On Arte Concert, Rachmaninov on the Swiss lands of his exile

ARTE CONCERT – ON DEMAND – CONCERT

Sergueï Rachmaninov (1873-1943) obviously did not play in the concert hall of the Lucerne Culture and Congress Center (KKL Luzern), delivered in 1998 by the Artec Consultants team of Russell Johnson, for the acoustics, and the architect Jean Nouvel. But the exiled Russian pianist and composer lived for a long time in the region, where he built, in 1932, on the shores of Lake Lucerne, a villa which was his residence before the war blocked him in the United States, where he will die.

In this room with exceptional acoustics occurs every summer the semi-permanent elite orchestra associated with the Lucerne Festival. Founded in 1938 by Ernest Ansermet and Arturo Toscanini – in response to the Nazification of Salzburg Festival –, the training continued until 1993.

Ten years later, at the instigation of the enterprising new director of the festival, Michael Haefliger, it came back to life, made up of members of the greatest international orchestras and renowned soloists and chamber musicians who come to immerse themselves in the symphonic bliss that ‘they usually only know from the outside. The result is magical.

The death of Claudio Abbadowho had relaunched the Lucerne Festival Orchestra, did not put an end to the adventure, which was taken over by another great ultramontane conductor, Riccardo Chailly, like his older brother, familiar with the Central European repertoire. In Lucerne, Chailly pursues a Rachmaninoff cyclecombining a symphony with a concerto.

Lunar Pierrot

This year the Piano Concerto No. 2 (1900) and the Symphony No. 2 (1906-1907) are on the program: two river works, with an oceanic texture, in which it is very common to hear the most revolting complacency bathed in rose water. Not the kind of Chailly, nor the Japanese pianist Mao Fujita.

The young man, 23, with the airs of Pierrot lunaire in a black silk tunic, seems to discover with the wonder of a first time the symphonic setting of this composition: this is what his face seems to express, listening to the orchestra’s sublime carpet of strings which introduces the second movement.

But his interpretation of the concerto is thoughtful, subtle, sometimes a little too much, as if the Japanese wanted to bring the work back to its classical sources. From this point of view, it is successful: one would even believe to hear Mendelssohn in the finale, where Fujita seems to want to sift any crackling virtuoso.

But what a musician! The “Bis”, a piece for violin by Bach arranged by Rachmaninoff, shows it perfectly, with the skillfully designed progression of texture. As for Riccardo Chailly, he continues to be ideal in this music, to which he grants all the appropriate pathos, that is to say always much less than is usually believed.

Rachmaninov Concert, by Mao Fujita (piano), Lucerne Festival Orchestra, Riccardo Chailly (conductor). (Fr., 2022, 118 min). On Arte.tv until December 10.

Renaud Machart