As part of the sixth edition of the Musicales de Baabdath, the Austrian pianist Aaron Pilsan splendidly sounded, on Friday October 21 in the Saint-Joseph church in Monnot, his Bechstein like a baroque orchestra imbued with a few romantic colors, showing with careful sensitivity. The audacious program of the evening takes the audience to the heart of the Baroque period of Johann Sebastian Bach where the young musician embarks on a kind of musical pilgrimage to explore the circle of tonalities in the first book of the Well-tempered keyboard.
The work of Johann Sebastian Bach (1685-1750) is a seraphic symbiosis between tonal harmonic plenitude and contrapuntal luxuriance, erected into a religion. Old musical testament of pianists and keystone of the piano works of the Cantor of Leipzig, the Well-tempered keyboard is a nitescent excursion into the sacred universe of preludes and fugues where the composer claims, in the words of the French music critic Guy Sacre, all the antinomies: the pleasure of reason with the delight of the imagination. Composed of two opuses, this cult work reviews forty-eight diptychs, each consisting of a prelude and a fugue, and successively explores all the major and minor keys following an ascending chromatic order. On Friday, October 21, as part of the sixth season of Les Musicales de Baabdath, the Austrian pianist Aaron Pilsan offered a spellbinding anthological reading of the first book of the Well-tempered keyboard where exhilarating baroque inflections have scrupulously run through his piano discourse, intimately uniting eloquence and virtuosity. From the height of his twenty-seven years, the young musician has thus succeeded in plunging the Lebanese audience into an eminently exotic sensory experience, reflecting, through the twenty-four major and minor keys, human nature in “its prodigious and painful diversity, in its darkness as well as in its light”.
Velvet box
It is 8:10 p.m., the Austrian pianist kicks off the musical pilgrimage to the peaks of the Bachian Olympus with the prelude no.1 in C major, BWV 846. This monument of Baroque music immediately takes on, under the fingers of Pilsan, a dreamlike character where a grandiose and beatific melody seems to float, like the song of an angel heard in the nocturnal silence, through the murmur of trees, groves and waters, which perfectly suits the description by the eminent biographer of JS Bach, Philipp Spitta (1841-1894). Engaged in a stubborn quest for a musical ideal, the pianist continues with the fugue and meticulously polishes the slightest inflection of atmosphere, thus highlighting an expressive, majestic and even triumphant character, going hand in hand with the designation Maestoso by Carl Czerny (1791-1857). With the ostentatious clarity of his game, the protege of Lars Vogt continues his exploration of the Bach peaks by wearing each of these jewels on a velvet case. It follows an invisible Ariadne’s thread and immerses the public in the infinite universe of tones.
Following the radiant diptych in C major, the pianist navigates the dark labyrinth of the key of C minor (BWV 847), clearly reflecting a vehement passion. dexterity sui generis of Pilsan and its articulato well dosed, ranging just between the staccato very accented by Glenn Gould (1932-1982) and the legato to the romantic reminiscences of Ferruccio Busoni (1866-1924), gives this second prelude dark orchestral colors where the theme progresses impetuously until its tumultuous hum abruptly stops on the dominant. The elegant and high-quality sound also denotes the high level of its science of touch. We can only salute such a pianist who ingeniously manages to blend, with such accuracy and ardor, into heterogeneous characters, so that each of the forty-eight pieces performed constitutes in itself a rich and unique musical universe. .
Dramatic intensity
Among other things, the five-part Fugue No. 4 in C sharp minor, BWV 849, was unequivocally one of the most poignant moments of the first half of the concert, unveiling a plethora of unfathomable depths: this Bachian musical cathedral therefore escapes out of the circle of tangible realities, in an almost sacred will to impose a tace on a torturing and tortured sensibility. Aaron Pilsan demonstrates a refined lyricism and deploys a quasi-orchestral playing with a softened dramatic intensity that would have benefited from being more pronounced. But the sweet intoxication of his phrasing will immediately dissipate all reservations. Likewise, we will remember his imposing interpretations of the prelude and fugue no.8 in E flat minor, BWV 853, and no.10 in E minor, BWV 855, from which emanate an intoxicating passion, painful palpitations and fiery impetuosity. The balance between the sounds is overwhelming and brings the audience to introspection; the Austrian pianist does not, however, make the economy of the sostenuto pedal, but we can only approve of this choice, so much his speech is fluid and eloquent.
Fugue no.12 in F minor, BWV 857, marks the end of the first half of the first book of the Well-tempered keyboard. In this room, a solemn and serious atmosphere prevails, as implied by the Italian appellation severe. The lack of indications of nuances, ligatures, fingerings and tempo in the scores of JS Bach opens the door wide to an infinite margin of freedom within a straitjacket which does not however tolerate any excess of intention. Pilsan breathes fluttering harmonic colors into this piece, marked by a continuous oscillation between major and minor modes, but remains, however, in moderation. The fugue ends on a majestic Picardy cadenza where the light ends up bursting out of the ultra-black. If the second half of the concert reflects more romantic colors where the pedal becomes more and more omnipresent, the Austrian demonstrates an impeccable and measured sensitivity, which falls neither into an excess of exacerbated lyricism nor into a disembodied interpretative aridity. .
Learned silences
From the key of F sharp major to that of B minor, the Bachian rainbow becomes more and more complete under the dazzling fingers of Aaron Pilsan. A great energy in the accents and a virile rhythm will mark his interpretation of the prelude and fugue no.20 in A minor, BWV 865, where he meticulously constructs a plurality of sound levels in the rigorous respect of breaths and inflections. Pilsan distils, notably in the prelude, skilful silences highlighting an admirable dialogue between the left hand and the right hand. It is almost 9:30 p.m., it is high time to conclude this unforgettable recital with the last diptych that could unquestionably be called religious asshole. The virtuoso excellently highlights the shimmering harmonic changes where the bass quietly wanders and seems to represent inevitable destiny, “the regular march of time”, according to the description of German musicologist Hugo Riemann. What subtlety in the final fugue which silkily produces a pathos where the tearing is authentic, highlighting the human tragedy! At the end of this concert, we can only congratulate the organizers for having set the bar high by inviting a virtuoso of this caliber to perform in Lebanon.