Chamayou/LSO/Roth - Gossec, Saint-Saëns, and Beethoven, 11 November 2021

Barbican Hall

Gossec: Symphonie à 17 parties in F major, Rh 64
Saint-Saëns: Piano Concerto no.2 in G minor, op.22
Beethoven: Symphony no.3 in E-flat major, op.55, ‘Eroica’

Bertrand Chamayou (piano)
London Symphony Orchestra
François-Xavier Roth (conductor)

 

François-Joseph Gossec lived a very long life during ‘interesting times’, born in 1734 in the Austrian Netherlands (Belgium) and dying in Paris in 1829, just short of the July Revolution. His Symphonie à 17 parties was written under Napoleon, in 1809, so makes for an interesting companion piece to Beethoven’s Sinfonia Eroica, composta per festeggiare il sovvenire di un grande Uomo, its initial dedication (to Bonaparte) famously scratched out in fury in response to the First Consul’s self-elevation to the rank of Emperor. If closer comparison is beside the point—whatever the virtues of Gossec’s piece, it would pale if heard after Beethoven—then this was an excellent opportunity to hear a little-known work, with fine advocacy from François-Xavier Roth and the LSO, Bertrand Chamayou contributing a blistering account of Saint-Saëns’s Second Piano Concerto in between. 

Gossec’s Symphony immediately catches the ear with its grandly rhetorical opening bars, prior to what comes across to our ears as fond looking (listening?) back to the eighteenth century, unquestionably from the standpoint of a composer for French orchestras. (Gossec had founded the Concert des Amateurs in 1769, offering for twelve years a serious rival to the celebrated Concert Spirituel.) And that was only the introduction. The first movement as a whole proved colourful and theatrical, testament to the composer’s interest in concert and dramatic work alike (sacred music too). If the movement’s close relied heavily on tonic and dominant harmony, that in itself is hardly a fault; one might—many do—say the same of Beethoven. The Larghetto second movement showed some rather more surprising harmonic shifts, allied to a keen ear for colour as heard earlier. Such music can all too readily be rushed, but not here; nor did it drag. The minor-mode Minuetto (I should have guessed ‘scherzo’) came as a considerable surprise, both in itself and for its counterpoint. Split violins, as well as considerable LSO heft (twelve first violins down to five double basses), truly told, as did unmistakeably Gallic use of bassoons. The trio’s Harmoniemusik was attractive enough, though perhaps it outstayed its (symphonic) welcome. The finale again had a strong sense of the opera house to it. Some phrases sounded superficially Mozartian in themselves, but the construction is very different. 

Chamayou ensured a properly arresting opening to the Saint-Saëns Concerto, as if extemporising on Romantic memories of Bach—which, in a way, is very much what the composer is doing. The LSO’s response was equally, differently rhetorical, the first movement’s course meeting somewhere in between, broadly Lisztian. What some say of Liszt, I might wonder of Saint-Saëns; this movement does sound to me a little like an introduction to an introduction. I am probably missing the point, though, and there was no denying the superior quality of Chamayou’s pianism: glistening, melting, virile, double octaves and all. Fantasia-like swirling mists prior to the close proved mysteriously alluring. A sparkling, sprightly, even sprite-ly second movement began in Mendelssohnian vein, before moving in quite different directions. The tarantella finale sounded ambiguous, perhaps ambivalent, certainly a whirlwind. One could only marvel at the pianist’s technique and musicianship, Roth ever the alert, discerning accompanist. As an encore, we were treated to the Adagio from Haydn’s late Piano Sonata in C major, Hob.XVI:50. Rapt in its intensity, it benefited from a similar sense of the improvisatory, founded in attention to detail and command of line. I should love to hear more Haydn from Chamayou. 

The opening of the Eroica came as quite a culture shock (to me, at least). I do not think I have ever heard it so fast: presumably taken at the ever-controversial metronome marking. Roth’s musicianship won me over, though. This was a very different Beethoven from that of Wagner, Furtwängler, Klemperer, Barenboim, or a host of others. Of course it was, Colin Davis included. (It was under him, I think, that I last heard the LSO play this symphony.) But comparison, or for that matter contrast, is not the point here. Roth, anything but dogmatic, had his own vision and it worked splendidly. Ultimately, I missed a degree of grandeur, but here, in Beethoven’s first movement, not only did notes fly off the page; they fairly danced. There was, moreover, a fine sense of exploration to the development and what is in effect a second development (recapitulation). 

The Funeral March was brisk, if less (to my ears) iconoclastically so. Obsequies grew in stature, as if grief were approaching us from a distance. There was, fittingly for the programme, a strong sense of French Revolutionary processional. It was, perhaps, more Berlioz’s Beethoven than Wagner’s—and none the worse for it. Excellent woodwind solos (Olivier Stankiewicz’s oboe here first among equals) contributed to the greater whole. Counterpoint lay at the movement’s very heart; if sometimes I had wondered quite what was at stake in the first movement, here there was little doubt. Busy energy, born of detail and line, characterised the scherzo, the trio’s celebrated horns sounding with vernal freshness all the more welcome in dark November. Taken attacca, the finale constantly surprised, rethought in many ways by Roth. No variation was taken for granted, that for strings alone taken by solo instruments with strikingly ‘period’ tone. But that was a means to an expressive end, not an end in itself, the entry of the LSO’s woodwind creating all the greater contrast and later string vibrato far from parsimonious. It was exciting and coherent: neither quite what many would have expected, nor in any sense perverse. It was quite something (even to a die-hard Furtwänglerian such as yours truly).

And it was salutary to be reminded by Roth from the podium that Beethoven, here conducted by a Frenchman and played by an (international) British orchestra, was the most European of composers. ‘Vive l’Europe!’ as he said, to great applause. London needs to hear that more than ever right now.

Bertrand Chamayou - Debussy and Liszt, 2 July 2012

Wigmore Hall

Debussy – Suite bergamasque
Ondine
Préludes, Book II : ‘Ondine’, ‘La Terrasse des audiences du clair de lune’, ‘Feux d’artifice’
L’Isle joyeuse
Liszt – Années de pèlerinage : Deuxième année – Italie: ‘Sposalizio’, ‘Il penseroso’ ‘Sonetto del Petrarca no.104’, ‘Sonetto del Petrarca no.123’, ‘Après une lecture de Dante, fantasia quasi sonata’


I had heard good things about Bertrand Chamayou, but this was the first time I had heard him, whether on disc or in the concert hall. Not everything came off equally well in this Wigmore Hall recital, but there was enough to impress in itself and enough to indicate further promise. Debussy and Liszt make natural bedfellows, but not every pianist skilled in the music of one has proved successful in the music of the other. Chamayou’s Debussy was perhaps the more consistently impressive, but his Liszt intrigued too.

The Suite bergamasque announced itself with a muscular opening to the ‘Prélude’, which proceeded with a clarity at odds with lazy ideas of ‘impressionism’. (The description, when it comes to music, surely ought to be shop-soiled enough to leave alone now, with a few exceptions, but alas not.) Liszt hovered in the background and rightly so. Both the ‘Menuet’ and the ‘Passepied’ displayed a keen sense of rhythm, the former more flexible than the latter, which might have benefited from greater warmth. Such was not a problem during the intervening ‘Clair de lune’, whose Romanticism positively invited comparisons with Liszt. Voice-leading suggested that Chamayou’s Chopin – which we heard as an encore, albeit transcribed by Liszt – and his Bach might be well worth hearing.

Clarity was again the hallmark of ‘Ondine’, the first of three Préludes from Debussy’s second book. This was not the razor-sharp, crystal-clear clarity of, say, Pollini, but it was nevertheless Debussy from a modernist perspective, perhaps closer to Ravel than we often hear. ‘La Terrasse des audiences du clair de lune’ came as quite a contrast, its sultry heat and languor suggesting that a night on the terrace would be anything but chaste, post-Wagnerian eroticism very much to the fore. It sounded not quite without bar lines, but was certainly not ruled by them. Frightening insistence of the initial penumbra in ‘Feux d’artifices’ metamorphosed into colourful Lisztian pyrotechnics. Finally, we heard L’Isle joyeuse, in rather similar mould, very much – perhaps a little too much – in primary colours. Whatever one’s judgement in that respect, it was clear that this was very much the pianist’s own reading, with emphasis lying upon Lisztian qualities of harmony as well as technique.

Liszt himself was to be heard following the interval, in the guise of five pieces from the Italian book of the Années de pèlerinage. The opening to ‘Sposalizio’ might have seemed prosaic to some, but Chamayou’s performance had the undoubted merit of laying out the thematic material, almost as if for a class in analysis. Rarely has Schoenberg’s inheritance from Liszt’s motivic transformation seemed so evident in what is still relatively ‘early’ Liszt. The performance did not ignite Romantically as early as many, but that had its own rewards in making clear that this was anything but a picture-postcard. ‘Il penseroso’ did not lack rhetorical grandeur, but harmonic progression – those extraordinary augmented chords and where they lead! – proved more fundamental. The two Petrarch sonnets were a touch studied perhaps, especially were one to compare them with great performances of the past, yet again, seriousness of purpose offered a good deal of compensation for the relative lack of abandon. No.123, however, would almost certainly have benefited from a freer approach to rubato. The ‘Dante Sonata’ certainly had no lack of big-boned Romantic rhetoric at its opening; it was properly arresting, musically and dramatically. Soon, however, it was difficult not to feel that a greater willingness to yield would have benefited what became a somewhat unremitting performance. That said, when Chamayou’s virtuosity was at white heat, it was impressive indeed, and there were passages to savour later on of almost angelic, yet strangely erotic, delicacy. One crucial thing: we were left in no doubt whatsoever of how Liszt had expanded to the nth degree the very possibilities of piano writing.