Pierre-Laurent Aimard Casts a French Spell Over Carnegie Hall

Carnegie Hall. New York City. December 8, 2010. Olivier Messiaen is not my favorite composer, but it isn’t because I haven’t tried. A preliminary effort was my attendance at a Peter Serkin recital during which he performed Vingt Regards Sur L'Enfant - Jesus, which left me wishing I’d been someplace else. But, my major push took place three years ago at Royal Festival Hall in London, where I sat through a painful 80 minutes and 10 movements of the Turangalîla-Symphonie , which was proceeded by an hour-long pre-concert lecture in which the speaker was rhapsodic about the work; his spoken rhapsody being the only music I heard that evening. So, when Pierre-Laurent Aimard announced that the entire first half of his Carnegie Hall recital would be devoted to Messiaen's eight Preludes, I was less than enthusiastic about attending, a decision made easier, however, because I had never heard this brilliant pianist in recital before, and the remainder of the program was devoted to familiar Chopin and Ravel. In preparation, I did my homework by downloading and listening to the Preludes several times in advance of the recital itself.

The eight Preludes comprise Messiaen's first published works and were composed while he was still a student at the Paris Conservatoire. They owe much to Debussy and Ravel, and are very listenable. In the hands of a pianist as good as Aimard, they are transcendent. Messiaen can have no advocate better than Aimard.

After the intermission, Aimard turned to Chopin’s Barcarole and Scherzo No. 2, and he concluded with Ravel’s Miroirs. The program was very French in sound, if not in nationality. Aimard is an accurate pianist with a dynamic interpretive approach. There may be many adjectives and commentary that can describe his playing, but the two that occur to me are lucid and satisfying. It is easy to understand why Aimard has a large following, as the full Carnegie Hall and enthusiastic applause showed.

The two encores, one by Gyorgy Kurtag, and the other by Harrison Birtwistle, were appropriate in character with the music which proceeded them, and any of the traditional encores favored at these recitals would have been sure to have broken the spell cast over the evening by Aimard’s revelatory Messiaen, Chopin and Ravel.

(FYI: Carnegie Hall identifies all encores on its Website the day following the performance.)