The Gould touch
Francesco Tristano Schlimé records the Goldberg Variations in homage to Glenn Gould
We find ourselves today in an era of musical status quo. A Glenn Gould
would find it difficult now to claim a place in the sun. More and more
young pianists are trapped by “competition-think,” caught in a struggle
at once athletic and anti-woeful result is a universal leveling of
taste.
Happily, Francesco Tristano Schlimé’s nature is such
that it enters into a natural bond with music. Though showered with
first prizes in piano since his earliest youth, he comes to the rescue
of moribund individualism, transcending the stereotype of the
“competition animal.” “Chicho” (to his friends) has the divine
spark - the prerequisite sine qua non for attacking a score as mythical
as the Goldberg Variations, and this at an age when others are
still playing at video games. Despite a palpable inner tension, with a
certain cheekiness, without waiting, as would any number of his
colleagues, for riper years, he takes up the challenge, reinventing the
text with such inspired fantasy that we are compelled to listen to him.
If one had to trace a spiritual lineage, one would of course think of the “Gouldberg” Variations.
And it is no accident that this disc should appear 20 years after the
death of the Canadian genius who poured everything, both technically
and musically, into this summation (originally written to ease the
nightly vigils of a lifelong insomniac) in order that it might not
suffer the ravages of time. As Schlimé’s own essay in the accompanying
booklet makes clear, this recording is intended frankly and openly as
“homage to Glenn Gould.”
And how it flies along! With a total
absence of apparent effort, even - or especially - in the most tempestuous
passages. Without pedal, without rubato (except in the air), in a
clear, ascetic light, yet with the flashy severity, diabolical
staccato, and annoying intellectual posturing of the Canadian idol
toned down. A poet of manifest sensitivity whose gift is to reconcile
rigor and warmth, Schlimé colors, illumines, shades the diverse
registers of this music that he breathes through every pore, a
latter-day Rimbaud!
Two pieces no less infused with verse round out the album: a transcription by Nauomoff of the organ chorale O Mensch, bewein dein’ Sünde gross (BWV 622) and an arrangement by the pianist himself of another well-known Bach chorale, Wachet auf, ruft uns die Stimme.
All of this, thanks to an unrivaled interpreter, is terribly exciting.
One can only admire the limpidity of the ascending and descending
figures in the 23rd variation, or the balance of the two hands in the
27th. Plucking out notes more willingly than he binds them together
(the canon at the octave in the 24th variation), Schlimé never forgets
to sing, favoring melody over rhythm in the 18th. Playful in the lively
episodes (the astonishing 14th variation), contemplative in the slow
passages (the andante of the 15th), always lucid and balanced, he
confers on the 25th variation the crepuscular melancholy of a Chopin
nocturne.
We are a long way from those Goldberg performances
tricked out like a metronome in a powdered wig. The performance here
breathes, it sings forthrighty, it gives the impression of discovering
the score moment by moment (the appoggiaturas of the first variation,
the trills of the seventh). Even if, at 21, our pianist doesn’t strive
to give an air of eternity to the founding monument that is the Goldberg Variations,
he has a way of taking possession of the instrument, of giving life to
the least musical element that remains quite captivating, quite
fascinating.
Without pretending to have penetrated once and
for all - who could? - the secret of this air of 32 measures, so simple in
appearance, that serves as a base from which Johann-Sebastian Bach will
launch a stupefying festival of invention and imagination, the young
Luxembourg prodigy is right to focus on the palette of possible colors,
on differences in climate and sensibility, on varieties of touch. By
these means he keeps his distance from the master he reveres and from
that master’s Spartan approach to an enigmatic work whose mathematical
abstraction favors the most authentic emotion instead of restraining
it, and whose learned variations justify all possible exuberance.
A piano lesson, or, better, a voyage of initiation that sweeps you up and won’t let go.
José Voss, Letzebuerger Land, 15 octobre 2002
Translation by Marc Getlein
(The Goldberg Variations were
recorded in Philharmonic Hall in Warsaw between the 22nd and 28th of
May, 2001. The sound is well defined, offering detail, depth, and
transparency. Timing: 70’15”. An accompanying booklet of texts about
the work and its interpreter, featuring citations from the writings of
Thomas Bernhard, Nelson Goodman, and Bruce Brubaker, is published in
Polish, English, French, and German. The cover illustration is by
Tung-Wen Margue.)
