酒・煙草・ジャズをこよなく愛し、不健康な生活の果てに46歳の若さで逝ってしまったフランソワですが、残された録音はまさにお宝の山。フランソワといえばショパンが人気で、現代のショパン演奏からは大きくイレギュラーですが、こだわりを捨ててピアノ名曲に酔いしれようじゃないですか。

It is strange that so fine a musical discourse as Beethoven’s Triple Concerto should have been so long the butt of critics. It belongs to a royal line of pieces conceived or completed in the years 1803-04 — the “Eroica” Symphony, the “Waldstein” and “Appassionata” sonatas, and Fidelio’s first stirrings — and though it cannot claim to leave the indelible mark that these great works invariably do (in its pleasing mix of ottocento elegance and sudden uplift it most nearly resembles Fidelio in its compositional atmosphere), it is, nonetheless, the work in which Beethoven solved once and for all the problems of the concerto form in general and the ritornello in particular, pointing the way forward to the Violin Concerto and the Fourth and Fifth Piano Concertos.

Certainly there is no evidence that the work was idly tossed off. An 1803 sketchbook shows Beethoven working assiduously on the concerto’s first pregnant sotto voce statement, expanding the reach of the harmonies and charging the line with silences as well as sound (silences which speak across
the gaps between the notes unlike the inert spaces between the chords in the unsuccessful ritornello of the Third Piano Concerto). There follows a grand, burgeoning, very Beethovenian theme which later transforms itself with chameleon’s art into the jauntier measures of a second subject group whose own art is such that it can harbour amoment of romantic longing which in no way inhibits the ritornello’s processional advance. At the cadence on a simple exposed C, certainty and expectation sit aptly side by side.

The expectation is not disappointed. The cello enters with an eloquence of line which proclaims it, from the outset, to be the work’s protagonist, happy recompense for the absence of a full-blown cello concerto in the Beethoven canon. As the long movement unfolds, we are held by the quality of Beethoven’s discourse, by a fresh and far-seeing quality in his harmonic planning, by his avoidance of all redundant gesture (the tuttis are the stronger for Beethoven’s withholding full tutti commentary at several expected moments), and by his unfailing masterly of the pianissimo climax. What’s more, there is the mastery way in which the rococo elegance of the violin and piano roles permanently illuminates the cello’s rapt unravelling of Beethoven’s terse, beautifully blocked, chastely scored thematic material.

The slow movement is one of great decorum, like the slow movement of the Fifth Piano Concerto with which it shares several significant features. Launched by the cellist in periods of telling eloquence, the music’s gaze is soon directed upwards. Sublime music rather than beautiful music (if Imay borrow Kant’s useful distinction) which offers little to the connoisseur of sensation but much to those who seek some specifically moral appeal to the emotions. The length is perfectly judged. If we know the work, we are probably already anticipating the Polonaise, whose vital pulses and subitle oscillations of harmony in the theme itself ensure its permanent fascination. This movement, too, is laid out on the grandest scale, the second subject group once more deployed with flair: an aggressive, rising figure backed by polonaise rhythms of Verdian pride and a gentler subject which Beethoven makes much use of later when more senior themes are cooling their heels in the corner. The coda is particularly spacious. Though it promises a quick rush to the line, there is a fine written cadenza to negotiate and some equally fine afterthoughts (whose sanguine temper Brahms probably much admired), with which this splendid, unjustly berated piece, comes ceremoniously home.