LDV73

27 JEAN-PHILIPPE COLLARD To get back to Chopin, whom you have served a great deal in your career, he has in common with Granados a kind of elevation of the salon style to the universal level, an aristocratic elegance, somewhere between nonchalance and heroism, and also a prominent vocal colouring; and a taste for the dance, of course. Not to mention his sensuality and his sometimes frenzied lyrical power. How can the performer reconcile all these qualities without getting lost in a forest of intentions, at the risk of neglecting the overall structure of the text? The parallel with Chopin is a tempting one, since the common denominator of these two composers is the quest for a permanent lyricism. And it’s true that this absolute need to sing, which presides over all the contours of the work and is the driving force for one’s playing when one adds rhythm, colours, sensuality and so forth, does tend to disturb the correct functioning of the work’s architecture. So many stated intentions, superimposed in layers, require careful navigation from the keyboard. The risk is not so much of losing control of the execution, but rather of using extreme interpretative licence in performing the text to adapt the score to one’s own technical possibilities. Granados the pianist possessed instrumental capacities deriving from a very rare and complete technical mastery. When he came to produce his sound, you can hear that he was capable of instantaneously giving it a thousand inflections, a thousand intentions dictated by his mood of the moment and the promptings of his soul. Fromthat point of view, the gesture of the interpreter is also that of the painter!