LDV82

CÉDRIC PESCIA,PHILIPPE CASSARD, pianos 25 How can you do justice to the colours of the orchestra when you have just a single instrument with strings struck by hammers? Cédric Pescia: There can be no doubt that Liszt does want to try to reproduce on the piano the colours of the oboe, the silky vibrato of the strings, the piccolo, the bass drum. Another challenge is to perform the vocal passages: the soloists, the chorus. It’s especially difficult to create on the piano the illusion of a text. How can you reproduce on a keyboard the coup de théâtre of the first entry of the baritone, who so spectacularly admonishes the audience and the orchestra? What tricks can you use to convey the slightly grandiloquent effect of the solo quartet singing without the chorus towards the end of the fourth movement? Personally, I always try to recite the text tomyself in German. That enablesme to find its inflections and articulations toa certain extent on the piano. Indeed, evenwhen I’mnot specifically playing a transcription, it’s often a reflex for me to imagine other instruments, or even to add a text to a theme whose inflections I find difficult to grasp.