“It is with happiness, respect” but also “ a lot of emotion » (“a lot of emotion”) that Jonathan Biss will sit down, Friday June 7, 2024, in front of the piano of the Grange de Meslay to play the last two sonatas of Schubert to open the festival created sixty years ago by Richter.
In 1997, upon the death of the Russian giant, “I was still a teenager”. A teenager already very advanced in his musical studies which began early within a family of musicians, with parents who were violin teachers and a grandmother who was the dedicate of the Cello Concerto by Barber.
Acclaimed musician on the biggest international stages
At 17 years old, “I had the chance to become a student of Leon Fleisher, a character like there are two or three in a century”. Is it with this admired master, who approached “music with so much integrity and commitment in a luminous, direct and powerful playing” that Jonathan Biss learned what makes a great performer? : “The quest for depth, the intelligence to enter into the works, the sincerity and the desire to delve into the music”.
Twenty-five years later, acclaimed musician on the biggest international stages, Jonathan Biss, keeps this need to go ever further, deeper into the secret of his works. “working with his head but above all with his heart”.
With sincerity and modesty
And for this, Jonathan Biss thrives on every opportunity. At the prestigious Marlboro Music Festival, created by Rudolf Serkin, which has welcomed the greatest and which he co-directs with Mitsuko Uchida, every summer since 1951, the participants, “ whatever their level, become students again,” showing that we can and must continue to (re)discover “music throughout one’s life, sharing it with others”. When he also writes, to offer his experience and his vision of music, Jonathan Biss, recognized writer praised by critics, constantly questions himself, obliging himself “in a quest for truth, to differentiate between what is important and what is absolutely necessary for a musician.”
It is driven by this search for “ depth and light » that Jonathan Biss addresses with “sincerity and modesty” the last two sonatas, “last heartbeat” by Schubert, written two months before his death which he will therefore play at the opening of the 60e Grange de Meslay festival. The one in A major, “where power, tenderness, nostalgia and anger mingle” but also “acceptance of the idea that life will end” and the one in B flat major “which, for me, is almost after death”. Two monuments of Romanticism, music, humanity…
Friday June 7, 2024 at 9 p.m. at Grange de Meslay, Parçay-Meslay. Prices: €40 and €12. PCE and under 16 years old: €8. Tickets on festival-la-grange-de-meslay.fr
