Nour Ayadi (Piano), nominated by (and performing with) Gautier Capuçon.

An expressive meditation on Rachmaninov, Debussy, and Liszt

“For me, [the piano] is the place where I find myself, where I can meditate, be almost in a sort of trance…it allows me to discover who I am, my limits…” — Nour Ayadi

“The cellist is anchored in the ground, around his instrument, there is a union of two bodies… we wrap around each other, it’s very sensual.” — Gautier Capuçon

Pianist Nour Ayadi, and cellist Gautier Capuçon, share an intimate relationship with their instruments that surpasses physical touch. It is a relationship that nourishes their sense of identity and grounds them in a universe that spins on the axis of musical strings.

Mysticism echoes through Sergei Rachmaninov’s Sonata in G minor for Cello and Piano, Op. 19. Reaching psychological breaking point in 1897 after a catastrophic premiere of his Symphony No. 1, hypnotherapy lulled the composer into recovery, after which emerged this sonata. Featuring close intervals, passionate single-note repetitions and bell-like sonorities, the symphony is reminiscent of the spirit of the Russian Orthodox Church.

Mysticism and mystery are not limited to the four-movement form. Claude Debussy’s D’un cahier d’esquisses (From a sketchbook) is a brief, yet seductive piano work of just fifty-five measures. Its “very slow (without rigour)” rhythm has a persuasive quality, rich with thoughtful repetition and meaningful pauses. First publicly performed by Ravel in 1910, it remains one of Debussy’s least known and most neglected works.

Masques lets its anxiety and torment be known. As repeated themes turn incessantly around each other, we can almost feel the anguish regurgitating through the notes. With obsessive motifs and sharp staccatos, the work departs from the slow pondering of the previous work. Written in the summer of 1904, Debussy had just left his first wife for singer Emma Bardac. Its title, he said, “is not [a reference to] Commedia dell’arte, but the tragic expression of existence.”

After ceaseless probing, we start a gradual descent into an inferno through the Devil’s Interval (a tritone). Après une lecture du Dante (Fantasia quasi Sonata) by Franz Liszt describes the journey of the soul into hell, beginning with descending tritones and dissonant harmonies that brings us to D minor – a key infamously associated with death in Romantic music. The second theme of this work is an enchanted chorale in the major, representing the uplifting nature of Heaven. Perhaps it is here that we witness the meditation and intimacy that both Ayadi and Capuçon experience with their instruments.

Programme notes written by Malika Jumbe.