On a recent evening in Paris, the brilliant French pianist Jean-Yves Thibaudet had a night off and so made the time to talk on the phone, energetically and enthusiastically, about his life and work.
Thibaudet is both a Parisian and an Angeleno; he’s had a home in Los Feliz for many years. He was due in Prague later in the week to perform with the Czech Philharmonic, which he will accompany on a U.S. tour, beginning Nov. 4 in Costa Mesa and including a stop Nov. 16 at Carnegie Hall.
Thibaudet is probably the foremost living practitioner of the French school of piano playing, though he’s dubious that such a school exists anymore. The world is too global now, he says, the performance styles too mixed.
The French school was “characterized by clarity, transparency, a certain elegance,” he says, and part of his training was in that tradition. One of his teachers at the Paris Conservatory was Lucette Descaves, a French pianist who collaborated with many composers, including Ravel.
“If there is a French piano school, she was really the epitome of it,” Thibaudet says. “I mean she really was that. And I certainly had that tradition. When I play French music, I think it’s really there.”
But his repertoire is vast and varied, and he had teachers other than Descaves, including the Italian-French pianist Aldo Ciccolini.
“I think if I play something else, I think my style is much more open because I was lucky to have so many other teachers and other windows that opened for me. It was really fantastic. I was really lucky and privileged from a very young age to have all those different teachers.”
Thibaudet, 53, was a prodigy, though with a difference: There was no fallout, no burnout.
“I had that gift, which was great, and then I did work, and I was very disciplined,” he said. “I was a good boy and I just started really early. But I was not pushed to do it. I did it because I was enjoying doing it – I asked my parents to do it.” He began studying at the Lyon Conservatory (in his hometown) when he was five and gave his first public performance at 7. By the age of 13 he had entered the legendary Paris Conservatory, though he still lived at home.
“The first two or three years I was going every week to Paris by train from Lyon,” he said. “And those trains in those days, we didn’t have the TGV, the fast one; it was five hours to go to Paris. I would go there early in the morning, have two days of class, do all the music there – the solfège, the piano, the sight reading, the harmony, composition. All the things we had to do were really crammed into those two days.
“Then I would come back to Lyon. I would miss every time two days of classes in Lyon. Then the teacher would give me what they had done those two days, which I would do on the train the next time. That was really hard. Then only when I was about 16, I got a little studio in Paris.” He completed his studies in Lyon by mail. He has no complaints.
“It was very intense, yeah, I think intense is really the word. But again I enjoyed what I was doing – all of it – and I had no problem doing it. It was just different. I was just already different than all the other kids. I already didn’t have a normal life,” he says, laughing.
Thibaudet, unusual for a pianist at his level, plays a lot of music that’s off the beaten track. He recently persuaded Yannick Nézet-Séguin, music director of the Philadelphia Orchestra, to open the season with Khachaturian’s seldom-performed Piano Concerto instead of one by Rachmaninoff. He is a champion of the Piano Concerto No. 5, “Egyptian,” by Saint-Saëns.
“I think my maestro Ciccolini, he really resurrected so many neglected composers – unbelievable,” Thibaudet says, specifically mentioning his teacher’s revival of Satie. “So maybe he gave me that kind of taste in my mouth that it was fun to play things that not everybody plays. And also I think it gives you a certain identity. You have your own pieces that become a little bit your signature pieces. Nobody else plays them, and so people are interested.”
He feels it’s his duty as a performer to seek out neglected repertoire. “I think you have to also play some pieces that are forgotten. Because of course Tchaikovsky is great, of course Rachmaninoff is great, of course Brahms, I mean all those concertos, we will always play them, they will always be there.” A good balance, he says, is half canonical works, half lesser-known pieces.
His vehicle with the Czech Philharmonic is another neglected work, Liszt’s Piano Concerto No. 2, much less performed than the famous First.
“I think it’s deeper, maybe. I think it’s a more interesting, more profound piece of music than the First. And also there we are in front of an incredible modernity – there’s something so incredibly ahead of its time, just in the form of the piece, based entirely on one theme.” Thibaudet thinks the piece reveals the composer as a “genius,” beyond the mere glittering virtuoso he is often considered.
Thibaudet’s fashion-forward concert attire, designed by Vivienne Westwood, is in line with his thinking about repertoire.
“I think the format of our concerts is so old-fashioned. It’s just so boring and dusty and conventional that I think the young generation of people, when they look at that they just don’t feel attracted, they don’t feel connected to it, they don’t relate to any of it.”
Fashion, he says, is something he’s been attracted to since he was little, and he says it’s just another small way to liven up the concert atmosphere.
“I always felt that it was unfair that girls could have all those gorgeous dresses and change gowns between parts and there we were always wearing these stupid penguin tails and I said, ‘You know, that’s not fair. I want to have fun too.’ So this is how it all came together.”
Contact the writer: 714-796-6811 or tmangan@ocregister.com
