With this fourth concert of the season, it is somehow hard to believe that the Inverurie Music programme for this year has reached its half-way mark! Following on from the poise and precision of Hugh Mackay and Xiaowen Shang (September) to the intense drama and colour of the Wallace Collection (October) and the sultry sounds of the Tim Kliphuis Trio (November) came the incredible virtuosity of pianist James Willshire for an exploration of the works and influence of the great Maurice Ravel in his 150th anniversary year. Ravel is, unsurprisingly, a theme to our concerts this year, with two of our three remaining programmes featuring works by the French master.

Willshire began his ‘guided tour’ of Ravel’s work with a piece by one of his predecessors, the French Baroque composer François Couperin who Ravel would later pay homage to with his own piano suite, Le Tombeau de Couperin in 1917. Willshire introduced the pieces in a light and succinct manner (as he would throughout) and continued this into his playing with an effervescent rendition of these characterful harpsichord pieces. This was followed by the first of Ravel’s pieces in the programme, his beautiful and quicksilver Jeux d’eau (1901), often hailed as one of the first manifestations of impressionism in music (if indeed such a phenomenon ever existed).

Willshire introduced the work with some fascinating insight into the relationship between Ravel and Debussy and it was hard not to hear the work of the older composer in Ravel’s shimmering and playful piece. Again, the pianist had the necessary lightness of touch to capture this fleeting music and coax some beguiling textures from the experienced town hall piano. The first half continued with one of Ravel’s most enduring piano works, the Valses nobles et sentimentales (1911), his homage to another great composer, this time Schubert and his own set of colourful waltzes. Composed ten years after Jeux d’eau, these eight short pieces are spikier, more austere and often much more exaggerated than the earlier work, but no less full of Ravel’s characteristic harmonies and melodies. Willshire obviously found great sympathy in these dances, and he gave a controlled performance, not without some humour and passion in all the right places. A work by Ravel’s teacher, Gabriel Fauré followed, his Bacarolle in A minor from 1881. This slight but attractive piece was a wonderful bridge between Ravel and his antecedents: Fauré’s work was premiered by his teacher, the redoubtable teacher and composer Camille Saint-Saëns. The first half concluded with Liszt’s Transcendental Étude No.3, setting the scene for the fireworks that were to come.

The tour of Ravel’s life and works continued with a musician who had been in the Frenchman’s circle in the 1920s, the celebrated British composer Lennox Berkeley (1903-1989). Berkeley’s Six Preludes had a Ravellian quality to some of them, but there were other influences and characters to the music, especially in the quicker, more animated sections. Willshire delivered the pieces with aplomb confiding to the audience at its conclusion that he had ‘forgotten how hard they were’. He followed this with perhaps Ravel’s greatest melody, his Pavane pour une infante defunte which (other than his perennial Boléro) is arguably one the composer’s most lasting statements. It was a moment of stillness and repose in a dynamic and dramatic concert. If the Berkeley was hard, then surely it was a walk in the park compared to what followed, Ravel’s colossal Gaspard de la nuit. Ravel wrote his pianistic masterpiece in 1908, largely to place it in the same bracket of virtuosity as Liszt or other celebrated Romantic pianist-composers. This monument of the piano repertoire often sounds like all of Ravel’s pieces played simultaneously, becoming breathtaking in its textural density and quasi-orchestral sonorities. Willshire handled these difficulties deftly, often in a blur of fingers and hands as he moved from one end of the keyboard to the other, somehow harnessing Ravel’s technical wizardry and providing the audience with a beautiful and compelling performance. It was the highpoint of a fantastic concert. Willshire finally gave Debussy his say in the proceedings with a short encore of La fille aux cheveux de lin from the first book of Préludes, a suitable ending for this comprehensive journey through Ravel’s work in his anniversary year.

PAC (17 February 2025)

Comments:
John Hearne
In addition to the review of James Willshire’s amazing performance, his own introductions to the programme items were also a delight in his witty and informative approach. This was obviously appreciated, since there was total silence from the audience through the whole evening, followed by thunderous applause at the end. True ‘chamber music’ even in this large space.