CHRISTOPHE SIRODEAU PLAYS BRAHMS' INTERMEZZI
Christophe Sirodeau plays his selection of Brahms on a new album from Melism
The long road out of lockdown is ahead. As a guide we need our own Virgil or Dante , someone spiritual and thoughtful, someone who can channel the sadness of the past but light up the bright bits on the way out. A musician isn’t a bad model to begin with.
The photograph of the extraordinary pianist on the sleeve of his album makes Christophe Sirodeau look like a contender; the long fingers folded as he leans on his Steinway and a slight smile on his handsome face – his dome-like forehead , clearly packed with brains, above it. He appears the epitome of the sensitive artist.
When a musician of his experience, his discography is pages long, plays a composer as feted as Brahms, the results are bound to be wonderful and they are. Christophe had always loved Brahms work and thought of him as ‘mon meilleur ami au piano’ so it was quite a shock when, at the age of thirteen, he offered to play these sublime Intermezzi for his supervisor at the Moscow Conservatoire, Evgeny Malanin- only to get turned down flat. “He refused to hear them,” remembers Christophe (in French of course) and worse than that, he added disparagingly that ‘music written by a composer on his deathbed’ was not the thing for an adolescent. Imagine the effect on a very young musician far from home to have his beloved carefully rehearsed piano pieces, shot out of the water by this autocratic Russian – who was clearly absent when they covered psychology of children in his teachiers’ training class.
But the highhanded maestro was actually wrong about the deathbed. Brahms might have been old, but he had years to live when he wrote the Kalvierstucke Opp 116 to 119. And he was still deeply in love with the brilliant Clara Schuman, widow of Robert “Certainly there is so much autumnal melancholy and a sense of going back over life in these pages” reflects Christophe “ But here also is an abundance of light, calm and serenity.”
At this point in our lives we can certainly do with all of those gifts. And the lyrical playing of Christophe Sirodeau gives them in spades in the course of these lovely pieces. There is sadness here, even tragedy. But in the next bar or phrase comes an acceptance of life as it is. This interpretation brings passion and joyousness to music already full of love and a kind of forgiveness.
As we move towards the beginning of a new openness in life, with regrets behind us but everything to go for in the future, this music and its intensely sincere artistic rendition by Christophe Sirodeau can help the quiet transition to an acceptance and calm to face the uncertain possibilities of life ahead of us all.
