Suites pour violoncelle seul, integrale

Description

Among the artists who crossed paths with Benjamin Britten, one extraordinary figure captured the English composer’s attention: Mstislav Rostropovich. The rapport that developed between the two men led to the creation of a sonata for cello and piano, premiered on July 7, 1961 at the Aldeburgh Festival, and the Symphony for cello and orchestra, which Rostropovich gave its first performance in the main hall of the Moscow Conservatory on March 12, 1964. The Russian musician recounted, with his customary humor, the circumstances surrounding the creation of the 3 Suites for cello by his illustrious British friend: “[...] Britten was to introduce me to Princess Mary (the Queen Mother’s sister), who lived at Harewood Castle in Yorkshire. I decided that I should make a curtsy with a 360° turn and a genuflection — roughly what I had seen done in Tchaikovsky ballets at the Bolshoi. Benjamin, terrified at the thought of such extravagance, spent most of the journey trying to dissuade me. [...] Just before arriving at Harewood, we stopped in Lincoln for lunch. Britten was in a state of near panic. That was when I had a flash of genius. I grabbed a restaurant menu and drafted a contract on it, half in German, half in gibberish, which began as follows: ‘I, the undersigned, Benjamin Britten, in exchange for the elimination of the curtsy that Slava was to make to Her Royal Highness, undertake to write him three major works for cello.’ He signed and soon fulfilled his contract: thus were born three works of genius, the three Suites for solo cello.” After Bach’s suites, Britten’s suites are the second summit cellists must face in their lives. True masterpieces of musicality requiring a more than demanding technique, these three monuments are among those pieces one spends a lifetime refining. The young Antoine Pierlot has set out to conquer these peaks and offers us his great virtuosity in this program recorded live at the Flâneries Musicales de Reims. He makes his instrument sing just as well in the broad declamation opening Suite No. 2 as in the nervous pizzicatos of the “serenata” from Suite No. 1, or in the galloping ricochets, full of Iberian nobility, of the “marcia.” Antoine Pierlot triumphed in 2009 in the cloister of Saint-Remi in Reims with the three Bach suites. His mastery of his instrument and his extreme musicality need no further praise. The lineage from Bach to Britten is obvious. Antoine Pierlot has no trouble convincing us of it.