductors like Pierre Monteux and Sergey Koussevitzky - would palpalby be revealed, whole and alive and well, in such an adventure.
In volume one, Bavouzet takes on both books of the Debussy Preludes. Like the printed page scores, these readings are music first, and poetic or impressionistic titles second. The narratives are shaped through typical keyboard means of phrasing, varied tempo, and yes of course, color. What is magical and much more difficult to explain or describe is their profoundly French and profoundly musical aptness, a sort of high poise that one associates with legendary world class pianists like Romania's Dinu Lipatti. Or with Artur Rubinstein playing Chopin in his last stereo cycle.
One suspects that this cycle will take on reference weight, pretty much as this level of playing does, provided it can stay in the catalogue across two or three generations. Not displacing Michelangeli, Moravec, Jacobs, or Schepkin (or others of your own appreciation), but surely enduringly welcomed to the gifted wings of the musical family.
Given these startling abilities, one also cannot help but wonder what Bavouzet woud make of the three Bartok piano concertos, or of Bartok's solo keyboard output, all. That is a recorded project just begging for attention, right after the Prokofiev concertos are safely vaulted in the super audio bank.
A glance at the existing catalogue also shows that Bavouzet has done the complete Ravel solo piano music - playing a real, turn-of-the-last-century instrument. If you feel any lure to Ravel on the piano, that set is also likely the real deal.
Fear not, Debussy fans, this one is way more than glitter and glitz, cheap perfume, and circus tent showmanship, and Debussy is revealed, larger than life, as the revolutionary of his era - inexhaustible as Beethoven.
Very highly recommended, Five Stars."
Changed my apathetic attitude for debussy into full blown en
Brian | SAN DIEGO, US, Canada | 01/08/2009
(5 out of 5 stars)
"Im not a musician but I love this stuff, I have many other recordings of these works that I've tried to develop a love for but it just never materialized until I bought these from a review off archivmusic. Its been pure joy ever since, I hear things that I never heard before, the quality of the recording is awesome, for me his tone is perfect, the passion I get from his playing caused me to buy all his other cds of Debussy except the latest which I mostly likely will. I look forward to hearing his Ravel"
