Customer Reviews

Ravel: Gaspard de la nuit; Carter: Night Fantasies; Two Diversions; 90+

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"Thorny," "knotty," "craggy," and "acerbic" are some of the unflattering adjectives that unsympathetic critics have used to describe Elliott Carter's "Night Fantasies" since the work's premiere in 1980. Those clichés will have to be retired now en masse as a result of Pierre-Laurent Aimard's marvelously lucid account of Carter's 22-minute meditation on insomnia. Aimard brings a light touch to the sudden mood swings; even the more aggressive sections seem lyrical in comparison to some other readings. (The work has been recorded commercially seven times. Like the composer's Duo for Violin and Piano, it has found a lot of champions in its short life. One sees it entering the mainstream repertoire as time goes on.) Also noteworthy is Aimard's precise pedaling, which gives a haunting, almost ominous quality to many of the soft passages. It is a captivating reading that ranks alongside my two favorites, those of Stephen Drury and Ursula Oppens.

Lucidity is also the watchword in the three other, shorter gems by Carter on the disk: 90+ and the Two Diversions. On a bonus disk, Aimard gives a 25-minute lecture on the music -- in English as well as French and German, for those of you who swing that way. He illustrates his points with plenty of musical examples, separating Carter's conflicting juxtapositions into their separate lines and then putting them back together. Neither overlong nor overly technical, the presentation added a lot to my appreciation of the music, and I've known this work for years. Listen closely, though; Aimard speaks English softly, with an accent.

The CD also includes a fine performance of Ravel's Gaspard de la Nuit, chosen, evidently, as a second nocturne to complement the Night Fantasies. On the bonus disk, Aimard describes the work as a clocklike mechanism, and his precise yet delicate interpretation reflects that attitude.

I have heard several recordings of Ravel's Gaspard de la Nuit, but I enjoy Aimard's performance the most. The wonderful color palette, subtle and wonderful sense of line and musical style, sensitive use of dynamics, and superb clarity, and more make for a great performance. The works by Carter are played beautifully also. I heartily recommend this recording.

I've been a huge Aimard fan, but this CD is a major disappointment. One would think this French pianist armed with staggering technique would provide a landmark Gaspard recording, but this performance is nothing of the sort. He grossly underplays the sensuality and poetry throughout, and virtually ignores the devilry in Scarbo. Oddly enough, his Night Fantasies is excellent--he nicely clarifies the thorny textures. Unless you want a curiously neutral performance of the Ravel, I'd skip this CD.

Pierre-Laurent Aimard is one of the most brilliant pianists now on the scene, especially brilliant in his understanding and performance of contemporary music. Several notable pianists have performed and recorded Elliott Carter's NIGHT FANTASIES, but Aimard's is the most lucid and effective. AND it is accompanied by a 20+ minute illustrated analysis of this remarkable piece (with French and German versions, also spoken by Aimard), on an accompanying disc. The Ravel is beautiful.

Pierre-Laurent Aimard is a leading performer and interpreter of the contemporary piano repertoire. His recording of Ligeti's etudes, for instance, in the Ligeti Edition series, is amazing (see my review). This particular disc is a brilliant concept, combining two piano nocturnes by Ravel and Carter. Ravel's "Gaspard de la nuit," (Kaspar of the Night -- 23'10") is a lively and accessible piece in three movements, written in 1908. Based on the poetic fantasies of Aloysius Bertrand, the imagery features a water nymph, a gnome, and a scene at a gallows.

Carter's "Night Fantasies" (22'13"), written in 1978-80, does have a minimally programmatic content -- Carter says it is "a piano piece of continuously changing moods, suggesting the fleeting thoughts and feelings that pass through the mind during a period of wakefulness at night" -- but it is more complex and abstract than Ravel's sonata (are you surprised?). Carter utilizes one of his characteristic structural elements, contrasting meters, here of course in the right and left hand instead of different instruments or components of an orchestra. Also included are two shorter pieces by Carter, "Two Diversions (7'37) and "90+" (5'29").

Carter's sonata has been recorded several times already, but I am not sorry that I waited until now to hear it. Aimard has gone to great lengths to make the work accessible, through his sensitive interpretation, through the combination with Ravel, and through a 25-minute tutorial on the bonus disc, in English, French and German. Aimard gently leads the listener through the works' structure, in a smooth, easy-to-take voice, illustrating with passages on piano.

Overall, a great new disc from Warner Classics, presenting a master of modern piano!

Do we need yet another recording of Carter's "Night Fantasies"?? No I doubt it, although Aimard is such a wonderful performer, sensitive to the music's context, intellectual to all the vagaries,timbres and forms of modernist expression that it is indeed difficult to merely ignore and skate across this CD. Yes "Night Fantasies" is a very good work,a master-work for some probing the whys and wherefors of the Master Signifiers in Music; typical Carter with his interst in cross-referencing of materials, cloistered chorals, 'fugitive' filigree fast furioso wistful lines as interruptions, points of differing,differed timbre, cross diagonal poly-rhythms,telescoping of "what-is-to-come" expansion,more time expended,(longer metrical values) contractions of time,of gesture, of moment, modulations of pulse,so you know something some materials are changing and transforming themselves, all this/these technical aspects has its curiosity and I am sure Carter's music is studied late night within the cloistered preserved citadels of academia,(I can smell the high ceilinged wood beams,gables and cathedral like and white, vanilla hued plastered walls)but this is a rare piece of music for Carter,for he had a need to write a piece going back to the genre of the "nocturne" of the introspection contained in/of Schumann,the private gaze into oneself, and as extroverted as many of the moments are here,the piece suggests something beyond itself,perhaps the genre of musical history explored and re-explored. I think Aimard understands this at some level judging from his rather self-conscious comments,(included here on another CD and we really cannot say that for all the pianists who have played this work, many we will never know.
Likewise Ravel's three movement phantasy here has wonderful,points, a work also based upon contractions and expansions of time,floating,gesticulating,summoning imagery across time/ Aimard treats Ravel's advanced timbre like nature,as a labyrinth to enter, to proclaim like something erupting from beneath a place, perhaps below the piano,all with technical clarity,and Aimard sacrifices the pulse if it means a poetic moment that we will remember.

Likewise the two piano studies here more Carter the "90+" with its array of contrasting struck and sustained moments, the articulations for students hopefully and the "Two Diversions" is great stuff to begin of the modern repertoire, But not a place to simply begin and END with Carter but go on to explore other more interesting parts of the repertoire. Of course the highlight on this 2 CD box is Aimard commenting on all that is played, and his imagery and the factual background I thought was a bit self-conscious,with coangulated,arduous phrasings,and overlabored metaphorical references,perhaps the three languages does that,English, French and German; the content looses something in translation.

While the music of Maurice Ravel and Elliott Carter could hardly be more different, they both sought in grand piano works to express the mystery of the night. On this Warner Classics release from 2005, the great pianist Pierre-Laurent Aimard, famed for his command of contemporary repertoire, presents these noctural imaginings.

The Ravel contribution is "Gaspard de la nuit" (1908). This was my introduction to Ravel's brand of musical impressionism, and while I'm not intrigued enough to want to seek out more of his work, this was entertaining enough. I found especially moving the second movement, where the continual sounding of a B flat is said to represent the tolling of a bell heard from a gallows.

Eliott Carter's main contribution is "Night Fantasies" (1980), his most substantial piece for solo piano. It's a single-movement beast clocking in at over 20 minutes. Except for its rhythmic zest, Carter's trademark "tempo modulation", this isn't a whole lot different on the ears than the Darmstadt serialist piano classics. This is a piece I admire but cannot love. The virtuosity is impressive, but there's only room in my heart for one such bleep-bloopy piano work, and that's Boulez's Second Sonata.

The disc is filled out by two later Carter piano works which are very representative of the composer's most recent output in their short lengths and small proportions. "90+" for piano (1994) was written as a 90th birthday greeting for Goffredo Petrassi. It begins as a slow count of 90 beats, around which there are chords and little keyboard runs. This may be the most technically transparent piece of the composer's maturity, and it has proven surprisingly popular among a contemporary music demographic that might not usually go for Carter's music.

"Two Diversions" (1999) is not as well known, but deserves to reach a wider audience. The first, like "90+", retains a perceptual beat under his characteristic tempo wizardry. The second is more florid with lots of virtuoso touches in efervescent harmonies that are a delight to the ear.

Aimard is something of an outsider to Carter's piano music. The composer has mainly collaborated with Charles Rosen and Ursula Oppens, and you can still track down recordings by those pianists which I sense as a bit more definitive than Aimard's go.

We also get a bonus CD featuring a 25-minute talk by Aimard in three languages (English, French, German). His comments on the Ravel are elementary, but his illustrated introduction to the piano music of Elliott Carter might be very instructive for those new to the capricious music of the American modernist who seeks to represent a range of conversing personalities in his music.