14 Sept - Emmanuel Despax

Emmanuel Despax – what a pianist!  He makes the piano sing, and makes the audience listen. 

The opening piece of the evening was Busoni’s Sonatina Carmen.  I had the impression that Emmanuel was a bit nervous initially although I may have been very wrong as it is unlikely!  The piece starts busily with lots of octaves; I wondered if putting this kind of physical piece right at the beginning may exhaust him... When the well-known gypsy theme came in, wow it was like the piano was really singing!  I am curious if Emmanuel would play Horowitz’s variation on a theme of Carmen, I’d love to listen to him play. 

After the Busoni, the programme was:
- Portraits and Landscapes - Stephen Goss (world premiere)
- Deux Légends - Liszt
- Fantasia in C minor - Mozart
- Apres une lecture du Dante - Liszt 

I loved all the Liszt pieces.  Emmanuel’s meticulous approach was perfect for these.  Generally, Liszt piano compositions are technically very demanding, and many pianists who challenge fail to overcome this technical difficulty and end up banging or pressing rather too many random notes. Or, they focus only on the technical side and nothing musical is conveyed. I am sure this was not Liszt’s intention. Emmanuel maintained perfect precision throughout, and on top of that, brought out his creativity, imagination and character. The first Légende (St Francis of Assisi preaching to the birds) was so poetic – high-pitched trills at the beginning were so even and delicate. The second Légende (St Francis of Puale walks on water) was dynamic and dramatic. When St Francis supposedly battled against the river water to cross it, the intensity of the piano increased gradually until it reached the climax.  

I was excited to see in the programme that Emmanuel was playing Apres une lecture de Dante, but at the same time dreading it. I had beento a concert in the past where a pianist played the very same piece, and I found it dead boring. That pianist played it very well, but it was robotic and acrobatic, not musical. Well, very fortunately Emmanuel’s playing was not like that at all. The programme note says that this single movement, 18-minute work "makes enormous technical, physical and emotional demands of the performer". I totally agree. Emmanuel must have been drained after playing this piece. The themes of Heaven and Hell, death and faith that preoccupied Liszt were explicitly expressed throughout this piece. It was heavy, dark, depressing, frightening, all that, but truly impressive. 

I had not come across the composer Stephen Goss. I had no idea what Portraits and Landscapes would be like, but it was wonderful and delightful to listen to. It consisted of five short pieces, all about people and places. I particularly liked the first one Sound of Iona and the fourth one Waltz and Réplique. Sound of Iona expressed the few days of a year when the Scottish sun is hot: Emmanuel made perfect sounds - deadly still, tranquil, transparent and somewhat mysterious. The composer wrote that he had the Ondine pieces by Debussy and Ravel in mind, so no wonder. The playful Waltz and Réplique was fun to listen to; it was literally a replica of Schumann’s Valse Allemande from Carnaval. Nicely twisted, it sounded rather peculiar and very different from the original version of course, but you could definitely tell where it derived from. I had a chance to speak with the composer who was at the recital, and he told me that it was such a pleasure to work with Emmanuel. He said, sometimes it was hard to work with musicians and that it could be frustrating to get his thoughts across to them, but Emmanuel was different – that Emmanuel’s idea and imagination could extend further and reach something that was even ahead of the composer’s thought!

The programme notes were also written by Stephen Goss and they were very informative and interesting to read, adding more pleasure to listening to Emmanuel’s delightful performance.