Search - Jean-Marc Luisada :: Beethoven: Piano Concerto No.4, Piano Sonatas Nos. 8 & 30 [Germany]

Jean-Marc Luisada, Mikko Franck, OrchPhilRadioFrance: Beetho

Dan Fee | Berkeley, CA USA | 09/30/2009

(5 out of 5 stars)

"Jean-Marc Luisada is a player of Tunisian origins, trained in Paris and England, with mentoring-coaching from Paul Badura-Skoda, and Nikita Magaloff. He came to public attention by winning competition prizes - Dino Ciani, 1983 - Chopin, 1985. He first had a recording contract with DGG of Universal Classics; then eventually moved on to BMG Sony.



His early releases concentrated on his Chopin; with a complete set of waltzes on one DGG disc, and some selected Mazurkas on another disc. Then he began to branch out into the wider Romantic solo piano literatures - Schumann, French composers, Liszt, Granados.



On this disc we get to hear a very fine, very strong reading of Beethoven's fourth piano concerto, plus two solo piano sonatas (Pathetique, No. 8, and Opus 109, No. 30). The Orchestre Philharmonique de Radio France is led by rising young star conductor, Mikko Franck.



The opening gestures of the fourth tell a listener right away that Luisada's reading is going to be strong Beethoven - yet clean, clear, and elegant. This reading is consistent with French musical traditions of combining strength and elegance in Beethoven performance. One has to reach back to the heyday of players like Robert Casadesus to hear Beethoven like Luisada's.



The solo sonata that ends the disc, Pathetique (Nr. 8) shows fine qualities right through. Rhythms are etched and sprung, yet never disrupt the larger musical flow. Light and shadow, song and drama are all expressed along the way; but the whole shape is clear and clean, too. Touches of rubato are more involved with the deep ebb and flow of the whole movement, rather than spotlighting local passages or figurations. The declamatory sense captures both a narrative speech articulation (as in story-telling), and suspense-discovery turning points. The slow middle movement is sung, directly, simply. Its contrasts intensify the song, pushing the music deeper without losing melody and vocal impulse. Luisada relates this slow movement's ethos to a very Italianate, Bellini or Donizetti-like bel canto, above all. Again, it makes a sort of whole musical sense that still eludes many Beethoven players who are getting rave reviews, frequently. The final fast movement Rondo evokes coloratura sparks without diminishing the brilliance of Beethoven's busy intellect, so varied. The harmony seems oddly marked by improvisatory ease and fluency, and a compelling force of musical-dialogue that Socrates might have envied. By the end when the coloratura figurations return, one suddenly glimpses that Luisada is closer kin to, say, fierce Beethovenians like Bruce Hungerford than one has earlier realized.



Immediately I hit the equipment replay button, to listen again to the Opus 109 (Nr. 30) sonata. Yes, it lives and moves and breaths and sings in the same musical world as Luisada's Pathetique. The opening musical motif which seems to be refusing to take itself too seriously suddenly digs in, with vigor and intelligence, eventually unfolding drama in argument. Bel canto and coloratura touches show up, too, though put to slightly different musical uses than in sonata eight. Attaca, the second movement speed up asserts. The ineffable, sheer friendliness of this disclosure is complemented by its heightened urgency, pressing. Then the harmony relaxes while it elevates our levels of musical discourse, opening the third concluding movement of the 30th sonata. Like a prologue, this first part seems to sum up and explain the urgent notions of the middle movement, sprung so vocally from the first. As the music elaborates, it gathers bel canto force again; reminding a listener that beautiful song is also meant to express deep, embodied, unspeakable feelings and ideas. Wit and intellect re-emerge in the lively polyphony, then break again into heartfelt song. Coloratura trills spin off lights, emphatic. A quasi-fugue cast of characters suddenly choruses onto the center stage, like an ancient Greek chorus filling out the fated turns of events so far. Lifting song returns again, relaxing into coloratura asides; then the fugue intensifies, clinching, culminating. Students of music who like to distinguish between Italianate melody (bel canto) and supposedly Germanic high seriousness in formalities like fugues will be confounded, by Luisada, and by this Beethoven. No sooner has the fugue taken over and come into its own, than it breaks forth in the bel canto song that turns out to have been its love affair.



Whew. Okay. This is really some Beethoven playing. Not at all, business as usual.



Now let's hit the replay buttons again, and hear that fourth concerto more closely. Luisada sets out a counterpoint of legato and detache physicality, right in the famous opening. Conductor Mikko Franck is alert enough and involved enough to inspire the band to match Luisada, just so. Perhaps this already shows some indebtedness to HIP manners; but the debt is not un-musical, nor intrusively self-conscious. The point is still the music. The music still sounds like Beethoven. Then Franck lets the orchestra loose, punch and sforzando. The rest of the movement strikes me as more rhythmic-dramatic than usual for this work, this movement. I had a similar reaction to hearing what Horenstein and Erich Gruenberg were doing in the Chesky disc of the Beethoven violin concerto. The CD booklet essay by Jean-Jacques Velly compares the fifth symphony gestures that give rise to that entirely ubiquitous narrative, with the rhythmic-harmonic core of the fourth concerto first movement. This reading brings out the connecting energies. Even when our piano is relaxing into Luisada-esque bel canto figurations, the point is still the oscillation of that opening harmony, flying through to shape and structure all the textures, infinitely lighted from changing angles, different and familiar. Nobody spells out which first movement cadenza Luisada is playing; but it is fully in keeping with how everybody lays out this first movement. A series of free changes, rung on the rhythm and the oscillating harmony of the opening phrases.



The vigorous strokes of the start of the second slow movement are closer kin to the focus of the first movement than may be typical. No romantic-sentimental mood setting here. The point is clearly the steel girder reach and lift of the harmony. The solo piano interjections are sung hints of contrast, not yet Liszt's Orpheus charming the wild beasts. Attaca, the last movement takes off. This middle movement suddenly seems more of an interlude than before; like getting a quick, retrospective relationship with the famous middle movement of the Moonlight Sonata? What the first movement hammered home, and the second movement pondered, this last movement will freely release and develop. The rhythm runs about more, takes stands, released into a passing lightness that modern listeners may hear recalling a Mendelssohn not yet quite born into the real era in which a real Beethoven lived. The Rondo-variation energies of this last movement are hardly subdued; both Luisada and the band players bring everything right out, clear, cleanly into the musical open with great athletics. There is something touched with archaic sights at work here, as if somehow recalling those Minoan-Crete wall frescoes, populated by lithe, gravity-free, Bull Leapers aloft in mid-air. After the cadenza, Luisada and the band players rise and float, up, then back to earth again, settling to a close like a feather, amazingly well-traveled.



Sad to surmise, Luisada's Beethoven will probably not get the bright attention in North America that his Beethoven justly deserves - at least on the basis of this disc. Kudos to Mikko Franck and the band for so warmly welcoming everything which marks Luisada's Beethoven out with such special, burning intensities. There is simply no musical obfuscation at work at all, in this sort of Beethoven. No fake mythologizing or scene setting. Beethoven has completely ceased to be mood music.



My only quibble is that for me, reversing the order of the works on this disc would have been most productive. Start off with the sonata Pathetique, then go to the sonata Opus 109, then wrap up with the fourth piano concerto. That would be the most convincing sequence for me, given the habits of Luisada's way here.



Of all the possible candidates to do a full set of Beethoven sonatas and concertos, I would have taken way too long to come up with Luisada. Yet, on the basis of this disc, he is a front-runner.



Five stars, more please? I really mean it, BMG Sony producers. This guy could give us all 32 piano sonatas; and chances seem high that his set would endure as a long-time benchmark. Ditto, all five piano concertos. More please? Five stars."