The rapid rise of the Festival Ravel, now in its third year, shows no sign of slowing. A starry second incarnation last summer featured, among other delights, Roth and Les Siècles playing Daphnis et Chloë, but this year’s programme, conceived by joint festival directors Bertrand Chamayou and Jean-François Heisser, feels like a coming of age. Across two and a half weeks the Basque seaside town of Saint-Jean-de-Luz (adjacent to Ciboure, Ravel’s birthplace) welcomes Andsnes, Béroff, Fink, Graffin, Langrée, Pahud and Pons, not to mention the Ensemble Intercontemporain, Jerusalem Quartet and a slew of distinguished orchestras.
The festival’s eponymous composer is never far away. Heisser was joined by Renaud Capuçon for a recital framed by Ravel sonatas: his posthumous no. 1 to begin with, and movements 2 and 3 from the better-known second (played out of sequence, but never mind) that served as encores. In both works there was a slight misalignment between violinist and pianist – the one probing and refined, the other unfailingly emphatic – that faintly compromised enjoyment.
Capuçon gave a gorgeous account of the Posthume (my notes say “aristocratic elegance”, but that’s too much of a cliché) and revealed its music to be concise yet busy with elusive undertows. His performance progressed through volatile moods of despondency, jumpiness and repose, the last of these in fleeting moments of tonal accord with Heisser’s sturdy piano. Not only is this work every bit as rewarding as its more familiar companion, it also served as an ideal partner for Debussy’s Violin Sonata, given here in a triumphant reading founded happily on a meeting of minds by both musicians. A familiar work yet never an easy listen, the violinist projected listlessness in the central movement while locating the songbird in its très animé finale.
Roussel’s Second Sonata rudely pulled the ear into an altogether different sound world. There was macho stomping that first settled then erupted again like an unfinished tantrum, followed by an aerated, rising figure on the violin that felt like an ingratiating smile after all the fury. And that was just the first movement. Heisser’s piano began the multifaceted second with an ostinato passage that feather-bedded an angular melody from Capuçon, although the movement’s elaborate development was again marred by an over-insistent piano. Roussel’s finale boasted some spiky, speedy virtuosity from the violinist, but his crisp tone was muddied by an excess of piano pedal and the end product lacked a sense of dialogue.
The recital’s climactic work was a curio: a five-movement sonata by Marguerite Canal (1890-1978) that she wrote while in residence at the Villa Medici after winning the 1920 Prix de Rome. It is a substantial work but at first hearing a banal shadow of its obvious model, the Sonata in A major by Franck. Technically it’s a strong composition with lyricism to the fore. The opening movement evoked a bucolic scene with, perhaps, a pony or two cantering among sun-dappled trees; the fourth, more successfully, was built upon a powerfully forthright melody with a doleful conclusion. Like Franck, Canal was drawn to the violin’s lower register – and, also like Franck, her finale barrels forward to an abrupt conclusion.
Mark's press trip was funded by the Festival Ravel
