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Françoise Chaffiaud Plays Bach · The Piano Maven with Jed Distler

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  This is Jed Dissler and welcome to the Piano Maven, your friendly podcast guide to piano
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  recordings.
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  A few years ago, somebody gave my pianist friend Jerry Kuderna a disc that had music
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  of J.S. Bach played on a vintage Steinway piano dating from around 1910.
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  It was a small instrument that had a slightly nasal timbre, but there was a real clarity
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  and distinction between all of the registers, or let's say in each register.
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  And the pianist was a French musician who I had never heard of whose name was Françoise
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  Chafiot.
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  She was born in 1942 and she studied with both Yvon Lefebure and with Alfred Courtaud.
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  And she is very active these days giving master classes.
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  Anyway, Jerry had called me up to say, I just discovered this wonderful Bach player and
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  I would love to play this for you.
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  So I said sure.
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  So the next time I was out in the Bay Area, he put on the disc and he told me just to
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  listen and he didn't tell me who was playing, but he just wanted me to listen without asking
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  who was playing.
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  I was completely mesmerized by this performance of the A minor Prelude and Fugue of Bach for
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  organ in the Franz Liszt transcription.
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  I was impressed by the naturalness of the phrasing and how this pianist was trying to
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  get the maximum expressive and coloristic potential out of this piano's peculiar tonal
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  characteristics.
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  The Prelude was grand, but the Fugue was relatively relaxed and held back.
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  And then I heard the B flat minor Prelude and Fugue from the Well-Tempered Clavier Book
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  1.
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  And the slow tempo for the Prelude didn't sound ponderous or ceremonial as it often
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  can be, but the music simply flowed in the hands of this pianist.
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  And there were very subtle shifts in balance between the hands to clarify the lines.
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  And these words apply also to the C major Prelude and Fugue from Book 1.
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  Actually the Fugue in C major had almost an ethereal deliberation that was quite haunting
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  and I really loved it.
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  Anyway, after I was listening for a while, Jerry told me that this pianist was Francoise
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  Chauffeaux and he let me look at the cover and I kept listening to the disc and I kept
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  loving every bit of it.
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  For example, the combination of Bach's French Suite No. 5 in G major, this particular instrument,
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  and the pianist's imaginative fingerwork made for an ideal trifecta.
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  She finds the right balance in this suite between sustained and detached phrasings and
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  her ornamentation is just delicious and totally appropriate, not too much and not too little.
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  Often when you hear the E minor toccata, that concluding fugue can sound very note-y and
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  it can sound like it's going on forever and ever, but there's a lot of internal shaping
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  in this performance that manages to hold your attention.
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  Maybe I would have wanted more improvisatory ardor in the chromatic fantasy than what Francoise
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  Chauffeaux gives us, but the understated eloquence of her phrasing in the Bach-Bussoni Nuncom
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  der Heiden-Heiland and in the Meyerhess transcription of Jesu Joy of Man's Desiring gives the impression
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  of the music unfolding on its own without having an interpreter's interface.
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  This disc, by the way, was released in two editions.
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  It came out on the Sirius label, that's S-Y-R-I-U-S. It had the catalogue number S-Y-R-1-4-3-3-9,
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  but it also was released on the Parnassi label with a catalogue number P-A-R-59.
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  So you can look for it in both of these incarnations.
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  You will see that I have provided a link to an episode from my weekly radio show Between
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  the Keys where I devoted the entire hour to recordings by Francoise Chauffeaux, and I've
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  also posted a link to the pianist's website.
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  So you can hear for yourself just what a special and personal musician and pianist she is.
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  By the way, Francoise Chauffeaux and I were going to play Four Hands in concert this past
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  year.
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  The concert had to be put off, but I do hope that we will collaborate in the future.
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  I really hope that we do because I know that I would learn an enormous amount from her,
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  and I've already learned a lot from exploring her artistry on disc, and I hope you will
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  as well.
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  This is Jed Disler, and you've been listening to the Piano Maven, your friendly podcast
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  guide to piano recordings.
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  Thank you for joining me, and I look forward to being with you next time.