There is going to be a lot of excellent music in this year’s Nuit Blanche, which kicks off tonight at 7 p.m. But if there were one event that I would beg and push my way into seeing, it would be French harpist Sylvain Blassel’s performance of the full Goldberg Variations at Koerner Hall.
- Classical Music 101: What Does A Conductor Do? - June 17, 2019
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Just as Glenn Gould proved to the world that J.S. Bach’s immortal Aria and interlinked variations, written for a two-manual harpsichord, could be played on a single, 88-key modern keyboard, Blassel proved to the world five years ago that it could be done on a concert harp’s 47 strings.
Not just done, but rendered in a heavenly way, capturing all the texture and counterpoint, but with the naturally softer, gentler harp sound.
The Goldbergs were commissioned in 1741 by Russian Count Keyserlingk to help him while away an insomniac’s interminable night. Had he heard them on a harp instead of the insistent tinkling of a harpsichord, it would have wafted him off to the Land of Nod on a magical cloud of sound.
Blassel already enchanted us at Koerner Hall on Monday night, as he teased us with far too little of the Goldbergs at the BACHanalia celebration of Gould’s 80th. After a work week filled with master classes, Blassel delivers the full suite tonight, as well as another one of his direct translations from a piano score, Ludwig van Beethoven’s fearsome final Sonata, the Op. 111 in C minor.
Blassel makes it look so easy — both technically and in the way he bounces onto a stage. But behind this fine show, this master is stretching the boundaries of what the harp player can do.
I caught up with Blassel ahead of one of this week’s master classes. He speaks with the energy and conviction of a true zealot, and with the perspective of a thinking musician (he has enjoyed a parallel career as a conductor with the new-music Ensemble Intercontemporain in Paris).
The 37-year-old professor from the Conservatory in Lyon says it took him four years to get the Goldberg Variations into his fingers. He modestly describes the process as “chaotic,” and the result, which was released on disc here in 2008, as “presentable.”
As with every other serious interpreter of Bach, Blassel sees his relationship with the music as an ever-evolving state. “It would be awfully boring if we played it like a music box, always the same,” he smiles.
“You can get lost inside this work,” he says of the Goldbergs. “There is an interdependence in all the variations. If you change the tempo in one, all of the others have to change as well.”
There are technical hurdles for the harp player to overcome that are first about getting the fingers to pluck the strings as quickly as possible when there are overlapping notes for right and left hands. Blassel plays from a facsimile of Bach’s first edition, so there are no shortcuts here.
Then, to play sharps or flats, the performer needs to work a set of seven pedals. That’s easy enough when a piece is in a single key, but turns into a lightning-speed tap-tance in chromatic passages littered with sharps, flats and naturals.
Then comes the issue of interpretation.
As I’ve explored over numerous posts recently, there is endless debate over how Bach should be played on a non-native instrument. In particular, there is the question of whether the performer should indulge in dynamic shading on a modern piano — or, in this case, the harp.
Blassel, echoing the sentiments of centuries, says everything needs to be done with good taste.
“What sort of new vision can the harp bring to this work?” asks the virtuoso rhetorically. “It’s a balance between voices,” he begins, then veers to a fascinating discussion about the relationship between tempo and movement when considering the Goldbergs as a whole.
Blassel points out how the strict tempo — the metronome speed — is similar through each set of three variations, but the flow of the music — its movement — is completely different from one to the next.
“Movement is the instrument’s gesture,” he says with a dash of poetic insight. With the application of will, insight and skill, the interpreter can make the fast feel slow and the slow pulse with quiet urgency.
“Without this trick, the Goldberg Variations can become the most boring piece of music ever written,” Blassel concludes.
He makes a similar analogy in discussing his other Nuit Blanche piece, the Beethoven Sonata.
“This is repertoire I adore,” he says of his plundering of piano scores.
“Yes, I am a ‘pianiste manqué'” he laughs in response to my suggestion. “But I am also trying to advance the repertoire for the harp. I want to show the world that it can do more than sweet glissandos and arpeggios. I also want to advance my technique as an interpreter.”
There has never been a piano in his life.
“When I was 3 years old, my parents took me to this absolutely horrible concert of pan flute and harp — I found a cassette of it just a few years ago and couldn’t believe how awful it was,” Blassel recalls. “I fell asleep during the concert, but, in my dreams, I must have been seduced by the sound of the harp.”
The journey still has a long way to go. Blassel has his desires set on performing all 32 of Beethoven’s piano sonatas, and he is working on Bach’s great, unfinished testament to Western music, The Art of the Fugue.
“It’s not hard on the hands,” he smiles. “But it’s very difficult on the head.”
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For a little bit more information on Nuit Blanche at the Telus Centre, click here. The citywide programme is here.
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In case you missed it here earlier this week, these are clips of Sylvain Blassel playing his own transcriptions of the Goldberg Variations. I’ve also added a sample of Blassel’s passion for Franz Liszt, a performance of the well-known Hungarian Rhapsody No. 2 written, of course, for the piano:
Here’s a tour of a modern harp very much like the one Blassel uses in the Liszt video, showing off how the pedals and string layout work to allow a player to tackle music in any key:
John Terauds
- Classical Music 101: What Does A Conductor Do? - June 17, 2019
- Classical Music 101 | What Does Period Instrument Mean? - May 6, 2019
- CLASSICAL MUSIC 101 | What Does It Mean To Be In Tune? - April 23, 2019
