Jean-Efflam Bavouzet

Jean-Efflam Bavouzet – Stravinsky: Concerto for Piano, Capriccio, Movements & Petrushka (2015/2022)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 01:19:39 minutes | 1,31 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Digital Booklet, Front Cover | © Chandos

After having won the Gramophone Award in 2014 for his recording of Prokofiev’s five piano concertos, exclusive Chandos artist Jean-Efflam Bavouzet here explores the complete works for piano and orchestra of another Russian composer of the twentieth century: Igor Stravinsky.

Bartók’s Piano Concerto No. 2, Ravel’s Piano Concerto for the left hand, and Stravinsky’s Concerto for Piano and Wind Orchestra make good company. First, Bavouzet considers them ‘the greatest concertos of the twentieth century’. Furthermore, he has recorded all of them with Chandos. Last, but not least, his recordings of both Bartók’s (CHAN 10610) and Ravel’s (CHSA 5084) were shortlisted for Gramophone Awards in 2011 (‘Concerto’ category). The winner? The latter, which marked the first collaboration between Jean-Efflam Bavouzet and Yan Pascal Tortelier, one that is resumed on the present album.

It starts with the crisp games with rhythms, polyphony, and classical form of the expressive, weighty Concerto for Piano and Wind Orchestra. Then the Capriccio is a piece that Stravinsky composed as a repertoire alternative to his concerto; he performed it more than forty times in the first four years after its creation. The anti-tonal, twelve-tone idiom of Movements represents Stravinsky’s experiments in the use of serial techniques.

Pétrouchka is a work for piano and orchestra as well, except that the piano here is not a solo instrument but rather part of the orchestral fabric. Moreover, Bavouzet himself has described blending in with the fortissimos of the orchestra as ‘one of the best musical experiences of my life’.
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Jean-Efflam Bavouzet – Haydn: Piano Sonatas Vol. 10 (2022)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 01:11:29 minutes | 1,07 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Digital Booklet, Front Cover | © Chandos

His recordings and concert performances have long established Jean-Efflam Bavouzet as one of the most outstanding pianists of his generation. This latest album – the tenth – in his cycle of the complete Haydn Sonatas is built around the Grand Sonata in C major, Hob. XVI:50, a late work the first movement of which is one of the most highly developed that Haydn ever conceived for the keyboard.

Bavouzet has surrounded this with less well-known works: two very early sonatas (No. 3 and No. 4) provide a stark contrast to the later works (No. 28 and No. 45). The album ends with the Arietta con 12 Variazioni.
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Jean-Efflam Bavouzet – Mozart: Piano Concertos, Vol. 7 (2023)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 01:07:30 minutes | 1,14 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Digital Booklet, Front Cover | © Chandos

Volume 7 of Jean-Efflam Bavouzet’s Mozart piano concertos survey with Gábor Takács-Nagy and the Manchester Camerata features two of the late concertos – Nos 24 and 25 – along with a spirited reading of the Overture to Le nozze di Figaro (The Marriage of Figaro). Concerto No. 24 was written whilst Mozart was busily composing Le nozze di Figaro, between October 1785 and the première, in Vienna, in May 1786. One of only two piano concertos in a minor key, this extraordinary work possesses many unusual features, including the deliberately ambivalent tonality of the opening melody, which uses all twelve tones of the scale (a pre-echo of serialism??!). Concerto No. 25 was probably first performed, in Vienna, in December 1786, and was certainly a success as there were many repeat performances in the following years (probably including one by Beethoven, in 1795). The disc was recorded in Manchester’s Stoller Hall, Bavouzet playing a Yamaha CFX nine-foot Concert Grand Piano
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Jean-Efflam Bavouzet – Haydn: Piano Sonatas, Vol. 11 (2022)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 01:20:10 minutes | 1,20 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Digital Booklet, Front Cover | © Chandos

The survey by Jean-Efflam Bavouzet of Haydn’s piano sonatas reaches its conclusion with this eleventh volume. As in previous releases, the acclaimed pianist has mixed repertoire from different periods of Haydn’s career to create a recital of interest in its own right. Jean-Efflam notes: ‘It has been eleven years since the launch of this project to present Haydn’s sonatas, not in their chronological order, but as collections juxtaposing works from different periods. The programme for this final disc was actually the first one to be devised: I wanted to place side by side the very first and the very last sonata. Then the idea of fleshing out the sonata cycle with other major pieces began at Volume 4, with the addition of the famous Variations in F minor, and finally this last volume is made up of as many sonatas as other types of works. The complete series is thus able to offer music lovers all the sonatas identified to date, together with the other major keyboard works.’
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Jean-Efflam Bavouzet – Beethoven: Complete Piano Sonatas (2017)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 10:42:00 minutes | 9,56 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Chandos

Jean-Efflam Bavouzet’s landmark series of Beethoven’s complete sonatas is now available as a box-set and at very special price. Bavouzet has taken this programme to the most prestigious venues around the world and continues to perform it. Gramophone has nominated him several times for its Artist of the Year award, arguing that ‘Bavouzet’s chronological journey through the Beethoven sonatas has not been surpassed in the last 30 years. Yes, it’s that good.’

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