Pierre-Arnaud Dablemont, pianist » Dvorak

Ecoute, Ecoute! C’est moi, c’est Ondine (Ravel – Gaspard de la nuit)

Pierre-Arnaud — Wed, 12 Oct 2011 10:00:54 +0000

Today, We will pursue the exploration of my album’s Track list with Ravel. Not that we’re done with Janáček yet, believe me, but let’s take a little detour by one of my favorite pieces ever, Gaspard de la nuit. For those who know me close enough, they know how I adore this piece and that I could speak about it for hours. Written in 1908, during a very dark period of the composer’s life, it represents for me the quintessence of piano writing. From a technical point of view, of course, this dense triptych is still considered as the most difficult work for piano in the standard repertoire. But more than this, the piece shows such a large range of colors and emotions that it requires from the pianist a heart, sensitiveness, creativeness and imagination more than in any other piano work. The thing is: with Gaspard de la nuit, you can’t cheat. You can’t pretend to be anything but what you are.

The first piece of Gaspard de la nuit is Ondine. So my first question is: what is an ondine? To keep it short, an ondine is a water nymph or water spirit. Interesting fact about ondines: Ondines are said to be able to gain a soul by marrying a man and bearing his child. Other interesting fact about ondines: they are supposed to have a beautiful voice and sing to charm men. Ondines are popular characters in literature as well as in music (I’m thinking especially about Dvořák’s Rusálka as the perfect example).

Reading Aloysius Bertrand’s poem (epigraph to Ondine), we clearly understand the picture: An Ondine comes out of the lake, tries to charm a man. She’s singing a song telling him she’s a princess and has a marvellous liquid castle. Of course, she asks the man to marry her, but he refuses, saying he already loves a mortal. She “wept a few tears, burst out laughing and vanished in showers that formed white trickles down my blue windowpanes” (Aloysuis Bertrand).

Why am I telling this story? Because Gaspard de la nuit is program music. How could I deny that? Ravel sticks to the poem and expresses in music what Aloysius Bertrand expresses in words. Let’s take two easy examples.

Ondine begins with a sort of tremelo (right hand) and a beautiful melody (left hand).

In this beginning, you can make a connection with two elements qualifying Ondine : water (the “tremolos”) and her singing (the melody). The narrative content is here : Ravel describes the scene for us. In the background, water flows. In the foreground, Ondine is singing.

Let’s now take the last part of the poem : She [...] Burst out laughing and vanished in showers that formed white trickles down my blue windowpanes. Now, have a look at the last page of the score:

Isn’t this fast ascending arpeggio with a crescendo to fortissimo a musical burst of laughter? And aren’t the following descending arpeggiandos perfectly expressing Ondine vanishing in showers?

Ravel is generally considered to be one of the greatest impressionists. He didn’t like this categorization at all and wrote music far from being impressionist (Concerto in G for example) but in Ondine he uses fast movements of sounds in the pianissimo dynamic, explores timbres of the piano, finds new sound effects and place the colour of sound in the foreground. So typically impressionist.

Ravel choose in the first of Gaspard de la nuit to tell us the story of Ondine using his musical talent as a narrative technique and carefully selected his colors to depict the scene as he pictured it. That’s why, when listening to Ondine, I expect the pianist to be creative enough with sound effects, colors and textures to be able to tell me this dense story. That’s one of the challenge of Gaspard.

This was my first post about Ondine and in the next one, we’ll still talk about Ondine, but more specifically about Ravel’s experiments in this piece, featuring, as a guest star, Hermann von Helmholtz.

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My magic place

Pierre-Arnaud — Thu, 28 May 2009 06:00:55 +0000

When I started this blog, I promised to share with you things of my daily life that no one or few see. However, I haven’t yet showed you the place where I spend most of my time. Being not an expert in photography, you will have to excuse the pictures’ quality. These ones are clickable, so you can admire them in large format. Enjoy!

In the picture opposite, the view from “my” classroom at the conservatoire: the classroom number 74.

As you can see, the classroom 74, my professor František Maxián’s one, has an unobstructed view of the Prague Castle, the river Vltava and Malá Strana neighborhood. What a joy to work in such a beautiful setting! A bit of pianistic melancholy and I just have to turn my head to be immersed in the beauty of a city that everyone admire. Sometimes, when looking out of the window, I imagine Kafka, Mozart and Smetana strolling along the banks of the Vltava. This clear and (so) beautiful view is a miracle that allows me to practice calmly!

I like this room, I find refuge there. The two pianos are not really good, it is not particularly pretty, but I won many battles and I still have many thoughts there. This is my little laboratory: my life as a pianist has developed between its walls. I like to work there because I feel out of this world and rarely someone comes to interrupt me. This room is full of memories, many great pianists played there: Richter, Indjic, Maxian to mention a few.

In the back of the room, on the wall, there is this huge portrait of Rafael Kubelik, a great Czech conductor, who observes us. Sometimes I hear him saying that a pianist is like a conductor, he must understand structures and layers, but has only ten fingers and has to conduct them like if it was a whole orchestra. “Each finger is like a singing voice” Samson François said…

In the picture opposite, you can see the famous corridor of piano department. On the left wall, the portraits of former directors of the Conservatory. In the back, right after the door, there are the executive secretaries, anteroom of the Director’s office. And just next to this door, you can see on the right the bust of Antonín Dvořák, also former director of the Prague Conservatory.

So this is a part of my universe. In this room 74, I have built a good part of my musical future and I thank it for always accepting me although I sometimes mistreated it…

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The New World Symphony

Pierre-Arnaud — Sat, 13 Sep 2008 12:44:43 +0000

Being in Prague and attending the conservatory, I’ve had A LOT of Dvorak… The New World Symphony, i.e. the ninth, is played everywhere. I hear it at least once a week.

What it has to do with what I want to tell you today? Well I’d like to introduce you to David Christoffel, author of Assimix, Ma newsletter du dimanche (My sunday’s newsletter) and “other epistolarities especially electronic” as he says himself. Today, his Solfiage has caught my attention. (Click on the link so you can listen to it on Arte Radio.)

“In order to learn a new piece, musicians and classical singers practice the solfiage. To solfy, it’s to sing the melody by naming the notes: C, D, E… David solfied for us an extract of Antonin Dvorak’s ’New World Symphony’.”

The result? I love it and from now on, I can’t listen to Dvorak anymore quite the same way…
Thanks for having renewed my experience of a symphony I’ve heard a million times.

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Pierre-Arnaud Dablemont, pianist » Dvorak

Ecoute, Ecoute! C’est moi, c’est Ondine (Ravel – Gaspard de la nuit)

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My magic place

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The New World Symphony

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