THIBAUDET
east & west... a scintillating Boston Pops debut...a thoroughly engaging,
mostly French recital in Orange County (CA)...an exuberant opening night concert
at the Hollywood Bowl
"Boston University Night" in the Spring of 2003 marked Jean-Yves Thibaudet's
debut with the Boston Pops. Mr. Thibaudet, of course, is no stranger to Symphony
Hall. He has been here more than once before, dazzling Boston's serious music
lovers with his now famed virtuosic performances. But a Boston Pops concert
is a more social event and attracts a slightly different audience: easy-listening
concert-goers who enjoy having their music served up with food and drink.
How
would serious concert fare such as Ravel's Piano
Concerto in Gplay to such an audience, we wondered. If the Boston
U Night concert was a good indicator, very well indeed! The party-like atmosphere
(perfect for the evening's other musical entrees - Offenbach's Overture to "Orpheus
in the Underworld," Gould's American Symphonette No. 2, music from the
film "Cinema Paradiso," and hits from the Broadway musicals "42nd
Street" and "Chicago") did not detract from one's enjoyment of
Ravel's music, clearly because Thibaudet was totally uncompromising in his artistry.
Wearing an unconventionally stylish black silk jacket (not
leather as many thought), he delivered - with his customary panache. His
nimble fingers raced across the keyboard, unfolding a brilliant panoply
of sound and color - from the jazzy Gershwinesque first movement (at times
pointillistic and dream-like, and finally rhapsodic), through the nostalgic
melody of the slow and lengthy second movement, to the almost unrestrained
rapidity of the short third movement.
It
was a masterpiece of Ravellian jazz and lyricism exquisitely played by soloist
and orchestra under the very able direction of Pops maestro Keith Lockhart -
to the audience's great delight and a standing ovation.
The concert also showcased Boston U's 2003 music competition winner, student
Dainius Puodziukas, who played the first movement of Tchaikovsky's Violin Concerto
with warmth and sophistication.
[Note: Mr. Thibaudet's second performance of Ravel's Piano Concerto was telecast
on PBS in the summer 2003 series of "Evening at Pops."]
AND
ON TO THE WEST COAST...
A
few days later, Thibaudet was onstage at the Orange County Performing Arts Center
in Southern California for a programme of PURE THIBAUDET! Replacing an indisposed
Mauricio Pollini, he first serenaded the audience with familiar Chopin pieces
- nocturnes, etudes, waltzes and preludes played with admirable subtlety and
delicacy, and then proceeded to give a masterful accounting of the French repertoire.
He traversed progressively unfamiliar territory as he went from Debussy to Satie
and finally to Messiaen - with technical precision, clarity of tone, purity
of emotion - amazingly, without losing the audience. Thibaudet gave physical
meaning to the mostly abstract titles of three of Debussy's Etudes: "For
Chromatic Steps," "For Compound Chords," "For Octaves"
and SATIE's
inventive pieces: "Gymnopedie No. 1," "Gnossienne No. 7,"
and "The Dreamy Fish."
The evening's piece de resistance was"Regard
de l'Eglise d'Amour," (Contemplation on the Church of Love) the final
piece from Messiaen's monumental "Vingt Regards sur l'Enfant Jesus,"
(20 Contemplations on the Infant Jesus), now becoming less of a rarity in
American concert halls because pianists such as Thibaudet have added the
work to their repertoire.
It is a daunting piece for the pianist because of the piece's technical challenges,
as well as for the audience because of the elements of dissonance and atonality
inherent in contemporary music. But Thibaudet infused his playing with abundant
color and an intensity of spirit that made Messiaen's transcendent music of the
spirit soar. The audience listenened - enthralled, and rewarded him with a long
standing ovation. He graciously reciprocated with three encores: Liszt's transcription
of the hauntingly beautiful "Liebestod" from Wagner's Tristan und
Isolde, Debussy's lyrical L'isle Joyeuse, and Duke Ellington's rapid-fire
"Jubilee Stomp" which again brought the audience, cheering, to their
feet.
AND
THE HOLLYWOOD BOWL...
...where
he opened the Bowl's 2003 classical season as guest soloist, with guest conductor
Andreas Delfs conducting the LA Philharmonic Orchestra. This time he showcased
LISZT's Piano Concerto No. 2 in A major, less familiar
but a virtuoso piece just the same. Like LISZT's
FIRST (which Thibaudet has played in concert over a hundred times,
at least), the Second is a concerto in one movement; unlike the First in which
four disparate themes define the concert's muted subdivisions (equivalent to
the movements in a symphony: allegro-adagio-scherzo-finale), the Second is less
discernibly structured and plays out as a magical, free-flowing transformation
of a melody into many subthemes. Thibaudet's playing as always revealed his
affection and respect for Liszt, and the effect even in this acoustically less
than perfect setting was both kaleidoscopic (light striking bits of glass forming
an endless variety of patterns often bursting into a riot of colors) and elegant.
Bookended by a festive Prelude to Wagner's Die Meistersinger as the
opener and an exuberant Beethoven's Symphony No. 7, it made for a truly colorful
opening night of "Symphony Under the Stars 2003."
[Mr.
Thibaudet began the 2003-2004 season in the opposite direction
- West (where he opened the San Francisco Symphony season with Tchaikovsky's
Piano Concerto No. 1 in a gala concert that was jarred by the blare of a false
fire alarm that interrupted Stravinsky's Firebird) to East (where he
performed MESSIAEN's
Turangalîla Symphony at Carnegie Hall with Christoph
Eschenbach and the Philhadephia Orchestra].
After-concert
photos taken at: Orange County Performing Arts Center and the Hollywood Bowl
A MESSAGE FROM JY (1999)
UK
