Search - Legato: The World of the Piano: Pierre-Laurent Aimard - Not Just One Truth on DVD

An Aimard Feast

J Scott Morrison | Middlebury VT, USA | 08/16/2009

(5 out of 5 stars)

"Pierre-Laurent Aimard is one of the handful of truly great pianists before the public today. He is equally effective in the classics and in cutting-edge modern music, the latter skill very likely incubated in his early involvement with Pierre Boulez's Ensemble Intercontemporain and his long studies with Yvonne Loriod (pianist wife of Olivier Messiaen). This DVD contains three distinct parts. There is a thirty-minute 'Portrait' that follows Aimard's preparation for the concert contained herein. In it are conversations between Aimard and Elliott Carter as well as Bach scholar Christoph Wolff. Then the concert, 75 minutes long and given at Munich's Akademie der Schönen Künste on March 5, 2008, follows. And then there is a long and far-ranging conversation (73 mins) between Aimard and this DVD's director, the music documentarian Jan Schmidt-Garre (whose filming of Marc-André Hamelin I raved about a couple of years ago Marc-André Hamelin: No Limits - The World of the Piano, Vol. 2. These DVDs are part of an ongoing series of discs about pianists made by Schmidt-Garre, a man who clearly loves and knows a great deal about pianists and their concert literature.

The works on the Recital are shown in a small image of the back of the DVD box on this page but it is difficult to read the tiny print. The works:

Bach: Five excerpts (all in four-part polyphony) from 'Art of Fugue', including incendiary performances of the Contrapunctus No. 4 and the Canon per augmentationem in contrario motu

Elliott Carter: (in honor of his 100th birthday): Matribute; Two Diversions, Nos. 1 & 2; and Caténaires (the latter written for Aimard)

George Benjamin: Shadowlines (a six movement suite in 'spatial counterpoint'). Benjamin is a British composer, a phenomenon as a young composer who is now approaching fifty. He studied extensively with Messiaen.

Beethoven: Sonata No. 31 in A flat major, Op. 110 (Aimard's playing of the Adagio - Fuga final movement is a marvel of poetry and craft.)

Aimard comes across as not just an extraordinary musician, but as a fiercely intelligent man whose motto, he says, is 'Not Just One Truth', which is the title of this DVD. He also seems humble, humorous and gentle. I certainly will never miss the opportunity to hear Aimard live when he is anywhere near my part of the world. He is very nearly one of a kind.

Strongly recommended for Aimard fans and pianophiles in general.

TT: Portrait 30 mins; Recital 75 mins; Interview 73 mins; Format: NTSC 16.:9; Sound: PCM stereo; DD 5.1; DTS 5.1; DD 2.0 (Portrait & Interview); Subtitles: English, German, French, Spanish; Region code: 0 (worldwide)

Scott Morrison"