ROGE RECITAL BRILLIANT

Press, Volume CXV, Issue 33790, 12 March 1975, Page 19

ROGE RECITAL BRILLIANT

The yearly Arts Festival will be remembered for the glorious piano playing. Yesterday in i the James Hay Theatre, Pascal Roge gave his first recital of works by Maurice Ravel, the centenary of whose birth falls this year. Mr Roge will play all Ravel’s compositions for the piano. To have the chance to hear all of them is splendid, but to hear them played with such rare skill as Mr Roge 'showed will be something ! that should charm the birds from the trees. Mr Roge seems superbly equipped by nature and by art to. interpret Ravel’s subtle, brilliant, imaginative, and poetic writing. He brought a new wonder to the sounds of the piano, and Mr Roge reproduces faithfully his innermost meanings. These recitals, and those given and promised by Charles _Rosen, will give the festival * period that special place and meaning which it should have. They are something which would not come our way under ordinary conditions. The recital began with the “Pavane for a Dead Princess.” It was played with meltingly beautiful tone and shadings of nuance, and with that freedom of tonal production which Mr Roge has so wonderfully at command. It would be hard to imagine the playing at any given moment in this work—or at any moment in this recital—-

being given with more polished expertise and freedom.

In the “Vaises Nobles et Sentimentales,” Mr Roge gave to each an enlightened rendering which made it a perfect foil for its companions. Everything seemed so exactly right. The bristling difficulties of the “Gaspard de la Nuit,” pieces seemed to disappear in the unfettered flow of Mr Roge’s immaculate playing. The three parts of the work, “Ondine,” “le Gibet,” and “Scarbo” come from a set of prose ballads by A. Bertrand inspired by the paintings of Rembrandt and Callot. They show how Ravel’s kaleidoscopic mind reacted to suggestions from a literary background. Ondine was a water nymph who seduced young men to their death. That was reprehensible of her, but the music shows how smoothly successful she could be. It rippled forth in entrancing fashion. “Le Gibet,” as its name suggests, was a stark and lonely work, played with great force, and with chilling atmosphere expressed in sombre colours and deep shadows.

“Scarbo” was a diabolic creature, best not met on a lonely road, and one devoted to malice and mischief. He, too, came clearly to life and his complex tricks danced from the piano under crisp command. Ravel has found in Mr Roge a faithful and brilliantly accomplished interpreter. —-C.F.B.