Bertrand Chamayou is a generous artistic director. In an evening traversing all of Maurice Ravel’s solo piano music, he ceded two of the ripest plums – Miroirs and Gaspard de la nuit – to his senior compatriot, Pierre-Laurent Aimard, in the late night recital, after earlier sharing the platform with Hyunji Kim, Jeune soliste de l’Académie Ravel, who performed a handful of early works.
This is a very special edition of the Festival Ravel, marking the 150th anniversary of the composer’s birth. It takes place in and around Saint-Jean-de-Luz and Ciboure. Indeed, the imposing Église Saint-Vincent, where last night’s recitals were held, is not even a stone’s throw from the back of the house where Ravel was born on 7th March 1875.
Chamayou’s set demonstrated precisely why he is considered one of today’s leading Ravel interpreters. With deft rubato, light pedalling and a delicate touch, he makes this music sigh, the Sonatine being a perfect case in point. He revelled in the dissonances in the Valses nobles et sentimentales; the watery plumes in Jeux d’eau rippled and cascaded, the Pavane pour une infante défunte flowed – if not as swiftly as Ravel himself – at an unsentimental pace.
Chamayou interleaved his programme with three contemporary tributes, each fascinating in their own way, from Betsy Jolas’ percussive Signets, hommage à Maurice Ravel to Frédéric Durieux’s Pour tous ceux qui tombent, with its tolling bell reminiscent of Ravel’s Le Gibet. Most remarkable was Salvatore Sciarrino’s De la nuit, with its watery imagery and flickers of Ondine. It was like looking at Ravel in a cracked mirror; you can still recognise his reflection but in a distorted, not unbeautiful way. Ravel’s own reflections – on Baroque dance, Le Tombeau de Couperin – were played with immaculate taste and precision, Chamayou never treating the material like bone china.
Aimard’s playing offered an interesting contrast. There were plenty of smudges and smears in Miroirs, perhaps appropriately given that it’s Ravel at his most Impressionist – a word he and Debussy detested when applied to their music – but it felt a little over-cooked, guitars strumming wildly in the Alborada del gracioso. Aimard’s facial expressions, from dark frown to something akin to a startled owl, added to the drama. In Gaspard, a blurry Scarbo felt testy rather than menacing. This seemed a deliberate choice by Aimard because, in between, came crystalline precision in two icy shards of another anniversary composer, Pierre Boulez, bringing clarity to the densely written Incises.
The evening had begun with Chamayou and Hyunji Kim playing four early fugues written by Ravel, probably composed as part of his multiple (futile) efforts to win the coveted Prix de Rome. Kim then essayed the juvenalia, including the weird Parade, a repetitive “ballet sketch”, composed under the pseudonym Jacques Dream, for the dancer Antonine Meunier.
The Sérénade grotesque – a spiky precursor to Alborada – needed a few sharper edges, but Kim shaped Ravel’s miniature tributes to Haydn, Chabrier and Borodin very nicely. In truth, she was competing against the ridiculously pretty early evening light, which flooded the altar’s pink marble quite spectacularly. As the sun set, Chamayou was bathed in gold before blue lighting frosted the altar.
Mark's press trip was funded by the Festival Ravel
