LDV75

ADRIEN LA MARCA 17 Prokofiev is something else again . . . I’ve always loved his music, and I’ve played Romeo and Juliet a lot – it helped me win the Victoires de la Musique Classique in 2014. This version (approved by Prokofiev) is based on the arrangement for viola and piano by Vadim Vasilyevich Borisovsky (1900-72), a leading personality of the viola in the USSR and one of the foundingmembers of the Beethoven Quartet. So I have noworries about betraying the composer. I took over the viola part and Jean-Pierre Haeck – an outstanding orchestrator, composer and conductor – transcribed the piano part for orchestra. It had never been performed like that, so it’s a very exciting experience. We reviewed the whole question of balance and tempi, and added or modified a few instrumental parts to restore and nourish the palette of colours. By definition, the orchestra didn’t know this brand new version; we had to avoid having ten brass instruments suddenly waking up with all their thundering power and stifling the discourse. Because, and this is the story of this recording, we were starting out from the perspective of live performance. For me, it was about creating a score suitable for the concert hall. Of course, you can do anything on record! But it’s a work that people want to hear, so I’d like to be able to play it again in concert. In fact, I was astonished not to find any version similar to ours, not even in Russia . . . I’m happy to have found and launched an original idea, which sheds new light on this work. Gwenael Mario Gris and I hit it off right away. My residency with the Liège Royal Philharmonic allowed us to meet and get on close terms quickly. I needed to get practical experience of his music, to perform it, and he needed a bit of guidance because he had never written a concerto for a stringed instrument.