LDV109

21 PHILIPPE BIANCONI What you’ve said about expressiveness and sensuality, but also your personal connection to Ravel’s works, prompt me to ask you about the degree of freedom that a performer can allow himself or herself with music of such meticulousness and discretion. Does the music give you scope for freedom of interpretation, and if so, how would you define that freedom? Although this crucial question of freedom arises whatever the repertory you’re tackling, it does become extremely acute when you’re playing Ravel. It would be very easy to conclude that you can’t permit yourself any leeway at all and to play the notes exactly as the composer decreed, but his quip was also a provocation! He had such an exact idea of how he wanted his music to sound that he was wary of the sometimes intrusive temperaments of the performers of his time and the initiatives they might take. I don’t have a personality that pushes me towards extravagance. But there’s that term ‘expressif’ which is everywhere in his music, unmissable! How do you realise it on the piano? Should you polish the contours of the phrase, the musical material, the piano sound to a peak of perfection, or concentrate on the agogic aspect, allowing yourself a relative rhythmic freedom in the way you phrase the music? In the Valses nobles et sentimentales , for example, should you delay the second beat of the bar slightly, as is customary in Viennese waltzes? Ravel’s music is more formal than organic; it has very classical lines, a bar structure. There is a typically Ravelian design that can also be found in the melodic element. In addition to its colour and its aquatic sonorities, Ondine contains an incredibly beautiful, overwhelmingly perfect melody. Should you simply play the notes and let it develop naturally? Do you need to add anything to it? Not to underline, not to strain for effect, but to let the phrase blossom, to allow it to breathe while striving to be expressive . . . that’s the difficulty of this music! It calls for tact and subtlety, and that often depends on tiny inflections.