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Jean-Efflam Bavouzet, Misha and Cipa Dichter, in Recital
BY JESSICA MOORE Director of Marketing
Week five of the 2023 Aspen Music Festival and School summer season brings to the fore two Harris Concert Hall recitals sure to delight the piano enthusiast. Award-winning French pianist Jean-Efflam Bavouzet (pictured above) offers listeners a program of Ravel and Haydn on Thursday, July 27, and long-time Festival friends Misha and Cipa Dichter return on Saturday, July 29.
Always a favorite with Aspen audiences, Bavouzet has curated what AMFS Vice President for Artistic Administration Patrick Chamberlain describes as “a really gorgeous program” of Haydn’s A-flat major Piano Sonata and works by Ravel. In a rare feat, last fall Bavouzet released the final volume of his complete recordings of Haydn’s 62 sonatas, a gargantuan task that shows his affinity for the often-overlooked com- poser. The New York Times praised Bavouzet’s interpretation as “unmatched in its zest and wit. But it is also substantial, informed, and deeply rewarding.”
Says Chamberlain, “Haydn’s one of those great composers whose music I think we don’t know nearly well enough. Every time I encounter it I’m just amazed at how effortless it was for him to write endlessly beguiling, charming, brilliant music.”
To complement the Haydn sonata, Bavouzet chose Ravel’s nod to the composer with the Menuet sur le nom de Haydn, which will then be followed by three other works by the fellow Frenchman: Jeux d’eau, Sonatine, and Miroirs. “I do think he brings a sensibility and flair and real color to Ravel’s music,” says Chamberlain.
Many of Ravel’s better-known orchestral works were originally written as piano pieces that the composer then embellished, so “at his heart, Ravel was really a piano composer and wrote these wonderful works that show off how the piano can act like an orchestra,” Chamberlain explains.
The wealth of sparkling piano repertoire continues later in the week with duo Misha and Cipa Dichter performing a recital of Debussy, Liszt, and two-piano arrangements of Infante and a suite from Gershwin’s Porgy and Bess. Through this varied program, Misha Dichter hopes “that our audience will hear the widest possible range of the piano, going from the transparency of Debussy’s Suite Bergamasque for one instrument to the orchestral explosions in the works for the two pianos.”
Well-known and beloved by Aspen audiences, the Dichters first began coming to the Festival in the summer of 1974. “We have vivid memories of our now-adult sons spending whole summers here with us in a place that we found as welcoming as any place on earth,” says Misha.
The AMFS is deeply woven into the fabric of the Dichter family with many fond memories of their visits but one that stands out, recalls Misha, is a particular Sunday Festival Orchestra performance, “probably around 1976, and our now50-year-old son was sleeping on my lap while Lee Luvisi was playing a beautiful Beethoven Emperor Concerto. As the slow movement began, our son began to snore, first very faintly, then becoming louder. By the middle of the movement I had the choice of letting him snore away or risk waking him. I chose the latter, and I was soon running up the aisle carrying a wailing young man!”
Says Chamberlain, “I think the beauty of Aspen is the chance to encounter these great artists over so many years, and the Dichters are part of that.”
