Pierre-Laurent Aimard - Aimard at Carnegie Hall (2002)

This is the real raw thing, a live recording of a hot performance–pianist Pierre-Laurent Aimard tackling a rangy and demanding program without benefit of retakes or sonic airbrushing. Not only do we feel the excitement of the occasion, but we also reap the benefits of intelligent playing and first-class engineering.

Aimard plays with a fierce, thoughtful lyricism and punchy fluidity, and if at times he’s a little clipped, it’s to greater rather than lesser effect–it becomes something of a trademark. The concert opens with the Alban Berg`s sonata, difficult and thick stuff, but in Aimard’s capable hands every note is audible; the chilling ending is made even more so through his careful workings. He follows Berg with a taut performance of Beethoven’s “Appassionata”, sustaining a powerful momentum throughout, especially impressive in the concluding presto–surprising and invigorating yet never chaotic. He is not afraid to soup up the adagio sections a bit, but always in a precise and musical fashion.

A dynamic performance of Liszt’s St. Francis de Paule marchant sur les flots comes next and Aimard is truly in his element here: technically accurate, blazing with virtuoso fire, but also serious and pensive–Liszt at his most profound. Between the Liszt and Ligeti Aimard allows a quiet moment of repose, playing two pieces from Debussy’s Images (“Reflets dans l’eau” and “Poissons d’or”), both of which are stellar, defined by gorgeous full-bodied sonorities and thoughtful voicings, played without mud. Ligeti is where Aimard really excels; he owns this music. Although he already has committed much of this extremely technically demanding music to disc, his proficiency and accuracy on display here–live and “untouched”–is astonishing. He impishly pounds out “Cordes à vide” with some serious fury and smoothly assays the gorgeously contrasting “Automne à Varsovie”.

Of course, encores were demanded, and these were as well chosen as the program. Aimard plays Ligeti’s virtually unplayable Der Zauberlehrling (“The Sorcerer’s Apprentice”) étude with real passion, and follows this with the rich harmonic stasis of Messiaen’s “Premiére communion de la Vierge” from Vingt Regards sur l’Enfant Jésus, its chords carefully and expressively voiced against high flurrying filigree. Closing the concert is Debussy’s charming étude “Pour les huit doigts”, which Aimard plays with all the puckish enthusiasm required.