Concertos pour piano numéros 23 et 27

Description

On May 15, 2016, Menahem Pressler returned to Magdeburg, which he had fled as a teenager chased by the Nazis, to celebrate his 93rd birthday. A Mozart evening, to soothe memories, to rediscover a lost life, two concertos in serene tempos, played on a luminous, effusive keyboard, where each phrase speaks of clarity. How can one not perceive the emotion that surfaces behind this elegant touch, which refuses the chic of embellishment to better reveal the deep song of Mozart, his nostalgia that dusts the harmonic richness of his discourse with a tender and profound midnight blue. Admirable, whether for the nuanced discourse of K 488, or for the more theatrical gesture of K. 595, which Pressler lightens, playing it entirely in the garden, and what a garden! That of the Nozze, a concerto of comedy, deliciously piquant and suddenly shadowed by a melancholy that this touch knows all the variables of. The orchestra modestly aligns itself with great musicality to the subtleties of the pianist, who plays as if for himself from scores loved since adolescence, embodying his asides, his silences, understanding how this fragile world is held together only by the emotion hidden at the heart of an art where everything is suggested. A magical evening even in its three timeless encores: listen to the Nocturne in C-sharp minor; if it doesn't carry you far away, I can't help you (Discophilia - Artalinna.com). (Jean-Charles Hoffelé)