Jean Rondeau, No Smoke or Mirrors

Imagine (Bach), J. Rondeau (released on January 27, 2015) Erato 825646220045 | 79'56"

For many listeners, even those judging high-level music competitions, what they see is more important than what they hear. This phenomenon is likely made worse with an instrument like the harpsichord, which listeners may not have heard all that many times, meaning that image or superficial appeal can sometimes trump musical substance. One worries that something like that is at play in the packaging of young French harpsichordist Jean Rondeau, who made his Washington debut on Tuesday night at the French Embassy. The youngest first-prize winner at the Bruges competition, Rondeau's star is on the rise, as seen in his selection to play with Emmanuelle Haïm and Le Concert d'Astrée at the Victoires de la musique this year.

In this program, Rondeau excelled in several slow-tempo sonatas by Domenico Scarlatti, often slathering on a thick layer of rubato, teasing out curled phrases in the C major and F minor sonatas (KK. 132 and 481, both marked "cantabile"). He used the instrument, built by Thomas and Barbara Wolf and now owned by the University of Maryland, in a fairly straightforward way, combining the two 8' stops for occasional antiphonal effects and changes on repeats, as in the D minor sonata (K. 213) and the A major sonata (K. 208), and not using the instrument's other stops. Seeming to recognize his strength, Rondeau included only two sonatas in faster tempos, not to the most pleasing effect, with inelegant hand crossings in the D major (K. 119) but savoring the piled-up dissonant chords and guitar-like figuration in the A minor (K. 175).

Other Reviews: Patrick Rucker, Young harpsichordist continues to amaze (Washington Post, June 18)

More interesting were the transcriptions of Bach pieces that filled out the program, featured on Rondeau's new disc for Erato. In his slightly odd program notes for the recording, Rondeau describes his interest in "slipping in" to Bach's works, so daunting, by a "smaller human-sized door" by way of such transcriptions, which are "an apprentice's exercise," a way "to learn how the music is made." (To read more of Rondeau's thoughts in his own words, see the interview he gave this month to La Tribune de Genève.) The prelude from the C minor suite (BWV 997, originally for the Lautenwerk) was in the same vein as the slow Scarlatti pieces, not requiring many changes to be played on the harpsichord. With the famous D minor chaconne (from the second sonata for solo violin), Rondeau began with the transcription by Brahms, for the piano, left hand, but filled it out for both hands, although not in any way as vast as the devilish transcription by Busoni. The recital ended with the Italian Concerto (BWV 971), offered as a sort of "negative image" of transcription, since this is an orchestral genre rendered by Bach on a single keyboard, and played with almost mechanical regularity of tempo. A single encore sounded like another Scarlatti sonata.

La Plus Que Douce

This review is an Ionarts exclusive.

French pianist Adam Laloum came onto my radar when he won the Clara Haskil Competition in 2009. His Washington debut came on Friday night at the French Embassy, in a concert that paired Schumann's Études Symphoniques with Schubert's magisterial sonata in B-flat major, D. 960.

Laloum plays with subtle finesse, concerned with minute details of musical phrasing, making for many delicate moments in the dreamy central movements of the Schumann and the first two movements of the Schubert. Not too long into the program, however, with Laloum exploring fine gradations between pp and ppp, the style of interpretation began to cloy. To be fair, these are exactly the dynamic markings that Schubert returns to again and again in the score of this sonata, but something about Laloum's observance of those directions turned a little precious.

Schumann, Grande Humoresque / Sonata No. 1, A. Laloum (Mirare, 2013)

Part of this can be chalked up to some technical shortfalls noted before in streamed concerts by Laloum. The outer parts of the Schumann are thrilling, making the best performances -- recent ones include live performances by the likes of Alexander Melnikov and Yuja Wang -- those that push the virtuosic envelope as far as possible. Here there were a few little slips, some stickiness in the octaves that hampered some of the louder sections, and limitations in the left hand that left many interesting voicings mute on the page. Many of the same shortcomings came out in the Schubert, last heard so memorably in a live performance by Marc-André Hamelin, which was almost soporific in the first two movements, with nothing menacing about the rumbling low trills, understatement piled on understatement. Some of the best playing came in the last two movements, a quicksilver scherzo and lively rondo, capped by a daring Presto.

SVILUPPO:
Laloum played this program again on Sunday at the Phillips Collection. See Simon Chin, Laloum packs emotion into Romantic masterworks (Washington Post, October 28)

Bertrand Chamayou @ French Embassy

Schubert, Wanderer-Fantasie (inter alia), B. Chamayou (Erato, 2014) Liszt, Années de pèlerinage, B. Chamayou (Naïve, 2011) Franck, Les Djinns (inter alia), B. Chamayou, O. Latry, Royal Scottish National Orchestra, S. Denève (Naïve, 2010) [Review] Mendelssohn, Piano Pieces and Transcriptions, B. Chamayou (Naïve, 2008) [Review]

This review-interview is an Ionarts exclusive.

The recordings of the French pianist Bertrand Chamayou have come in for special praise in these pages. Since I had managed to miss his first and only performance here in Washington, back in 2006 (co-presented by the Roque d'Anthéron Festival at the Rosslyn Spectrum Theater), the chance to hear him play an all-Schubert recital at the French Embassy, on Tuesday night, was most welcome. It turns out that Catherine Albertini, the embassy's Cultural Attaché, had presented Chamayou on a previous post in Mexico, long before Chamayou had become widely known.

Chamayou's recordings for the Naïve label have all featured Romantic composers, and his first project after signing with Erato is devoted to Schubert. After this concert, I had the opportunity to ask Chamayou a few questions, starting with why his recordings have focused on music of the 19th century. He seemed to regret that his discography indicated that he plays only Romantic music, because his interests are much broader in concert, including contemporary music and pre-Classical works. In these other areas, he told me, he has been privileged to work with Pierre Boulez, among others, and has studied the pianoforte. We did speak at some length, though, about his work with the Centre de musique romantique française, based in the Palazetto Bru Zane in Venice, which has supported some of his recordings and concerts and passed along the fruits of their research into the works of lesser-known composers of the 19th century.

What made Chamayou's Franck and Mendelssohn recordings so interesting was that he chose to pair some more familiar pieces by those composers with works that have been almost entirely forgotten. The case was similar with his Schubert program, which is anchored on the Wanderer-Fantaisie, one of the first Schubert pieces that came under his fingers. He introduced it with works that are heard much less frequently, beginning with the set of twelve Ländler, D. 790, played almost attacca, that is, with no or almost no pause between them. Each one gave a slightly different take on the Austrian folk dance known by that name, some with an orchestral scope, others like intimate moments in a small room. He did not fall into the trap of trying to make them into something more than what they are, but he found a significance in each one, especially in the first half of the set.

The two shorter pieces that followed were also both seemingly filled with a sense of nostalgia, Liszt's transcription of Schubert's song Auf dem Wasser zu singen and a single Ländler, no. 12, from the D. 366 set. Nostalgia, though, is not what Chamayou said was the most important thing in his approach to Romantic music: for him, the most important thing was to focus on a pictorial or narrative goal, revealing the literary leanings of most of the Romantic composers. This certainly seemed to be the case in the longer works on this recital, beginning with the mostly unknown three Klavierstücke (opus posth., D. 946), distinguished especially by an always beautiful touch at the keyboard and a sense of how the sections fit together to tell a story, often overcoming the composer's occasional tendency to noodle around aimlessly.

The only piece on the program one might describe as familiar was left for last, the daunting but compact Wanderer-Fantaisie. It had its tour de force moments, perhaps not as fast as some other versions in the opening section but heroic, and not only fast but mercurial in the scherzo section. As had been the case in the Klavierstücke, it was the slow movement -- an evocation of a section of the composer's song Der Wanderer -- that stood out for its forlorn quality, quite somber in color, with a concluding finale set out with a hard-handed fugato section, all steely resolution. The single encore was an equally unexpected choice -- no impromptus for Chamayou -- the Kupelwieser-Walzer transcribed by Richard Strauss. Whether one believes the story about this piece -- that Schubert played it at a wedding but never wrote it down, until Strauss transcribed what had been passed down through a couple generations in memory -- or think it is Strauss's tribute to Schubert hardly matters. It was a delicate end to a striking evening of Schubert.

Miranda Cuckson @ Embassy of France

Charles T. Downey, American violinist Miranda Cuckson kicks off Embassy of France’s Fusion program
Washington Post, January 27, 2014

Nono, La Lontananza Nostalgica Utopica Futura, M. Cuckson, C. Burns (2013)

The concert series at the Embassy of France has been reborn. On Friday night, the new cultural attaché, Catherine Albertini, appointed in 2012, introduced the first concert of a program called Fusion, intended to promote young French and American musicians in a spirit of international cooperation. While Quatuor Eclisses, a quartet of French guitarists, was slated to perform at the Phillips Collection on Sunday, American violinist Miranda Cuckson and pianist Yegor Shevtsov took the stage of the embassy’s auditorium. The series is presented under the aegis of France Musique, the French public radio station, which may broadcast these concerts in the future.

Cuckson’s program likewise highlighted the interchange of compositional ideas between France and the United States. The foundation of this 20th-century program was Claude Debussy, represented by his extremely late violin sonata, given a gauzy, subdued performance that suited Cuckson’s elegant, ribbon-like tone, which Shevtsov never overpowered from the keyboard. [Continue reading]

Miranda Cuckson (violin) and Yegor Shevtsov (piano)
Fusion
Embassy of France

Christophe Rousset, Musical Journeys

Charles T. Downey, Christophe Rousset on the harpsichord
Washington Post, April 15, 2013

J.-P. Rameau, Les Indes Galantes, C. Rousset (Naïve, 2009)

In the right hands, the harpsichord can be a mesmerizing instrument. Christophe Rousset, in two concerts over the weekend, took listeners on unforgettable musical journeys: through two centuries of French music for the harpsichord, through musical depictions of world cultures, through the portal of life and death.

At La Maison Française on Friday night, which happened to be Rousset’s birthday, the French harpsichordist began with music of the 17th century, in a concert called “In Praise of Shadows.” The shades of the giants of the French harpsichord school were headed by a stately, pensive pavane by Jacques Champion de Chambonnières. The three suites that filled out the program, played without intermission, each ended with a “tombeau,” a musical tribute by one composer to another composer who has just died, like a sculpted portrait placed upon a tomb. To the dances of Johann Jakob Froberger’s 19th suite, Rousset appended Froberger’s tombeau for the lutenist Charles Fleury de Blancrocher. This cerebral piece ended with a crashing minor scale down the bass keys, a reference to Blancrocher’s death after falling down a flight of stairs, where he died in the arms of his best friend, Froberger. [Continue reading]

Christophe Rousset, harpsichord
La Maison Française (April 12)
Library of Congress (April 13)
[See my preview article]

Christophe Rousset in Concert

Froberger, Suites de clavecin, C. Rousset (Naïve, 2010) L. Couperin, Suites de Clavecin, C. Rousset (Aparte, 2010) J.-P. Rameau, Les Indes Galantes, C. Rousset (Naïve, 2009)

We are big fans of the harpsichord playing of Christophe Rousset around here. The French harpsichordist and conductor has a vast discography to his name, with discs of music by a startling range of composers, some largely unknown, most of them excellent. As much as we love his playing and have savored so many of his recordings, we have yet to review him in concert, with only a near-miss when he played on the Estate Musicale Chigiana during my summer in Siena a few years ago. That is all about to change, as Christophe Rousset will play two concerts in Washington this weekend: first at La Maison Française this evening (April 12, 7:30 pm) and tomorrow afternoon at the Library of Congress (April 13, 2 pm), with two completely different programs. At the French Embassy Rousset offers a concert called Éloge de l’ombre (In Praise of Shadows), which opens with a pavane by Jacques Champion de Chambonnières (c. 1601-1672), followed by three suites that all end in a tombeau (a tribute by one composer to another, dead composer), by Johann Jakob Froberger (1616-1667), Louis Couperin (c. 1626-1661), and Jean-Henry d'Anglebert (1628-1691), the last one ending with a tombeau to Chambonnières. At the Library of Congress, Rousset plays a program he describes as a "keyboard travelogue," with dances and other pieces by François Couperin (1668-1733) and Jean-Philippe Rameau, all representing exotic locations and nationalities, "from Peru to China and the Far East."

Rousset recorded some of these pieces a while ago, but at left are a few of the recent recordings that include music to be featured on his Washington concerts. Rousset will play a Froberger suite from his earlier CD of that composer's music, but he has recently released a disc of more suites from Froberger's extensive output. Froberger was from Stuttgart, but because he worked much of his career at the imperial court in Vienna, musicologist Guido Adler featured his music prominently in the collection of music he edited, Denkmäler der Tonkunst in Österrreich. His distillation of the French style brisé kind of dances into a suite -- Allemande, Courante, Sarabande, [Optional], Gigue (although Froberger did not always have all of these slots, or have them in this order) -- had a major influence on subsequent composers in German-speaking countries. One part of the appeal of Rousset's recordings is that he has made them on a series of interesting historical instruments -- on the Froberger disc and others, instruments now in the museum of the Cité de la Musique in Paris (in this case, a 1652 Couchet harpsichord here). The result is playing that is not only pleasing, musical, diverting, and affecting -- but with lessons to be learned by matching historical music to an instrument like that for which it was likely destined. The 12th suite is especially moving, with the first movement given over to a lament on the death of Ferdinand IV (eldest son of Holy Roman Emperor Ferdinand III), who died of smallpox in his 20s. At the end of the lament, Froberger has the right hand rise up the keyboard in a C major scale, ending at the highest C, where he drew a bunch of heavenly clouds in the manuscript.

The harpsichord music of Louis Couperin, the uncle of François Couperin who was mentored by Chambonnières himself, is becoming more familiar to audiences, heard recently in concerts by Blandine Rannou and Mitzi Meyerson, for example. At La Maison Française, Rousset will play this composer's F major suite, and his recorded performance of the work is embedded below. The "travelogue" program at the Library of Congress will conclude with a section of one of the strangest pieces in the Baroque repertoire, the fourth suite from Rameau's own transcription of the music from his own opera-ballet Les Indes Galantes. This arrangement has been recorded before, but some of the pieces in the fourth suite appear impossible to play on the harpsichord -- especially the Ritournelle, written on three staves, and the Adoration au Soleil (Adoration of the Sun), written on four staves. Rousset plays everything, except one tiny introductory piece, on a mostly unaltered 1761 Jean-Henri Hemsch harpsichord.

Les Percussions Claviers de Lyon at La Maison Française

The French ensemble Les Percussions Claviers de Lyon offered a delightfully idiosyncratic tribute to Claude Debussy at La Maison Française Tuesday night. As their name indicates, these five players specialize in keyboard percussion, and they filled the stage with marimbas, vibraphones, and other mallet instruments in various sizes, along with some non-pitched ones like cymbals and a tam-tam. Most of these were absent from Western music in Debussy’s time, and he never wrote for them. Nonetheless, their sound is surprisingly apt for his music. In fact, the composer had been deeply inspired by an Indonesian pitched percussion ensemble, or gamelan, at the 1889 Paris Universal Exposition.

The concert featured two sets of Debussy arrangements by Les Percussions’s artistic director Gérard Lecointe, alongside two pieces by contemporary composers inspired by Debussy. First were two of his three Nocturnes, scaled down from their original symphonic scoring, followed by four of the twenty-four Préludes enlarged from solo piano. Lecointe’s arrangements artfully transmuted Debussy into a strange, sugared atmosphere of tinklings and rumblings and purrs. The first nocturne, Nuages, usually conjures up the gloomy, wooded setting of Debussy’s opera Pelléas et Mélisande, which he was composing at the same time. In the hands of Les Percussions, the wood became a trippy Candy Cane Forest, by turns whimsical, hilarious, and vaguely frightening. The players kept it at a hushed dynamic, letting the music’s many delicate colors come through. Fêtes depicts a festive procession, described by Debussy as a “dazzling fantastic vision”; here it was more like a slightly demented puppet parade. While some might object to this treatment of Debussy, I don’t think it served to distort his music so much as to bring out certain elements already existing within it. The weirdness is Debussy’s, and it’s conceivable he would have used these instruments himself had he known them.

The two contemporary pieces were more inspired by Debussy in spirit than slavish stylistic imitations. They shared his fascination with nonwestern musics: Rigodon, by François Narboni (b. 1963), evoked the complex clangor of gamelan, while Thierry Pécou (b. 1965) paid homage to Mexican marimba traditions with L’arbre aux Fleurs. In structure, both pieces recalled minimalist works by Steve Reich, often employing the same pitched percussion, built from the layering of rhythmic pulses that repeat and then morph into other patterns kaleidoscopically. They also both went on too long and covered too much ground to maintain much cohesion as artistic statements, but they were so hypnotically enjoyable that this could be forgiven. Pécou’s piece featured an interlude on the Aztec teponaztli, a shallow wooden drum. It ended the night dramatically, with all five players gathered around a single marimba in the manner of Mexican folk performers, hammering out diabolically difficult rhythms as one.

The next concert we are looking forward to at La Maison Française is a recital by harpsichordist Christophe Rousset (April 12, 7:30 pm), followed by a recital at the Library of Congress (April 13, 2 pm).

Alexandre Tharaud de Retour

Charles T. Downey, Alexandre Tharaud’s expressive piano at La Maison Française
Washington Post, October 29, 2012

D. Scarlatti, Sonatas, A. Tharaud (2011) Le Bœuf sur le Toit, A. Tharaud et al. (2012)

Where some pianists thrill with fanfaronade, Alexandre Tharaud teases out the piano’s delicate side, weaving threads of sound into exquisite lace patterns. The French pianist returned to La Maison Française on Friday night, in the intimate auditorium where he gave his last solo recital here in 2008.

Tharaud’s program opened with five of the 18 sonatas on his superlative Domenico Scarlatti recording, released last year. The Scarlatti sonatas often show up on recitals as flashy encores, but Tharaud reads them more like expressive tableaux, landscapes traced with a few strokes of ink. He has written that he chose from more than 500 such sonatas by Scarlatti by “allowing myself to be guided by my fingers.” The zippier sonatas certainly sat easily under his agile hands, but it was the reclusive melancholy of K. 481 that stood out for its exquisitely shaded shyness. [Continue reading]

Alexandre Tharaud, piano
Music by Scarlatti, Ravel, Chopin, Liszt
La Maison Française

SEE ALSO:
Steve Smith, Fingertips With the Force of Nature (New York Times, October 25)

Marie-Aude Roux, Alexandre Tharaud et les fantômes du cabaret (Le Monde, October 4)

Jens F. Laurson, Original and Happy Freaks: Alexandre Tharaud’s Scarlatti (Ionarts, December 8, 2011)

---, Tharaud: A Case of Perpetual Puppy (Ionarts, December 3, 2011)

Charles T. Downey, Alexandre Tharaud (Washington Post, October 27, 2008)

Thomas Dunford at the Maison Française

This review is an Ionarts exclusive.

As the candidates rehearsed their cutting remarks before Tuesday night’s debate, two men shared a very different stage in the ballroom of La Maison Française: French lutenist Thomas Dunford (pictured) welcomed Iranian-French percussionist Keyvan Chemirani for an amiable encounter between musical worlds. Though Dunford headlined the evening, it was marked throughout by collaborative bonhomie. On one occasion Dunford invited Robert Aubry Davis -- who was recording the event for later broadcast on Millennium of Music -- to recite some lute-themed verses by period poets over the music, and the two shared a natural cadence. The interplay of styles and media under 23-year-old Dunford’s mellow leadership made for an unusually intimate evening.

Dunford began with a few subdued solos by English Renaissance composer John Dowland (1563–1626). Then Chemirani joined him for more Dowland and for two pieces by the German-Italian virtuoso Giovanni Geronimo Kapsperger (1580–1651), with Chemirani playing the zarb, a resonant Persian goblet drum, and the udu, an earthenware jar used in West African music. Two dazzlingly polyrhythmic solo improvisations by Chemirani rounded out the program, along with two improvised duos -- one using Baroque themes, and the other, an encore, riffing on modern styles from funk to flamenco. The combination of Dunford’s early European music with Chemirani’s world percussion sound (based in the Persian classical tradition, and also embracing African and Indian influences) was unforced and appealing, especially in the sultry groove laid down for Dowland’s Lachrimae pavane.

Dunford’s relaxed demeanor masked a formidable technique. Seemingly without effort, he elicited warm, clear-sounding tones from across the wide range of the long-necked archlute and threaded them together with a true sense of line. In faster passages, though, some notes came out choked or twangy. These rough edges -- never entirely smoothed away even by masters of the antiquated lute, which always sounds a bit muffled compared to its modern descendants -- will undoubtedly be minimized as Dunford develops his sureness of touch.

Dunford was a sensitive collaborator, picking up subtle influences from his fellow performer. He seemed at his best when improvising, employing extreme contrasts of dynamics, tempo, and range, and indulging in some satisfyingly rich, theorbo-like bass notes. As a soloist, though, he could have done more to enliven and sell the music. Fine lute playing often affects a studied languor while smoldering with rhythmic intensity beneath the surface; Dunford’s placid solos somewhat lacked this energetic underpinning. It would be nice to see his more spontaneous improvisational side unlocked in the rest of his solo work.

The next concert at La Maison Française is the long-anticipated return of pianist Alexandre Tharaud (October 26, 7:30 pm), for which no tickets remain.

Cage 100, Part 1: John Cage sans champignons

Wednesday evening for a full house, the Contemporary Series at La Maison Française, in conjunction with the John Cage Centennial Festival, presented a tribute evening led by French cellist Alexis Descharmes. For the most part, contemporary works by Cage, Beat Furrer, Pierre Boulez, and Klaus Huber were paired with Descharmes's own instrumental arrangements of piano music by Erik Satie, a composer Cage held in high esteem. There is an apparent "proximity to silence" that these composers share. High points of the program included a 1982 letter from Pierre Boulez to John Cage, recorded in French and English by French actor Michael Lonsdale, that spoke of "keeping freshness for times to come." This letter was followed by Boulez's own tour-de-force Messagesquisse for cello and cello ensemble (though Descharmes recorded their parts himself), where the patron's name, Sacher, is spelled both melodically (E flat-A-C-B-E-D) and rhythmically through vivacious morse code.

A visual dimension was added when Descharmes shared 200 closeup photos of Gerhard Richter's series of six paintings titled Cage on a big screen overhead. Descharmes rigged the slides to change whenever he tapped his foot on a pedal -- every 7 to 10 seconds on average -- while performing Cage's extended Music for Two with violinist Irvine Arditti. The colorful, visibly raw brush strokes paired cogently with the bow strokes of the string players, who used stopwatches to pace their respective periods of silence and movement. While pianist Jenny Lin's approach to the Satie Gymnopédies and Gnossiennes was refreshing to the overall tone (or lack thereof) of the program, Descharmes idea of adding string and clarinet parts often undermined the works. In these slow works, Satie masterfully combats the decay of the piano by having accompanimental chords subtly sustain melodic notes. The expressive clarinet (Bill Kalinkos) and string players (Lina Bahn with Descharmes) tended to push the intensity of long notes in a way that moved the character of these pieces away from the proximity of silence.

Other Reviews: Stephen Brookes, Cellist Alexis Descharmes and friends pay tribute to John Cage (Washington Post, September 7)

Program note writer Erik Ulmann quoted Descharmes, writing that he spent a July evening "eating mushrooms" while preparing for this Cage evening, and that it was then that he came upon the Richter retrospective at the Centre Pompidou. There is an authenticity in Descharmes's magic mushroom consumption when planning a Cage evening, though who knows if Descharmes actually gently picked the shrooms off of cow dung in green farmland as Cage, a renowned mycologist, may have done, or obtained them from less earthy sources. No matter the caliber of one's ears and listening experience, this repertoire is challenging. Imagining the aid of having consumed magic mushrooms prior to listening to seemingly randomized cello scratches by Descharmes interspersed with snare drum stick taps on the stick holding up the piano lid by and other interesting techniques by Steven Schick in Cage's Etudes Boréales gives one the feeling of hope that it is possible to be in the know. Indeed, we too may be able to understand Cage's music, and even the painful fingers scratching-down-the-chalkboard, spine-twinging disharmony of Klaus Huber's ...ruhe sanft... for cello, recorded cello, and a few recorded words, by listening after eating magic mushrooms. The key being to be mentally distorted by an organic drug before experiencing the intentional aural brutality of some of this repertoire. I look forward to comments from readers who have experimented with Cage avec champignons.

Quatuor Diotima I: Contemporary

American Music (Reich, Barber, Crumb), Quatuor Diotima (2011) Berg / Schoenberg / Webern, S. Piau, M.-N. Lemieux, Quatuor Diotima (2011)

The biennial (or so) visits of the Quatuor Diotima to the auditorium of La Maison Française, as part of that venue's contemporary music series, are something we look forward to -- although not always recommend for all listeners. This French quartet plays all kinds of music, including modern and immediately contemporary, and they will perform a program of older music this evening at the Library of Congress. The program at the French Embassy, however, consisted mostly of pieces of more recent vintage, premiered within the last year. For all of their differences, these three pieces for string quartet all sounded cut from the same cloth, under the influence of spectralism, among other styles.

All three composers explored the boundaries and edges of sound possible on the traditional string instruments, so much so that genial introductions to each piece, made by members of the Diotima Quartet, began to cover the same sort of territory. Oscar Bianchi used microtonal writing, clusters, spacey glissandi, growls, pizzicato plinks and many other effects in his Quartet No. 6, even closing the work on a pitchless bow noise that sounded something like the crash of distant ocean waves. The music received an optimal performance from this ensemble, who go out of their way to favor beauty over stridency, even in the most outlandish sorts of music. Rhythm, however, has been the downfall of so much modern music, and the abundance of sounds like whistles, steam escaping, feedback noise, and so on could not make up for the fact that, except for the frantic conducting of first violinist Yun-Peng Zhao's head, one had little sense of rhythmic pulse because it was so fractured.

The situation was much the same with Ramon Lazkano's Lurralde, a work peppered with sounds more easily associated with chemical processes, electronics, and science experiments than a string quartet -- fluttery harmonics, near-bridge tremolos, avian twitters, a whole hallucinogenic sound-scape. Lazkano came by his spectralist tendencies honestly, having studied with Gérard Grisey in Paris, but the most memorable moments in the piece stood out for the invigorating sense of rhythm -- but mostly deprived of pitch altogether. Commissioned by the Auditorium du Louvre, Mexican-born composer Ana Lara's Au-delà du visible uses a number of effects of harmonics to tell the story of beloved friends departed. Lara has studied in many places, including a turn at ethnomusicology here at the University of Maryland, and even this fairly brief work (nine minutes) hinted at a burgeoning musical imagination. Following on such an exhaustive pass through the vocabulary of contemporary string music, however, something composed mostly of arco writing and with a standard 12-note chromatic scale would have stood out more.

Other Reviews: Alex Baker, Quatour Diotima at the French Embassy (Wellsung, April 13)

The real problem with string quartets in this style is that György Ligeti has done it all before, as the Quatuor Diotima proceeded to demonstrate by ending this concert with the Hungarian composer's Quartet No. 2. The Diotima introduction joked about the Ligeti as "historical music," but this quartet still sounds as fresh and paradigm-exploding as when it was premiered, in 1968: the painstaking anatomy lesson examining a single note, played in countless timbres, in the second movement; the dissection of the idea of rhythmic pulse in the third movement, related to the composer's fascination with metronomes; the deafening silences, performed here with statue-like stillness from the four musicians. So much that has come after it, including the three pieces featured on this program, can sound derivative of it.

While the concert season at La Maison Française appears to be over, there are hints that Ionarts favorite Alexandre Tharaud will be returning to Washington in the fall. Ainsi soit-il!

Paul Agnew: 'The treat is only sound'

See my review of the recital by Paul Agnew and friends, at La Maison Française, in today's Washington Post:

Charles T. Downey, Music review: Les Arts Florissants
Washington Post, September 21, 2011

H. Purcell, Divine Hymns, Les Arts Florissants, W. Christie

“Music for a while / Shall all your cares beguile,” as English poet John Dryden put it, but who shall beguile the cares of the musicians? Shortly after the Scottish tenor Paul Agnew had sung Henry Purcell’s setting of that text, in a beguiling concert at La Maison Française on Monday night, the harpsichordist accompanying him, Beatrice Martin, felt faint and asked her colleagues to pause the concert in the middle of a dance from Purcell’s G Minor Suite.

Martin and her colleagues, viola da gamba player Anne-Marie Lasla and theorbist Thomas Dunford, recently arrived in the United States with Les Arts Florissants, to perform what is by all accounts a magnificent revival of Lully’s “Atys” at the Brooklyn Academy of Music. Up to that point, no audible sign of fatigue was evident in Martin, and after the group took an impromptu intermission and reorganized the second half, she played with the same precision and passion as in her magnificent performance at the French Embassy last year. [Continue reading]

SEE ALSO:
Allan Kozinn, It’s Not Easy to Be a Goddess’s Boy Toy (New York Times, September 19)

Charles T. Downey, Ensemble Les Folies Françoises plays with vivacity at La Maison Francaise (Washington Post, March 18, 2010)

Poème Harmonique in Spain and Italy

Read my review published today in the Style section of the Washington Post:

Charles T. Downey, Le Poème Harmonique brings baroque to life at La Maison Francaise
Washington Post, February 21, 2011

Combattimenti! (Monteverdi, Marazzoli), C. Lefilliâtre, Le Poème Harmonique, V. Dumestre Plaisir d'amour, C. Lefilliâtre, Le Poème Harmonique, V. Dumestre

Has classical music become too literal because of performers' reliance on the written score? This was one of the questions posed by the improvisatory playing of the French baroque ensemble Le Poeme Harmonique on Friday night. In the auditorium of La Maison Francaise, Vincent Dumestre, playing the baroque-era lute called a theorbo, led his colleagues in a free-spirited rendition of Spanish and Italian music from the 17th century, rooted in historical research but animated by a more extemporaneous approach.

Through improvisation, pieces melted into one another, dissolving boundaries between works and even in between tunings and starts. Played without an intermission or other distractions, the selection of rather diverse works - dramatic recitatives, solo madrigals, canzonettes and instrumental dances and toccatas - created a sense of timelessness, extended by three lovely encores. Dumestre played the theorbo and baroque guitar with finesse, creating a sound at times so subtle that it almost disappeared, as in the rushing arpeggiation of a toccata by Johann Hieronymus Kapsberger. He was ably seconded by Joel Grare, who enlivened dance pieces by Gaspar Sanz with spiky rhythms on castanets, drums and a bell bumped by his foot. [Continue reading]

Le Poème Harmonique
Vincent Dumestre (theorbo, baroque guitar)
Claire Lefilliâtre (soprano)
Esperar, Sentir, Morir: music by Luigi Rossi, Claudio Monteverdi, Etienne Moulinié, Tarquinio Merula, Gaspar Sanz, Juan Hidalgo
La Maison Française

There was no room for this in the paper, but the three encores that concluded this concert were Tout en montant la place d'arme, a French folk song, also known as La Louison; a Neapolitan version of a Spanish jacarà (recorded on this album); and La rose enflorece, a Sephardic song from the 15th century.

Quatuor Diotima, Exquisite Stillness

This review is an Ionarts exclusive.

Thomas Larcher, Madhares (to be released on June 8, 2010) Onslow, op. 54-56 Online scores: François Sarhan, BOBOK Ravel, String Quartet in F Major

As previewed earlier this week, the Quatuor Diotima came back to La Maison Française on Monday night, for another appearance on the French embassy's highly esteemed contemporary music series. This adventurous French string quartet took its name from a work by Luigi Nono and has won prizes and critical acclaim for its performances of contemporary music. As heard in the three recent works on this program, the group's approach to dissonance and unconventional instrumental techniques is little different from how they approached the gorgeous late tonal string quartet of Maurice Ravel: even when a more savage or pitiless interpretation could have been justified, they simply let the sound emanate and make its own point. The listener never feels beaten over the head, either by lush extended triadic harmony or by tone-neutral growls or rasps.

The opening work, Bitume, is the second string quartet by French composer Gérard Pesson (b. 1958), who teaches composition at the Conservatoire in Paris, commissioned for the Diotima to play at the 2008 Festival d'Automne in Paris. It is an evocative piece, using all manner of unusual techniques to create strange combinations of sounds -- using the wood of the bow to create flute-like overtones, sul ponticello effects -- as the work began on a single note, to which it would return at times. A pleasing rhythmic pulse would be established, only to recede again into the cloud of strange sounds, vaguely insect-like and all of it sotto voce. The piece ended with a faster section, based on a catchy, quasi-Latin rhythm.

Pesson's quartet was paired nicely with a string quartet by François Sarhan, BOBOK (see the .PDF version of the score), composed in 2002 as part of a cycle of chamber works inspired by the short story of that name by Fyodor Dostoevsky. A largely nonsensical tale about a failed writer, in the process of losing his mind, looking for material among the voices of the dead in a cemetery, it inspired some otherworldly sounds, as in the tense viola solo that concludes the piece, over a tone-free whine of vaporized space noise. The work began with all of the instruments in strict homophony, all playing in the same rhythmic pattern, often focusing on the opening chord, which returned many times. That unity comes apart at the seams, as the instruments sometimes seem to get caught up in obsessive loops, only to return to rhythmic calm. Sardonic humor also abounds, in oompah patterns, and a biting, sarcastic tone that could be described as Prokofiev- or Shostakovich-like grotesquerie. Near the end, a folk-like or naive innocence entered the work as Sarhan called for the violins and viola to be played like a cello, while the cellist was instructed to bow left-handed.

Thomas Larcher's third string quartet, Madhares (2006/07), began with a glissando-tremolo created by tapping a coin on the first violin's strings. The music of the Austrian composer, born in 1963, will be featured on a recording to be released on the ECM label this summer. Like many composers who came of age in the late 20th century, Larcher does not shy away from the use of tonality in his music: alongside many experimental sounds were passages of fairly traditional tonal music, including the folk-like section that concludes the work. One wishes that that final section and its false sense of resolution had been omitted, instead ending the piece on the return of that haunting coin motif. The Diotima proved with this survey of string quartets from the past decade that it could master modern techniques, creating sounds often not at all associated with their instruments, the many complicated metric patterns requiring one of the players to conduct with his instrument to keep the ensemble together, and so on.

With the final work, Ravel's F major quartet, they showed where that sense of coloristic exploration came from, a comparison akin to hanging some late Cézannes that explain what inspired later Cubist or abstract paintings. The Ravel is a gorgeous work that we have reviewed in many performances, from the exceptional to the adequate, and this one was so successful because it did not wallow in the swaths of color, remaining crystalline, finely etched, and rhythmically active. A very pleasing evening concluded with an encore from the quartet's recent disc of music by George Onslow, the finale of the C minor quartet, op. 56.

Dautricourt and Jokubaviciute Go Modern

Charles T. Downey, Belgian work highlights duo's lyrical contemporary evening
Washington Post, April 15, 2010

Violinist Nicolas Dautricourt (photo by Guy Vivien)

On Monday night La Maison Française presented another concert of contemporary music, by French violinist Nicolas Dautricourt, who inaugurated this series in 2005. For a program on the theme of musical modernism, it was an evening distinguished more by lyrical beauty than the harshness often associated with experimental music.

At the heart of the first half were pieces by the triumvirate of the Second Viennese School. In Berg’s op. 1 piano sonata, dating from the period of his studies with Arnold Schoenberg but before the development of the twelve-tone compositional process, pianist Ieva Jokubaviciute played with confident virtuosity and a moody spontaneity that emphasized the work’s chromatic, almost jazz-like harmonies. Webern’s more atonal four pieces for violin and piano, op. 7, were compressed almost to the point of implosion: the soft movements sounded like nothing more than a few drips of water into a puddle and some hoarse whispers. Only in Schoenberg’s op. 47 fantasy did Dautricourt’s technique weaken slightly, with some of the harmonics sounding scratchy and elusive. [Continue reading]

Nicolas Dautricourt (violin) and Ieva Jokubaviciute (piano)
All-contemporary program (Messiaen, Berg, Webern, Schoenberg, et al.)
La Maison Française

PREVIOUSLY:
Nicolas Dautricourt and Dominique Plancade (Ionarts, November 21, 2007)

Leclair, Royer, and Barrière

Jean-Marie Leclair, Sonatas / Overture / Concerto, Les Folies Françoises, P. Cohën-Akenine Pancrace Royer, Premier Livre de Pièces pour Clavecin, C. Rousset [Review]

Read my review published today in the Washington Post:

Charles T. Downey, Ensemble Les Folies Françoises plays with vivacity at La Maison Française
Washington Post, March 18, 2010

The excellent series of baroque music concerts at La Maison Française continued on Tuesday night. Some daring sonatas by Jean-Marie Leclair, the foremost French violin virtuoso of the early 18th century, were performed by three players from the historically informed performance ensemble Les Folies Françoises. Violinist Patrick Cohën-Akenine, harpsichordist Béatrice Martin and cellist François Poly drew the program largely from their fine "Leclair" CD, released a few years ago on the Alpha label.

Cohën-Akenine played with vivacity and accuracy, adding lavish ornamentation while producing a warm, smooth tone on his instrument's gut strings. The fourth and seventh sonatas from Leclair's third book were the most consistently lovely from all three musicians. In the opening Leclair sonata (No. 8 from the second book), Poly did his best at playing the middle part, created for a middle-range viola da gamba and notated mostly in the C clef, but the high passages were often strained and off-key. [Continue reading]

Patrick Cohën-Akenine (violin), Béatrice Martin (harpsichord), François Poly (cello)
Les Folies Françoises (music by Leclair, Royer, Barrière)
La Maison Française

PREVIOUSLY ON LECLAIR:

• Charles T. Downey, Band of Brothers: Trio Hantaï Warms Up for Boston (Washington Post, June 13, 2009)
  
• ---, John Holloway @ LoC (Ionarts, April 19, 2008)
  
• ---, Baroque Music in Versailles (Ionarts, January 4, 2006)

Charles Rosen - With Overtones of Modernity

"French-American Contemporary Music Festival" is the title of the two-concert series at La Maison Française that ended today, June 11th, with a concert of the music of Dusapin at 5 pm. With Ionarts' known penchant for all things French and many things contemporary, no one could have reasonably expected us to stay away from an event that presented Elliot Carter and Pierre Boulez piano sonatas alongside Debussy's Sonate pour violon et piano and Eye in the Sky, a work by the composer/performer Robert Dick.

Other Reviews: Charles T. Downey, New Music at La Maison Française (DCist, June 11) Tim Page, A French-American Specialty of the House (Washington Post, June 13)

The pianist Marc Ponthus spoke a few words about the Boulez (the score of which was spread out in front of the stage, for all to see) and the connections to Debussy whom he credited with being the first to make conscious use of overtones, as part of a "sound awareness" that, like a picture that moves outside its frame, makes the listener aware of the "natural extension of sound." He did all that in effortful English, but it had its charm. Out comes Charles Rosen (flectamus genua), bubbling away in French about Carter, his teacher Nadia Boulanger, and a few other things, leaving the non-French speaking (or -hearing) ears rather behind. After Mr. Rosen had his French credits duly established, Marc Ponthus reminded him gently that it might just be better to speak in English, after all - and Rosen duly repeated everything. Already, the concert was accumulating high marks for 'character'. After these introductions, amusing and enlightening in equal, if moderate, measure, Messrs. Ponthus and Schulte played the Debussy sonata. Rolf Schulte, who looks rather distinct, and not just on account of holding the bow some 4+ inches away from the frog, elicited two very different worlds of sound from his instrument. One - in the lower registers mostly - that buzzed away with vibrancy and one that was high, distant, otherworldly. A small tone, lightning fast trills and a few microtonal deviations from the conventional score gave the sonata a whole new, truly more modern, feel. The beautiful piano part - quicksilver on the outside, an epicenter of calm on the inside - is easily as exciting as the virtuosic violin part and Marc Ponthus was a most amiable exponent of it.

Bravo - and Elliot Carter next. The Piano Sonata was supposed to be next, but first Charles Rosen was on his knees, fixing an obstinate piano stool. After wrestling with the seat for a while, the first chord came crashing down and Carter got started. The piano sonata is - so Rosen - Carter's first truly interesting work, and apart from being interesting (very much so, by the way!) it is also an appealing, very (or reasonably - depending on your preferences) accessible work. Should anyone have thought that the 'silent notes', played for the purpose of eliciting overtones, are more theoretical ballyhoo than musical additions to a work, hearing them emanate audibly from the Bösendorfer would have put an end to such ideas. Rainbow- or star-like, these notes would rise out of the surrounding sounds and stand in the auditorium for a while. Between movement no. 1 (Maestoso) and no. 2 (Andante), Charles Rosen, who had intermittently sunk five inches with his piano stool, was back on his knees, grumbling and adjusting. No harm done to his compelling performance, though. His playing was formidable and in his tackling of that bear of a work, there was nothing dry or scholarly.

E.Carter, Piano Sonata et al., Charles Rosen Bridge P.Boulez, Piano Sonatas 1-3, P.Jumppanen DG 20/21

Many pianists find it relatively easy to see and hear merit in Boulez's first piano sonata, some go on strike when it comes to the second (I've heard it pronounced an "insult to pianists" - although hearing Pollini play it, that's difficult to believe). Fewer yet really get into the third, a 'work in progress' of five movements with only two of those formants published and Boulez-approved for performance. I recently wrote on a recording of the Boulez sonatas, but the third sonata on record can only be a snapshot of the day's whim of the performer. Semi-aleatory or random with restrictions, this Mallarmé-inspired work (un coup de dés n'abolira le hasard - a throw of the dice does not abolish chance) sounds different every time you hear it. (That assumes that even the less-than-casual listener could remember much from one rare performance to the next.) Constructed of 'points' (pointilist, sparse sections of music written in green) and 'blocks' (denser parts, in red ink) as a labyrinth, the performer can chose how to proceed from block to block, in accordance with arrows that connect them in various ways.

There is no point in disingenuously gushing about the work. Listening to it may flatter us as particularly sophisticated or avant-garde or having 'special tastes' - but how much more than an intellectual exercise this music is, I cannot really say. It isn't ugly to my ears (though it might be, to many) and, as I like to say, it cleanses your musical palate. You take the note clusters, key-twinkles, "points," and "blocks" with casual attentiveness and applaud in the manner that makes you most closely appear how you wish to be perceived by your fellow audience-members:
loud and wildly enthusiastic if you are the self-declared connoisseur of the weird and wonderful, a consummate lover of the absurd and champion of high-end intellectualism; polite and pleasantly amused if you didn't dislike it, but don't care if you are not seen as having understood it; not at all if you wish to flaunt your metaphysical or musico-philosophical differences with the very idea of such a piece... or if you simply thought: "What the &$*#?"

Visually, the sonata has undoubted appeal in live performance. Seeing the huge (15 X 25 inch?) sheets with their red and green chunks of music and the performers arranging them around is a sight to behold. Marc Ponthus's enthusiasm for the work or his ability were never in question - indeed, he seemed to feel more at home in the Boulez than he did in the Debussy.

Robert Dick, who performed his own Eye in the Sky for open-hole alto flute (the instrument looks like the bastard child of a flute, a cane, and an old kitchen sink faucet), introduced it as based on a Sci-Fi novel by Philip K. Dick. It is supposed to explore what it might feel like, to be on an extraordinary long interstellar journey. Take Space Odyssey 2001 and turn it into a work for solo (open-hole, alto) flute and you might approximate the idea. Eye in the Sky is an eerily evocative work, and the sounds Mr. Dick gets out of the instrument are astounding. Metallic murmurs and breathy squeaks evoke emptiness, nothingness. Fortunately it didn't last nearly as long as an "extraordinary long interstellar journey" and could therefore pass as curiously evocative, most interesting, and highly enjoyable. The audience on this very, very unique evening (earlier they had started impromptu applause to call the abnormally late performers onto the stage) behaved as well as I have not encountered before. Sure, the auditorium of the Maison Française was not even half full, but to stay absolutely silent during two such, erm..., "different" pieces as the Boulez and Dick was most extraordinary and commendable. Robert Dick's work, in particular, found some enthusiastic followers who shot out a few hollers and gave him a standing ovation. The consequent vino and meet & greet was the pleasant affair it always is with events at the Maison Française.