Piano illustration
André Laplante uses 88 keys as his musical palette
PREVIEW
ANDRE LAPLANTE
Thursday, February 7
Rozsa Centre (U of C)
French Canadian pianist André Laplante says that performers are illustrators of the compositions they play.
"We try to illustrate what is in the score and to communicate that," he says in a recent interview, while talking about his upcoming recital at the Eckhardt-Gramatté Hall in the Rozsa Centre, part of the Honens A440 series.
I first met Laplante 10 years ago at a party following his performance at the American Symphony Orchestra League conference in Chicago. His appearance there was a big success and has translated into important gigs with orchestras worldwide including shows at Carnegie Hall and the Kennedy Center, dates with Sir Neville Mariner and Sir Yehudi Menuhin, and a recent performance of Rachmaninoff's Third Piano Concerto in the opening season of the Dewan Filharmonik Petronas in Malaysia.
Laplante has the ability to play big, meaty pieces for piano by the likes of Liszt and Rachmaninoff, and has been pegged as one of the great romantic virtuosos, inviting comparisons to pianists like Ashkenazy, Horowitz and Serkin.
"My teachers always wanted me to play big stuff. By nature, instrumentally and musically, I was raised in a lot of romantic repertoire, I played a lot of big pieces. I played the bulk of the romantic repertoire by the time I was 20."
Still, Laplante did not necessarily want to specialize in that style and has strived in recent years to find a balance.
"I think I had a backwards education, I went back to the classical style a little later."
That balance is reflected in carefully chosen recital programs that experiment with more Beethoven, Schubert and Mozart. In Calgary, he will play Beethoven's Sonata Opus 81a, Les Adieux, Sonata No. 26 in E flat major.
Laplante feels that the Beethoven piece is a magnificently built sonata, for its organic architecture, connecting movements, and themes of departure, absence and return.
"There is an incredible emotional range to it and the form is extraordinary, so the work is satisfying intellectually and especially emotionally – there is formidable power in there. Beethoven was always the pure musician, but this is one sonata where you have everything.... Very intimate sentiment, but also a lot of virtuosity in the third movement, so he also investigated... the possibilities of the instrument itself as a virtuoso in that sonata. I think it is satisfying both musically and pianistically."
Oiseaux Tristes and Ondine by French composer Maurice Ravel (1875-1937) are part of the Calgary recital program. Ravel interested Laplante from the first time he heard Gaspard de la Nuit.
"Since then I have been fascinated by his sound universe. The only way I could describe (him) would be as an extraordinarily well-learned magician... because his universe of sound is unbelievable."
When he was student, Laplante played many concerts in smaller communities where he sometimes played on pianos that he says would have been put to better use as firewood – but he can't remember any piano on which Ravel sounded bad.
"If it was not the tone of the piano itself, it was the harmony that was so intricate and so incredibly well written and the resolutions were so clear. The clarity of the sound is absolutely magical for me. Now, of course, I am playing on decent pianos – I am finding that these are real tone poems and are perfectly well written for the instrument as well."
"It is so well written that you keep thinking of Liszt. Like Mozart, he never added too many notes to his music – you have this classical quality and contemporary colour.
In addition to the Sonata in B flat minor by Frédéric Chopin (1810-1849), Laplante will perform the famous Sonata in B minor by Franz Liszt (1811-1886). Many feel that this piece is one of the greatest ever written.
"There is not one note in there that does not have a purpose. Like for half an hour, a sonata based on three themes, all you hear... is those three themes transformed totally. He influenced a lot of composers with his new forms and his new harmonies."
With this motivic approach, Liszt influenced Wagner and Wagner in his turn influenced Schoenberg who was the so-called dawn of modern, contemporary music.
"With this sonata , you have one of the big masterpieces of the romantic period. He opened new doors for form, people started to experiment. I feel very lucky I can play the sonata, because it is such a joy to illustrate something like that – it's like the beginning of a phenomenon, it is one of those pieces. |
