Phillips Camerata Marks the Phillips Terquasquigenary

Stravinsky, Dumbarton Oaks Concerto (inter alia), Orchestra of St. Luke's, R. Craft

Charles T. Downey, Phillips Collection reproduces 1941 inaugural concert of weekly series (Washington Post, May 31)

The Phillips Collection presented its first public concert in 1941. On Sunday afternoon, the museum marked the 75th anniversary of its weekly concert series by reproducing the music played at that first concert, a program of pieces for two pianos. The Phillips Camerata, the venue’s resident ensemble, performed some of the pieces in the same format and others in expanded arrangements.

Pianists Audrey Andrist and Lisa Emenheiser played the ­two-piano pieces, and previous partnerships together, for the 21st Century Consort, gave them a solid ensemble footing. The daunting technical challenges of Saint-Saëns’s “Variations on a Theme of Beethoven, Op. 35,” were not exactly smooth in this performance, but the duo never played it safe, perhaps taking the funeral march variation a tad too fast to savor its harmonic vagaries... [Continue reading]

Phillips Camerata
With Audrey Andrist and Lisa Emenheiser, pianists
Phillips Collection

Christopher Park, in Lang Lang's Footsteps

Charles T. Downey, A lot of speed but little subtlety at pianist Christopher Park’s D.C. debut
Washington Post, March 15

Do music competitions reward musicians for the wrong things? This was one reaction to the Washington debut of pianist Christopher Park on Sunday afternoon at the Phillips Collection. Since winning the Leonard Bernstein Award at the Schleswig-Holstein Musik Festival in 2014, Park has appeared with orchestras in Germany and elsewhere. One of his mentors has been Christoph Eschenbach, outgoing music director of the National Symphony Orchestra, who was in the audience.

With Stravinsky’s “Three Movements From Petrushka,” Park certainly showed that his playing can be both supremely fast and supremely loud... [Continue reading]

Christopher Park, piano
Phillips Collection

Jordi Savall Bends Time

T. Hume, Musical Humors, J. Savall (Alia Vox, 2004) Marais, Pièces de Viole, J. Savall, T. Koopman, H. Smith (Alia Vox, 2011)

Only rarely does a classical musician cross the line into general celebrity these days. The situation is even less common for a performer of early music, a niche within a niche. Jordi Savall is perhaps the only example, known as a humanitarian and cultural icon as well as for his work as a conductor of early music ensembles. For a rare solo recital at the Phillips Collection on Sunday afternoon, he came only with his Barak Norman viola da gamba, built in London in 1697. With a program of outrageously obscure, mostly Baroque music, he commanded the stage with magnetic charisma.

The program was called “The Spirit of the Viol,” but the implied chronological survey was cast in reverse, beginning with music by the last gamba virtuoso, Karl Friedrich Abel (1723-1787), and going back in time to music from the late Renaissance. Rather than showing historical progress from simple to complex, the ordering revealed a body of music that went from inventive and varied to more homogenized as the instrument got older. By the time of Karl Friedrich Abel, the instrument was a curiosity, still found in German courts, where Johann Sebastian Bach wrote occasionally for it. Then it vanished, and only musicians like Savall, interested in historically informed performance practice, have made it live again.

Other Reviews: Anne Midgette, Jordi Savall wakes an early-music instrument from a long sleep (Washington Post, March 8) Simon Chin, Jordi Savall’s Magisterial Viola da Gamba Recital at the Phillips Collection (Chin Up, March 7) Joseph Miller, Gambist and Early Music Scholar Jordi Savall in recital, presented by CAMA Masterseries (Santa Barbara Independent, March 7) Alan G. Artner, Jordi Savall presents masterful concert of musical humors (Chicago Tribune, March 5) Tim Sawyier, Jordi Savall channels the English Renaissance at Mandel Hall (Chicago Classical Review, March 5) Sylvie Bonier, Jordi Savall, la philosophie musicale (Le Temps, February 22) Thomas May, Aural tradition: a weekend with early-music legend and gamba virtuoso Jordi Savall (Seattle Times, February 18) Rocco Zacheo, Jordi Savall distille à Genève l’éternelle jeunesse de la musique ancienne (Tribune de Genève, February 18)

Savall’s performance did not generally impress with technical prowess, as there were minor infelicities of tone and intonation here and there. A recital by gambist Paolo Pandolfo, over a decade ago now at Dumbarton Oaks, satisfied much more in that department, for example. Still, this was music that had been deeply pondered by its performer, shown in both his brief spoken introductions and his handling of each piece, like a curio to be examined from every angle.

Played in small groups, the pieces blended into one another, often because Savall improvised on them or otherwise modified them. In his adaptation of a solo cello piece by J. S. Bach for the viol, for example, he played one section of the piece over and over, sort of like a variation set. Sometimes he announced the titles of the pieces, unobtrusively, to help the audience follow the arc of the program. Savall seemed to hit his stride as the music got comfortably into the 17th century and earlier, bringing out the growls of Marin Marais's Les voix humaines, for example, in his instrument's lowest strings.

Marais's Muzettes, with its bagpipe-like drone, introduced the end of the program, focused on adaptations of various kinds of popular music. Selections from Tobias Hume's Musicall Humors included imitations of the soldier's tambour, involving strikes with the wood side of the bow, and other army sounds like trumpets. The title bell of John Playford's La Cloche sounded in a rare example of left-hand pizzicato, and in a brilliant closing set from the Manchester Gamba Book, two middle strings were crossed on the bridge to allow Savall to play an octave drone. These tunes, Savall explained, were likely first played on bag pipes and other folk instruments, but the arrangers had appropriated and refashioned them, not simply playing them without alteration.

One of these tunes, cast like a fast-moving reel, was not more than a step or two away from the feel of American bluegrass. An encore underscored the two-way nature of the road between learned and popular, with an Irish tune from the Ryan Collection, collected from oral traditions at some point in the first half of the 19th century. It fit quite genially with the same crossed-string tuning on Savall's viol.

Steven Osborne's Magic Lantern Debussy

Schubert, Impromptus, D. 935 (inter alia), S. Osborne (Hyperion, 2015)

Since not long after winning Switzerland’s Clara Haskil Competition in 1991, Steven Osborne has been producing recordings that are both shrewdly programmed and beautifully performed. The result was much the same for the Scottish pianist’s second recital at the Phillips Collection on Sunday afternoon, following up on his debut at the museum in 2012.

The high point of the concert was an eclectic combination of Debussy pieces from different collections, played as a set without interruptions. “Masques,” originally planned as part of the “Suite Bergamasque” but later published separately, was forceful and adventurous, followed by a dreamy middle section. In the second book of “Images,” Osborne’s attention to sound brought out hazy details like the meandering whole-tone scales and pinpricks of floating melody in “Bells heard through the leaves.” The somber strains of “And the moon descends” were barely whispered, while the fluttered tremolos of “Goldfish” were playfully mercurial. The hammered finale of “L’Isle Joyeuse,” another movement removed from the “Suite Bergamasque,” was symphonic in scope, forming an ideal climax to the set.

Other Reviews: David Rohde, Pianist Steven Osborne Plays Rachmaninoff at the Phillips Collection (D.C. Metro Theater Arts, February 29) Erica Jeal, Steven Osborne review – colour and texture above drama and display (The Guardian, February 4) Fiona Maddocks, Schubert: Impromptus, Piano Pieces and Variations CD review – radiance and lyricism (The Guardian, October 18, 2015

Osborne’s latest recording, released last year on the Hyperion label, is devoted to the music of Schubert, including two of the D. 935 impromptus heard here. Osborne played them with a combination of Romantic anguish and Schubertian delicacy, finding countless shades of wistful sweetness in the nostalgic dialogue of the left hand in no. 1, as it crossed back and forth over the right hand. An exceptionally fast tempo for no. 4 made the passages in parallel thirds less than precise but drove the piece forward with daring impishness.

Technical prowess was not the problem in a closing set of Rachmaninov “Etudes-Tableaux” either. Osborne’s articulate introduction to the set demonstrated that he understands and cherishes this composer’s music, but the disappointing sameness across all these pieces tarnished the achievement. One has to question why Osborne chose in this concert to omit George Crumb’s 1983 Processional, which he played with this program at St. John's Smith Square in London earlier this month. Concert length seems to have been the issue, as Osborne played only seven of the Rachmaninov pieces in London, rather than the ten he played here. Three fewer Rachmaninov pieces is a price I would surely have been willing to pay. You can still listen to the BBC streaming broadcast of Osborne's London recital to see what we missed.

This coming Sunday's concert at the Phillips Collection, by viola da gambist Jordi Savall (March 6, 4 pm), is an event not to be missed, but it is already sold out.

Bella Hristova Thrills in 'Kreutzer'

Bériot, Solo Violin Music, Vol. 1, B. Hristova (Naxos, 2009)

Charles T. Downey, Music review: Bella Hristova
Washington Post, February 23

Violinist Bella Hristova has been making the rounds of Washington’s concert series scene in the past few years. Her latest appearance came Sunday afternoon at the Phillips Collection, where she made a debut noteworthy for its fortitude and technique. Strangely, for a musician with such immaculate tone quality, the results were not always musically memorable.

In the final work on the program, Beethoven’s “Kreutzer” Sonata, Hristova was forceful and commanding in the big-boned first theme. Pianist Gloria Chien was equally thrilling in those loud sections, willing to go along for the fast ride required by Hristova’s tempo choice in the closing Presto movement... [Continue reading]

Bella Hristova, violin
Gloria Chien, piano
Phillips Collection

PREVIOUSLY:
Joe Banno, In performance: Bella Hristova (Washington Post, April 29, 2010)

La Piau Goes to Washington

Après un rêve, S. Piau, S. Manoff (Naïve, 2011)

Charles T. Downey, French soprano Sandrine Piau makes stunning D.C. debut
Washington Post, February 9

Sandrine Piau made her long overdue Washington debut on Sunday afternoon, and the Phillips Collection, celebrating its 75th anniversary season, got the glory. The French soprano’s excellent program of 19th-century songs, superbly accompanied by pianist Susan Manoff, was the latest sign of the ascendancy of the Phillips concert series, which has become one of the strongest in the city.

Manoff and Piau recorded many of these songs on their 2011 CD, “Après un rêve.” The qualities that set Piau’s voice apart on disc were, if anything, more pronounced live... [Continue reading]

Sandrine Piau (soprano) and Susan Manoff (piano)
Phillips Collection

PREVIOUSLY:
Charles T. Downey, Briefly Noted: Sandrine Piau (Ionarts, November 1, 2011)

Carducci Quartet's Shostakovich Marathon

Shostakovich, String Quartets 4/8/11, Carducci String Quartet (Signum Records, 2015)

Charles T. Downey, Carducci Quartet takes on Shostakovich’s quartets at the Phillips (Washington Post, November 16)

Dmitri Shostakovich once told a friend that he planned to compose 24 string quartets, one in each of the major and minor keys. He completed only 15, but they span his entire mature period as a composer, from 1938 to 1974, the year before he died. The Carducci Quartet scored quite a coup in August in London, when it performed the entire set in a single day, marking the anniversary of Shostakovich’s death. This week, the ensemble is performing the quartets in chronological order but on two days, one week apart... [Continue reading]

Carducci String Quartet
Shostakovich, String Quartets
Phillips Collection

PREVIOUSLY:
Stephen Brookes, Marital harmonies from the Carducci String Quartet at the Kennedy Center (Washington Post, May 5, 2013)

Math + Music

Moravec, Northern Lights Electric, Boston Modern Orchestra Project, G. Rose (bmop, 2012)

Charles T. Downey, Math + music = a little dry, but pleasant (Washington Post, June 2)

The equation of math with counterpoint is not necessarily axiomatic, but the probability is high that J.S. Bach will headline a concert program on the theme of mathematics and music. A concert by the Phillips Camerata on Sunday afternoon at the Phillips Collection, offered in conjunction with two exhibitions on artists and mathematics at the museum, reasserted this theorem. QED.

For pure fugues, the group turned to Mozart, or at least to arrangements of Bach preludes and fugues for string trio... [Continue reading]

Phillips Camerata
Music by Mozart, Bach, Moravec
Phillips Collection

PREVIOUSLY:
Charles T. Downey, NOI New Lights (Moravec, Brandenburg Gate) (Ionarts, July 1, 2012)

Quatuor Cambini-Paris Takes a Bow

Mozart, "Haydn" Quartets, Quatuor Cambini-Paris (Naïve, 2015)

Charles T. Downey, Musicians strive for authenticity by bowing to the past
Washington Post, May 5

An offshoot of the historically informed performance movement (HIP) was the formation of string quartets that play on period instruments. Two such groups are the Quatuor Mosaïques and Washington’s own Smithson Quartet. The trend, if it can be so called, continued with the Cambini-Paris Quartet in 2007, which had its Washington debut Sunday afternoon at the Phillips Collection.

The musicians, all specialists from French early-music groups, play on historical instruments with gut strings... [Continue reading]

Quatuor Cambini-Paris
Phillips Collection

PREVIOUSLY:
Charles T. Downey, Félicien David (1810-1876) (Ionarts, June 18, 2014)

---, Quatuor Mosaïques Continues with Schubert (Ionarts, July 13, 2010)

New Orford String Quartet

J. Hétu, Complete Chamber Works for Strings, New Orford String Quartet et al. (Naxos, 2014)

Charles T. Downey, Note perfect, but lacking life
Washington Post, April 21

The New Orford String Quartet, formed in Canada in 2009, had a mixed debut at the Phillips Collection on Sunday afternoon. The quartet gave a nearly note-perfect performance in two monuments of the string quartet literature from the later careers of Haydn and Beethoven, but beneath the immaculate sheen, the music didn’t always come to life as it should.

In the first quartet from Haydn’s Op. 76 set, the musicians were at their well-blended best in the Adagio sostenuto. The opening movement was on the frenetic side... [Continue reading]

New Orford String Quartet
Music by Haydn, Beethoven, Tim Brady
Phillips Collection

SEE ALSO:
Alan G. Artner, New Orford String Quartet at Winter Chamber Festival (Chicago Tribune, January 10)

Ibragimova Plays Bach

Bach, Sonatas and Partitas for Solo Violin, A. Ibragimova (Hyperion, 2009)

Charles T. Downey, Bringing out the best in Bach
Washington Post, March 10

Violinist Gidon Kremer once said that Bach’s solo violin sonatas and partitas were the “Bible of music.” Most violinists who record these six works too early in their careers end up recording them again after they have found their mature musical voices. This fact, however, didn’t deter Alina Ibragimova from making her Bach solo recording in her mid-20s. And the Russian-born violinist, now 29, played four of these six works during a substantial recital Sunday afternoon at the Phillips Collection.

Ibragimova’s finger pyrotechnics were most impressive as she turned in supersonic accounts of the Presto and Corrente movements... [Continue reading]

Alina Ibragimova, violin
Music by Bach
Phillips Collection

Discovering Pēteris Vasks

P. Vasks, Piano Trio / Piano Quartet, A. Levitan, Trio Parnassus (Mdg, 2008)

Charles T. Downey, A composer lets his work do the talking
Washington Post, February 14

In the Leading European Composers series at the Phillips Collection, a composer has the opportunity to give a guided tour of his work. On Thursday evening, the podium was offered to the Latvian composer Pēteris Vasks, but he declined to speak before the concert, pointing to the stage and saying, “No — my music.” Rather than more words, a quintet of Latvian musicians beautifully performed the composer’s selection of his chamber music.

The music said more than enough about this composer’s intensely mystical style, recalling... [Continue reading]

RIX Piano Quartet and Dita Krenberga (flute)
Leading European Composers: Pēteris Vasks
Phillips Collection

Alexandre Tharaud's Crushing Fortissimo Power

Bach / Rameau / Couperin, A. Tharaud (3-CD re-release, Harmonia Mundi) Scarlatti, A. Tharaud (Erato, 2011)

Alexandre Tharaud continues to surprise me. At his latest recital here, at the Phillips Collection on Sunday afternoon, it was not surprising to hear him play jewel-like Couperin (his opening set) or a delightful Scarlatti sonata as an encore (the guitar-like K. 141). The bulk of the program, though, showed the French pianist going in new directions, with composers not previously associated with him, at least by these ears.

Even in the set of eight Couperin pieces, drawn from all over the place, Tharaud seemed to be questing after new sounds and approaches, adding many changes and embellishments on repeats, not afraid to use the pedals copiously, strongly differentiating polyphonic voices, even hammering out some accents for percussive effect. His Les calotines clicked and clacked, as if with mechanical sounds, and he stretched Les rozeaux and the gorgeous Les barricades mistérieuses with taffy-like rubato. The pairing of Les ombres errantes and La triomphante was played for maximal contrast, delicate and ultra-slow for the former, trumpeted motifs bustling with agitation for the latter. After the clanging, sonorous bells of Le Carillon de Cythère (an effect easier to produce on the modern piano than on the harpsichord), the rhythmic infusion of Le tic-toc-choc, now synonymous with Tharaud, was played with more force than in his recording (or his 2008 recital at the French Embassy).

Mozart's A major sonata (K. 331) followed, the variations on its gentle lullaby theme given accented wrong-note grace notes and expertly voiced hand crossings. The menuetto was organized around its big orchestral unison motif, which set off more fast and delicate music, the trio a little slower and warmer in tone. Tharaud took the piece's famous finale, Alla Turca, at a perfect Allegretto tempo, not too fast, which allowed him to make strongly marked dynamic contrasts and apply a hard-biting touch in the loud Janissary sections, enlivened by percussive attacks. Tharaud's last performance of Schubert, the Moments musicaux at his 2010 recital at the Library of Congress with Jean-Guihen Queyras, was somewhat disappointing. Here he dove into that composer's set of sixteen German dances, D. 783, with much more variety of interpretation, from big and gutsy to forlorn and enigmatic, technically solid in the many challenges (parallel thirds, filigree rising scales, and so on) but with that free, lovely sense of rubato applied in the slow pieces.

Other Reviews: Robert Battey, A limited program and an inscrutable pianist at the Phillips (Washington Post, January 27)

The program was designed as a long crescendo toward the final piece, Beethoven's sonata in A-flat major, op. 110, or really toward that sonata's finale. Tharaud took the first movement at a slow, expressive tempo, emphasizing the music's delicate side and telling a compelling story with it through gradations of color in sound. The middle movement, marked Allegro molto, was taken at a rather slow speed, startling at first and perhaps not right for the joking quotations of folk songs (snatches of Unsa Kätz häd Katzln ghabt, or 'Our cat has had kittens', and Ich bin lüderlich, du bist lüderlich, or 'I'm a slob, you're a slob'), but again with the payoff of being able to make maximal dynamic contrasts and to exaggerate sforzando attacks, as well as giving the piece a more legato feel than it usually has. The Klagender Gesang section was steeped in tragic gloom, through which the fugue subject pierced like a ray of sunshine. The tempo of the fugue was perfect, floating weightlessly, allowing all the voices to be delineated cleanly, even in the stretto sections, and making possible a furious cranking up of tempo as the piece rocketed to its conclusion. One of the remarks I made about Tharaud's 2012 recital at the French Embassy was that "crushing fortissimo power is the only weapon missing from [his] arsenal." The exultant hammered chords at the conclusion of the Beethoven made clear that this reservation was no longer justified.

The next recital not to be missed at the Phillips Collection will feature violinist Isabelle Faust and pianist Alexander Melnikov (February 8).

Sumi Hwang Incandescent at Phillips

Queen Elisabeth Competition: Voice 2014, S. Hwang (inter alii) (MP3, 2014)

Charles T. Downey, Soprano Sumi Hwang soars at the Phillips Collection
Washington Post, November 4, 2014

In 2012, Sumi Hwang won second prize at the ARD Music Competition in Munich, followed this year by the Grand Prize at the Queen Elisabeth Competition in Brussels. The Korean soprano showed why at her American debut recital, a knockout hour-long program presented on Sunday afternoon at the Phillips Collection.

Hwang’s lyric soprano voice has a pearly clarity, the intonation just, and the tone even and pretty across its range. She had a pleasing simplicity in a set of three songs from Schumann’s “Myrthen,” Op. 25, giving a sense of excitement to... [Continue reading]

Sumi Hwang, soprano
Jonas Vitaud, piano
Phillips Collection

Tanya Bannister @ Phillips

Clementi, Piano Sonatas, T. Bannister (Naxos, 2006)

Charles T. Downey, Pianist Tanya Bannister at the Phillips Collection
Washington Post, May 20, 2014

Pianist Tanya Bannister has formidable technique and a thoughtful approach to programming a recital. Trained in London, at Yale and in New York, her fingers rarely erred in a recital inspired by the influence of Handel on Beethoven, heard at the Phillips Collection on Sunday afternoon. What did not always come through was a love of sound, a willingness to explore a broad range of tones and colors, as her touch at the keyboard was too consistently sharp and biting.

This harshness was in evidence in Bannister’s overemphasis of the melodic line in Handel’s Suite in F, HWV 427, balanced by... [Continue reading]

Tanya Bannister, piano
Phillips Collection

SEE ALSO:

• András Schiff's lecture on op. 110
  
• Charles T. Downey, Cygnus Ensemble at LoC: Harold Meltzer (Ionarts, February 6, 2012)
  
• Jens F. Laurson, Fine pianism from Tanya Bannister (Ionarts, January 29, 2007)

Thoughts on the English Suites

Charles T. Downey, Bach’s ‘English Suites’ tackled at Phillips Collection and National Gallery of Art
Washington Post, March 4, 2014

Bach, English Suites (inter alia), C. Rousset (Ambroisie, box set, 2010)

Bach’s “English Suites” are among his most diverting music for the keyboard, where a delight in patterns and brilliant finger-work crowds out a severe contrapuntal approach. Bach’s encyclopedic tendencies meant that he had a plan when he grouped works into a set like this, so one gets more out of a complete performance than hearing these pieces singly. So the complete performance offered on Sunday afternoon and evening, in numerical order and split between a harpsichordist at the Phillips Collection and a pianist at the National Gallery of Art, was most welcome. [Continue reading]

Bach, English Suites
Anthony Newman, harpsichord
Phillips Collection
Peter Vinograde, piano
National Gallery of Art

Raphael Trio @ Phillips

Charles T. Downey, The Raphael Trio at the Phillips Collection
Washington Post, January 14, 2014

Brahms, Piano Trios, vol. 2, Vienna Piano Trio (1994)

The Raphael Trio is approaching the 40th anniversary of its founding and, perhaps surprisingly, is still at it. As it has done regularly for many years now, the ensemble appeared on the concert series of the Phillips Collection on Sunday afternoon. The performance was slightly rough and uninspired, and sometimes worse than that.

Two of the piano trios of Brahms brought out the least subtle inclinations of the musicians in terms of balance. Pianist Daniel Epstein hammered away far too often, driving violinist Andy Simionescu to attempt to fight back in terms of sound, with strident results, while cellist Susan Salm was mostly lost in the mix. [Continue reading]

Raphael Trio
Music of Brahms, Merryman
Phillips Collection

Boris Giltburg @ Phillips

Charles T. Downey, Boris Giltburg’s debut recital
Washington Post, November 5, 2013

Prokofiev, Piano Sonatas 6-8, B. Giltburg (2012)

Another day, another recent competition winner’s debut recital in Washington. This time it was Boris Giltburg, winner of this summer’s Queen Elisabeth Competition for piano, in a concert at the Phillips Collection on Sunday afternoon. The museum’s weekly concert series has an exclusive arrangement with Brussels to present each year’s winner, and the experience confirmed the technical authority and sheer muscular force that brought Giltburg the prize.

Giltburg was hardly an unknown quantity before this victory, already having recordings for EMI and Orchid Classics to his name. He is a steely player who tends to wallop rather than caress the keyboard. He brought the audience to its feet mostly with circus-like demonstrations of virtuosity in Prokofiev’s eighth sonata (Op. 84, B-flat major), especially the blockbuster finale, played with savage accuracy, and in the orchestral vastness of sound he produced in Ravel’s “La Valse.” [Continue reading]

Boris Giltburg, piano
Phillips Collection

SEE ALSO:
Ivan Hewett, Can talented musicians be well-rounded people? (The Telegraph, October 22)

Emilie White, Queen Elisabeth Competition: Boris Giltburg (La Scena Musicale, October 1)

Martina Filjak @ Phillips

Charles T. Downey, At Phillips, pianist Martina Filjak offers unexpected interpretations of familiar works
Washington Post, May 14, 2013

Soler, Keyboard Sonatas 1-15, M. Filjak (Naxos, 2011)

Martina Filjak offered some surprises during her recital Sunday afternoon at the Phillips Collection. The Croatian-born pianist gave sometimes unexpected interpretations of familiar works, paired with pieces that were just unexpected. She also played with the una corda pedal halfway down most of the time, enough to keep the hammers striking all three strings but shifting their position just slightly. The goal was to force this often hard-edged instrument into a different realm of sound, and it worked.

Filjak opened with a Mozart sonata (B-flat major, K. 333), one of his sunniest and most welcoming, and she set the first and third movements at an easy-paced tempo that sounded happy, not manic. [...]
[Continue reading]

Martina Filjak, piano
Music by Mozart, Schumann, Scriabin, Prokofiev
Phillips Collection

Bavouzet Returns, Phillips Collection

Charles T. Downey, Pianist Jean-Efflam Bavouzet: Technical mastery in need of a little heart
Washington Post, April 23, 2013

Debussy, Complete Works for Piano, J.-E. Bavouzet (Chandos, 2012)

No one should have any doubts about the virtuosity of Jean-Efflam Bavouzet. The French pianist has amassed an extensive number of recordings on the Chandos label, including complete sets of Beethoven’s sonatas (ongoing) and the piano music of Debussy, both featured in a meaty recital on Sunday afternoon at the Phillips Collection. In concert, Bavouzet showed that he can play very rapidly and very loudly; whether his playing can engage the listener beyond the amazement it often inspires is another matter.
[Continue reading]

Jean-Efflam Bavouzet, piano
Music by Beethoven, Debussy
Phillips Collection

SEE ALSO:
Jens F. Laurson, Jean-Efflam Bavouzet Floats Ravel but Sinks Beethoven (Ionarts, January 23, 2006)

Tim Page, A Soft Touch Brings out the Best in Pianist Bavouzet (Washington Post, January 23, 2006)