Ravinia 2019, Issue 3, Week 6

JULY 1 – JULY 14, 2019 | RAVINIA MAGAZINE 15 F ranco-Swiss pianist Alfred Cortot famously formed a trio with violinist Jacques Thibaud and cellist Pablo Casals in 1905, and Arthur Rubinstein teamed with the Guarneri Quartet in the 1960s and ’70s for a series of mile- stone recordings of chamber works including Brahms’s piano quartets. But many other great pianists of the past paid far less attention to chamber music and are remembered primarily for their concerto and solo recital work. An argument can be made that today’s leading pianists lead more complete careers. They still perform abundant solo recitals and orchestral concertos like their forbears, but many also place a regular emphasis on collaborative chamber music. As evidence, look no further than four of the pianists featured this year at Ravinia—Daniil Trifonov, Jean-Yves Thibaudet, Jon Kimura Parker, and Marta Aznavoorian. Each will be heard at least once this summer alongside a singer or other instrumentalist. Parker, a Ravinia regular since 1991, joins cellist Gary Hoffman on July 24, and Trifonov, one of today’s most celebrated young keyboardists, will partner July 29 with esteemed baritone Matthias Goerne. Aznavoorian appears twice this summer at Ravinia, including an August 21 pairing with violinist Philippe Quint for a program based on their recent recording of music featured or written by filmmak- er Charlie Chaplin. Thibaudet will be featured in Gershwin’s Concerto in F with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra on July 13 and then returns July 22 for a recital with a longtime collaborator, cellist Gautier Capuçon. The famed French pianist teamed with Capuçon and noted violinist Lisa Batiashvili for a European trio tour in No- vember, and they plan to follow it up with a North American jaunt in 2020. “What has totally changed,” says Parker, a professor of piano at Rice University in Houston, “is that now I would not consid- er any pianist to be a complete artist unless they were comfort- able in all three roles—chamber music being highly important because of the collaborative aspect of it and the idea of sharing your musical ideas with others.” He believes so strongly in this idea that he serves as artistic director of the triennial Honens International Piano Compe- tition in Calgary, Alberta, which defines itself as a search for just that kind of “complete artist.” It puts as much emphasis on chamber music as recital and concerto repertoire. With classical music holding a less prominent place in the public consciousness than it did even just a few decades ago, star pianists no longer have the kind of lofty, rarefied status that allowed them to essentially go it alone. At the same time, perceptions about duo recitals with violinists or cellists have changed. On vintage recordings of superstar 20th-century violinist Jascha Heifetz, he is presented very close to the mi- crophone with the pianist sounding far more distant, because record labels wanted the spotlight to be squarely on the star artist. “That’s a very anachronistic approach now,” Parker says. “Any violinist and pianist would look at the Beethoven sonatas and say, ‘The only possible way to present these is that the two musicians are equals.’ ” D A N I I L T R I F O N O V J E A N - Y V E S T H I B A U D E T J O N K I M U R A P A R K E R M A R T A A Z N A V O O R I A N DARIO ACOSTA/DG (TRIFONOV); ANDREW ECCLES (THIBAUDET); TARA MCMULLEN (PARKER, PIANO)