Bertrand Chamayou

Bertrand Chamayou is back with an Odyssey that almost only he is capable of these days: the complete piano works of Ravel. A recital in the form of a tribute to the great French composer on the 150th anniversary of his birth.

Although he was not himself a virtuoso, we know that Ravel found all his ideas at the piano, as close as possible to the wood, the keyboard and the strings. This almost fusional proximity no doubt explains the spell exerted by his keyboard music, so contrasting and yet so coherent, with an instantly recognisable style. Sometimes thrifty, sometimes revolutionary, almost always modest, he offers us an album of nothing but marvels. Irresistible, the classicism of the Sonatine, between wisdom and exaltation; prodigious, the kaleidoscope of the Miroirs; sober and heart-rending, the song of the Tombeau de Couperin, a tribute to the dead of the Great War; bewitching, the liveliness of the Jeux d'eau; surprising, the Valses nobles et sentimentales which reinvent dance, degreasing it, roughing it up, metamorphosing it... And in this temple, like a dark diamond, lies Gaspard de la nuit : a masterpiece of piano modernity born of the dreams of Aloysius Bertrand, whose frenetic, indescribable concluding "Scarbo" pushes the limits of the piano.