a r t i s t : Jean Barraque (Herbert Henck)
t i t l e : Sonate pour piano
d a t e : 1999
l a b e l : ECM
c a t : ECM NEW SERIES 1621
s o u r c e : CDDA
g e n r e : Avantgarde
r l s. d a t e : Sep/2009
t r a c k s : 02
b i t r a t e : VBRkbps
s i z e : 47,6 MB
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Cards on the table: I consider Barraque's vacuum-sealed
Sonate (1950-52) the most powerful piano work of the postwar
era. And this is the current performance (out of three) that
I'd select to convince skeptics.
Jean Barraque (1928-1973) was described by Antoine Golea as
"enigmatic, secretive, difficult, the enemy - it must be said
to his credit - of all acclaim." Like Boulez, he took
Messiaen's composition class, and Messiaen's pianist wife
Yvonne Loriod championed the Sonate. One critic understood
its importance. In Since Debussy (1961), Andre Hodeir wrote,
"No music of this density has been composed since the Grosse
Fuge, the only ancestor worthy of this unique score." That
isn't so preposterous. Alone among serialists, Barraque
admired Beethoven, and their defiant attitudes, heroic
counterpoint, and large dramatic spans have more in common
than one might suppose.
At a suggested timing of "about 40 minutes" (which pianists
rarely meet), the piece falls conveniently into two parts.
Dichotomy is the main organizing tool and expressive device.
Both parts alternate "rigorous" and "free" sections.
(Everything is serially determined in the former, while
dynamics and rhythms become more expansive in the latter.)
Part One is mostly fast, active, and situated in the middle
of the keyboard. Part Two reverses and destroys this progress
ù it's slow, static, and fixated on the lowest and highest
keys. All these parameters suffer some leakage, so the
overall path is tangled. Barraque's use of encroaching
silence still seems revolutionary. This isn't allied to
Webern - silence as a structural component - but appears "in
the shape of irrational pauses that grow steadily longer and
more threatening" (Hodeir).
Obviously Sonate demands exalted pianism - minutely graded
articulations and headlong energy - but no more so than
Beethoven's Hammerklavier. (In either case, the cautious need
not apply.) I've never located Loriod's pioneering lp, which
Richard Toop amusingly dismissed - "an aura of mystery,
dubiously reinforced in the late fifties by an "historic"
recording whose relationship to the score is at times itself
something of a mystery." In 1969 Claude Helffer performed it
for Astree, as did Roger Woodward (with more panache and
wildness) on EMI three years later. (A CD of either would be
valuable, since BarraquΘ attended both tapings.) Cpo's 1998
Barraque integrale (999 569-2, 3 CDs) enjoys a decent success
rate - except for Stefan Litwin's Sonate, which is much too
slow and picky. Former Boulez associate Pi-hsien Chen
constitutes an immense advance (on Telos tls 006). She's
highly attentive to the score's complexities, and commands
the technique to execute them cleanly. A Spartan piano sound
robs her playing of some color.
And so to Herbert Henck. His artful notes trace the deepening
involvement that led to this CD, and they read like a
detective story. (The printed score is filled with errors and
ambiguities. Barraque was extremely nearsighted, and assigned
proofreading chores to assistants.) Henck's comprehension at
least equals Chen's, and he surpasses her in molding events
into long, cogent paragraphs. He's also much more daring
about Barraque's silences, stretching the rest fermatas to
the breaking point, but the line always holds. ECM's gorgeous
sound is a huge asset, delivering tiny pedaling details and
thunderous jolts.
After listening to Sonate, it's impossible for me to proceed
directly to other music. Barraque also had trouble moving
beyond the finality his masterpiece posed. In the three years
that followed, he finished only a brief electronic etude and
the revision of an earlier work, Sequence. Eventually he hit
upon a mad, unending project: a musical setting of Hermann
Broch's novel The Death of Virgil. In it, the dying poet
struggles to decide whether he should burn his Aeneid.
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01-Sonate pour piano - Premiere partie - Tres rapide [19:16]
02-Sonate pour piano - Deuxieme partie - Lent [27:08]
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46:24 min