Take one, July 2022. The borders are newly open, and Jean-Efflam Bavouzet, one of the biggest names of the Auckland Philharmonia’s season, is in town to play Béla Bartók’s Piano Concerto No. 2. And then he develops a cough. Yep.
Take two, October 2024. Bavouzet is again scheduled to appear in Auckland, same orchestra, same concerto. On the line from Switzerland, the pianist is optimistic, and upbeat about yet another long journey, at least in part because of the music he’s playing.
“I rank this concerto as an absolute masterpiece,” Bavouzet says. “It’s a highly physical concerto, the stamina you need is huge, but there is so much beauty in the second movement, a mixture of deep feelings.”
Bartók is one of the composers with whom Bavouzet is most associated. He has recorded all three concertos, but his connection to Hungary, the country of Bartók’s birth and heart, goes deeper.
Bavouzet is married to a Hungarian and has visited at least once a year since the 1980s. He’s developed musical relationships, too.
He was befriended by Georg Solti in the great conductor’s last years, and he was closer still to pianist Zoltán Kocsis. The pair performed and toured together, and Kocsis, who died in 2016, remains a musical touchpoint.
“I’ve met great musicians and continue to,” Bavouzet says, “but Kocsis is on his own. His attitude to text, his respect for music, the care for details, these are things I try to teach now.”
Kocsis helped Bavouzet prepare for his Bartók recordings. The Frenchman’s large, award-littered discography for Chandos also includes recently completed cycles of Mozart concertos (with another Hungarian, conductor Gábor Takács-Nagy) and Haydn sonatas.
However, the recording closest to Bavouzet’s heart, released in 2023, showcases the music of Pierre Sancan, a major figure in France as a pianist, composer and educator, but barely known elsewhere. He was Bavouzet’s piano teacher at the Paris Conservatoire.
“I owe [Sancan] a great deal; I became an adult musician, having worked with him for three years,” Bavouzet says. “I think of all my recordings, it’s the one that makes the most sense – Beethoven doesn’t need me.”
There will be no Sancan encore in Auckland (“after Bartók, we need something quieter”), and nor will Bavouzet perform his music in recital while here – the concerto is the pianist’s only appearance in Aotearoa. It is, he says, a sign of his devotion to Bartók’s music.
“I made the trip from Geneva to Auckland to play that concerto once. When you’re ready to fly 36 hours for one concert, that says how much I like to play it. This time it has to work.”
Auckland Philharmonia, Pictures at an Exhibition, Auckland Town Hall, October 17.
