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Jean Barraqué's Piano Sonata on disc · The Piano Maven with Jed Distler

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  Hello and welcome. This is Jed Disler and you are listening to the Piano Maven, your
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  friendly podcast guide to piano recordings. I'd like to talk about the piano sonata by
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  Jean Barraquet, the French composer who lived from 1928 until 1973. He composed his piano
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  sonata between 1950 and 1952. This is a large scale work that represents post-war serialism,
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  12-tone music in its most fundamental manifestation. And if you are familiar with the piano sonatas
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  of Pierre Boulez, the first sonata from 1946 and the second sonata from 1948, you will
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  get an idea of what Jean Barraquet's style is like. Boulez himself actually was kind of
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  dismissive about the Barraquet sonata. I interviewed Boulez back in the year 2000 and I asked him
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  about the Barraquet sonata and he said, oh, Barraquet was basically imitating my second
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  sonata. He just brushed it off. Maybe on the surface there's a kernel of truth to that,
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  but the Barraquet is very, very different from Boulez because it's cast in a single movement
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  that is divided into two continuous long sections. And the music often goes between large stretches
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  of dense dissonant flurries of notes and phrases and strategically placed silences. Of course,
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  being such a monumental work of total serialism, the Barraquet sonata has been written about
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  and analyzed and picked apart by scholars. But what about its effect on audiences? Is
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  this music emotionally compelling or is it just intellectually arid and even unlistenable?
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  I'm not going to decide that for you, but I am going to talk about the Barraquet sonata's
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  recordings. It was first recorded by Yvonne L'Oreal, the wife of Olivier Messiaen, and
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  she was a fervent champion of new music. And she recorded the Barraquet sonata. She made
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  its premiere recording in 1957 in the presence of the composer, and she was playing from
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  the manuscript. And apparently during the recording sessions, he made many modifications
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  and corrections. However, the sonata only got its first acknowledged public performance
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  in 1967, and it was done by the Danish pianist, Elisabeth Klein, not long after the sonata
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  was finally made available in print. It was published by Aldo Bruticcelli in Florence
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  in 1966. The second commercial recording of the Barraquet sonata came in 1969 with pianist
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  Claude Heffler on the Telefunken label. This has never been on CD so far as I know. There
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  also have been recent recordings by Chenpi Hissien on the Telos label and Stefan Litvin
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  on the CPO label. There's a live performance with Jean-Frederick Neuberger on the Mireille
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  label. I haven't yet heard Jean-Pierre Colot on the Winter and Winter label. And I also
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  have not heard a live concert recording in 1972 with Francois Tila that was only issued
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  in 2019 on the Solstice label. And this pianist prepared his interpretation under the composer's
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  supervision. I hope to hear that soon. The 1996 recording on the ECM label by Herbert
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  Henck should be talked about because this pianist actually went back to the manuscript and he
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  incorporated many, many corrections that eventually would find their way into the critical edition
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  that was published by Baron Reiter in 2019. But if I had to recommend one recording of
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  the Barraquet sonata, I would choose the one made in 1972 by Roger Woodward. He worked
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  on the piece with the composer. And in fact, Barraquet was so enthusiastic about Roger
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  Woodward's playing that he said that he would write a second piano sonata and he would dedicate
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  it to Roger Woodward. But at that time, the composer already was terminally ill and it
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  never happened. But in this performance, there's a real nervous energy to the virtuosic rapid
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  passages that go way beyond just playing the notes. And there's even a singing quality
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  to softer, more introspective passages. I first had this recording on LP when it came
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  out on the Unicorn label. I think it was also on the EMI label on LP in the United Kingdom.
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  But more recently, the Celestial Harmonies label brought Roger Woodward's Barraquet sonata
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  out on CD and remastered it from the original session tapes. In fact, many of Roger Woodward's
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  recordings from the 1970s have been reissued on Celestial Harmonies. So if you are curious
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  about the Barraquet sonata for whatever it's worth, I do recommend that you hear Yvonne
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  L'Oreal, of course, for historic reasons when the music was five years old and had no performing
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  tradition. Not that there is any real performing tradition to speak of these days. I mean,
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  very few people play it. And then I would also go to Herbert Henck for just his sheer
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  pianistic sheen and I guess also his meticulous observance of the text. But for a combination
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  of accuracy and a real feeling of performance, Roger Woodward on Celestial Harmonies is the
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  way to go with the Barraquet sonata. This is Jed Disler and you have been listening
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  to the Piano Maven podcast. Thank you for tuning in and happy listening.