It was once again a pleasure to experience a meandering, shimmering matinee. For classical pianist Lester Van Loock in this edition of BelLISSAma 'Belcanto & bella musica', this time not a supporting role, but standing in the spotlight and shining.
Van Loock lets the audience follow along in his emotional portfolio in intimate conversations between pianist and composer. Van Loock is a dynamic musician who constantly reinvents himself. An instrumentalist who excels not only technically. He has a solid background, knows where the music comes from and enriches it with his own emotion. He turns inward, breaks free, lets the music shimmer, explode in a sonic blast.
Van Loock makes the audience part of his musical universe ranging from playful and explosive to hushed and intimate. For two hours, a tumultuous sonic landscape unfolds. With emotional turbulence, he brings all those feelings to life. Spring manifests itself in scents and colors. A kind of lightness and playfulness settles in. Also found in W.A. Mozart's '12 Variations on 'Ah, vous dirai je maman' K.265/300'. When he heard this children's tune in Paris in 1778, commonly known as 'Poor little Jack is always sick, midweek, but not on Sunday!', creativity started bubbling up in him. Spielerei of the highest order. An inventive handling of notes and rhythms. The variation and intensity is genius. You simply become happy from it. Amusing detail: Lester Van Loock breathes music from head to toe. The pattern on his socks is a piano keyboard.
From playful to a composition with body
‘Gaspard de la nuit M.55' by Maurice Ravel. A very special work composed in 1908. Ravel wanted to test how many sound colors could come from a piano. He found inspiration in the macabre prose ballads of Aloysius Bertrand. It comprises three fierce, atmospheric pieces 'Ondine', 'Le Gibet' and 'Scarbo' that place extremely high technical and interpretive demands on the pianist. In the first part 'Ondine', the water nymph, you constantly hear the dripping and splashing of water, characterized by rapid arpeggios. In 'Le Gibet' (the gallows) a more static piece that depicts a desert landscape with a hanged man. A sustained B-flat note imitates the tolling of a distant bell. Music evokes associations. I involuntarily made the connection to Ernest Hemingway's book 'For Whom the Bell Tolls'. The third and final part 'Scarbo' is a devilishly difficult work, top-level sport for a pianist's hands. What agility in the fingers. Between keystrokes, Lester Van Loock's hands hover elegantly above the keyboard as if drawing energy from space.
After the intermission, Lester Van Loock chose a selection from 'Gyermekeknek' by Béla Bartók. Just like Mozart, he was charmed by folk children's songs. However, that's where the comparison ends. He employs a completely different dynamic in which the folk character shines through. Bartók was completely captivated by folk music, which he captured in its purity. Lester Van Loock enjoys playing Hungarian repertoire. The cycle comprises 85 pieces, of which Van Loock plays 8. The first seven are playful and spicy, the last is a lament. With a sixth sense, Lester Van Loock tries to share the composer's intentions.
If 'Gaspard de la nuit' by Ravel was already known as an infamously difficult work, Sergei Rachmaninovhe raised the bar even higher with his 'Sonata No. 2, Op. 36'. A work of considerable complexity. He was not only a great composer but also an accomplished pianist. In a way, he was challenging himself. He had a fondness for accelerandos and rubatos, but applied such techniques with finesse. He was, so to speak, able to spontaneously translate what came to mind directly into his playing. You don't need to be a musicologist to simply feel that something is happening that is impressive, moving, and astonishing. With emotional and musical intelligence, Van Loock navigates the border between melancholy and pathos. As a listener, you're transported to another world and an instrumentally brilliant euphoria. The structure in 3 movements, beginning with the 'allegro agitato', is a striking opener—fierce and virtuosic, immediately commanding full attention. Movement 2, 'Lento', is the lyrical heart of the sonata, often seen as a moment of deep reflection; movement 3, 'Allegro molto', is the energetic triumphant finale where the notes slow down, speed up, tumble over one another. Lester Van Loock becomes completely absorbed in the music and forgets everything around him. There are only sounds, rhythms, melodies. You're left thoroughly impressed.
