Originally presented as an exercise in performance art (and captured live with some minor audience noise), this program of pieces either directly or indirectly related to water isn’t really about music at all. Nor, to be honest, does it entirely concern water. It’s about Hélène Grimaud. As you can see, she stares out from the album cover freshly returned from her most recent alien abduction experience, inviting us, as it were, to share her revelations. Because music itself isn’t up to the task, the program contains a 10-minute punishment–er, “bonus”–in which Grimaud shares her reflections on the music that she has selected for this particular journey. Now as we all know, Grimaud is a fabulously talented artist; she also sounds completely out of her mind.
Oh yes, I almost forgot to mention: for this disc version of the program Grimaud has asked her friend, composer Nitin Sawhney, to compose electronic interludes between each piece. They are called, not too orginally, “Water-Transitions”. These add nothing beyond some atmospheric sonic blobs that happily you can skip over, should you feel so inclined, and get on with it. The level of narcissism on display here really has to be seen (and heard) to be believed. But on to the actual music.
The program begins with Berio’s Wasserklavier, a charming encore that by itself would have made a lovely introduction to Takemitsu’s Rain Tree Sketch II. But no: Sawhney’s first “Transition” intervenes pointlessly, as the others will six more times. Next comes Fauré’s Barcarolle No. 5, a piece that really isn’t about water but about boating–but that’s quibbling. Grimaud’s performance could, in fact, sound more “liquid”. She’s actually best in the pieces calling for brilliance: Ravel’s Jeux d’eau and Liszt’s Les jeux d’eaux à la Villa d’Este.
Albeniz’s Almeria takes its name from a seaport, but the piece itself is a dance native to Andalusia and again says nothing about water. Janácek’s In the Mist should be played complete or not at all; here we only get the first movement. Mist, of course, consists of water, but then so do clouds, and there’s not one of those in sight. Once again Grimaud’s playing in these pieces strikes me as just slightly twitchier than the music ideally requires, nor does she achieve the depth of “profound calm” that Debussy asks for at the start of The Engulfed Cathedral.
“We are water,” the booklet note sagely announces. “The majority of our bodies, like the surface of our planet, is constituted of water. Life cannot exist without it.” Don’t you just love it when artists pretentiously announce first grade science as a major discovery? The only thing missing from this program, given that our bodies consist primarily of water, is an original creation of Grimaud’s called “Me”. Now that would have been interesting.
As you can probably tell, I was not impressed with the concept; and the performances, while certainly good, don’t rise to the top of the heap when considered out of context. So then the question becomes what to make of the entire recital, “transitions” and all. I have to admit that it left me confused, and then I realized that this was only because Grimaud had neglected to tell us just which “water” she had in mind.
Think of the piano works as Michigan’s Flint River (Google it if you’re not up on recent US environmental news), and Sawhney’s contributions as lead contamination, and it all becomes clear.
