Jonathan Fournel in a very successful double alla polacca Chopin/Szymanowski

For his third album with Alpha, Jonathan Fournel delivers an exemplary version of the Piano Sonata No. 3e Chopin – an interpretation that he has long honed and matured in concert – set with two superb cycles of variations, early works by Karol Szymanowski.

This recital, where the pianist approaches new shores, was awaited. And it is a quite exceptional success and magnificently captured by Jean-Martial Golaz in the famous auditorium of the popular French-speaking theater of La Chaux-de-Fonds.

The Sonate n° 3 opus 58 by Frédéric Chopin constitutes – and in every sense of the term – the center of gravity. Jonathan Fournel gives us a splendid version, among the most recommendable published in recent times. We admire it over the Majestic introductory, sometimes so dispersed under other chattering fingers (Lang Lang at DGG) the sense of rigor and construction, the measured art of contrasts, and the polished elegance of the statements; but this sensation of doloristic urgency or immeasurable spleen never fades, an impression that we will find in the central trio of the scherzo – Moreover spiderlike with controlled velocity and rare finesse of articulation in its extreme flaps.

But it is at the will of an immaterial and inescapable largo, very modeled on singable and surrounded by a softness night that this interpretation reaches new heights. Everything is there: naturalness of the phrasing, layering of the sound planes, relief of the countersongs – with this distant and vaporous tinkling of the ineffable central section – and above all, between the notes, this ecstatic suspension of musical Time. The Finale, very dynamic according to the alternation of its verses and choruses, brings us back down here, with this contained rage and this sardonic outburst according to the garlands of sixteenth notes; the final deliverance of the coda leaves the feeling of bittersweet ambiguity more than pure digital triumph.
We will have understood, this version is familiar with the angels, and, through its constancy shrouded in a gentle madness, joins in certainly very different paths the pure stylization of a Dinu Lipatti (Warner), the bitter classicism of a Nikita Magaloff (Decca) or the almost marmoreal vision of Emil Gilels (DGG).

To frame this Third sonata almost ideal, Jonathan Fournel had the excellent idea of ​​recording two cycles of variations dating from the youth and the “first manner” of Karol Szymanowski – with a more than dotted Chopinian lineage…L‘opus 3 unfolds in just twelve minutes as many variations on an original theme in the form of a chorale, with an exacerbated chromatic harmony reminiscent of Reger and Scriabin, and a variety of touches sometimes reminiscent of Rachmaninov (variation III – mazurka tempo) sometimes the French school (the slow waltz andantino of variation X). This little-known cycle, dedicated to the very young Arthur Rubinstein, – who to our knowledge, never recorded it, and played it very little – allows the French pianist to demonstrate both his royal sonority (variation VII), or of its expressive palette according to the versatile intentions of this still juvenile score but superbly written and designed for the instrument. The finale is irresistibly dynamic, even if the production could perhaps have corrected one or the other minimal imperfection in the final measures with another take.

THE variations opus 10 on a popular Polish song, dedicated by Szymanoxski to his teacher Zygmunt Noskowski are of a completely different scope: in our opinion, Jonathan Fournel surpasses the recent version by Krystian Zimerman (DGG), with an almost detached and indulgent “pianism” . The young Frenchman wins both by a greater characterization of each range in his intentions – without sacrificing the overall curve of the cycle – and by a greater dynamic amplitude from the first variations. And further, the funeral march, true climax of the work, is here much more boring in its dramatic progression than under the fingers of the Polish maestro, while the vast final variation « what humor » throughout its multiple episodes, particularly throughout this fugato not very funny reaches a parodic and humorous dimension that is entirely appropriate, which one will look for in vain in the various competing versions.

Here is a recital where the pianistic finish competes with the most greedy expressiveness of the interpretation and a new formidable calling card for one of the most exciting French pianists of the young generation.

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