Texte paru dans: / Appeared in: |
|
|
Outil de traduction ~ (Très approximatif) |
|
|
Reviewer: Jerry
Dubins Like so many young artists today, French pianist Rémi Geniet, now 23, earned his credentials from leading conservatories, picked up a number of prestigious competition awards and prizes along the way, and has already embarked on an international career. I could be wrong, but I believe this is Geniet’s debut commercial album, and I have to say that there’s more than one thing about it that just doesn’t sit right with me. Technical command is not the issue; it rarely is these days. Rather, where Geniet’s Bach is concerned, it’s a matter of the pianist’s individualistic—some might say, idiosyncratic—interpretive ideas. Take, for example, his articulation of the fugue subject in the C-Minor Toccata. He stamps out each note with a sharp, clipped staccato, but one that sounds very different from the familiar staccato manner of Glenn Gould. Even at his rapid tempo, Geniet somehow makes the subject sound like a sequence of disjointed, halting hiccups. Moreover, it doesn’t really help to clarify the counterpoint as the other voices join in, as one might expect. Excessive and unnecessary rolling of chords is another mannerism that chafes, and Geniet’s earnest attempt—I’ll give him the benefit of the doubt—to realize Bach’s ornamentation suggests that he skipped that particular class on German Baroque keyboard practice. Every ornament, regardless of its specified symbol, seems to come out as an undifferentiated trill, which might not be so terrible an offense if Geniet didn’t make a point of adding more of them than are necessary. As indicated above, Geniet’s playing evidences no technical shortcomings; his fingers know their way around the keyboard and have no problem navigating Bach’s contrapuntal writing. The problem, as I hear it, is Geniet’s approach to Bach, which pays little heed to historical period practice in general or the composer’s style in particular. It’s not a question of playing Bach on the piano, as others have—Angela Hewitt and András Schiff, to name just two—in a manner more cognizant of and appropriate to both period and style; rather, it’s a matter of choosing not to acknowledge precedent and deciding to go one’s own way. Lastly, it’s always difficult to tell the extent to which the performance venue—in this case the Théâtre-Auditorium in Poitiers, France—or the recording engineer and setup is at fault, but one or the other, or both, do no favors for Geniet’s Steinway D, which lacks ring and ping in the treble and spreads in the bass, lacking a firm, distinct foundation.
I’m sure Rémi Geniet will be
an artist to watch for in the future, but perhaps in repertoire he’s more in
tune with than Bach, and on a recording that better captures his instrument
than this one does. | |
|
|
|
|
Cliquez l'un ou l'autre
bouton pour découvrir bien d'autres critiques de CD |
|
/3760127222682.jpg)
