Bizet Jeux d’enfants
Martha Argerich & Daniel Barenboim
Musical Performance Duo / Piano 0In a list of the greatest pianists of the 19th century, the name Georges Bizet most likely would not pop up frequently—Liszt, Chopin, and Clara Schumann being more obvious front-runners. Yet Bizet, as not only Liszt was able to witness with his own ears, was certainly one of the most important keyboard virtuosos of his time. He was, however, not fond of a performer’s life and almost never played in public. His compositional output for the piano is modest as well. With Jeux d’enfants (“Children’s Games”), he did write a true masterwork for four hands, though, four years before his early death: twelve enchantingly sophisticated, perfectly balanced miniatures which Martha Argerich and Daniel Barenboim performed at the Pierre Boulez Saal in their 2017 Christmas concert.
Georges Bizet (1838–1875)
Jeux d’enfants
for Piano Four Hands Op. 22 (1871)
I. L’Escarpolette (The Swing). Rêverie
II. La Toupie (The Spinning Top). Impromptu
III. La Poupée (The Doll). Berceuse
IV. Les Chevaux de bois (Wooden Horses). Scherzo
V. Le Volant (Battledore and Shuttlecock). Fantaisie
VI. Trompette et tambour (Trumpet and Drum). Marche
VII. Les Bulles de savon (Soap Bubbles). Rondino
VIII. Les quatre coins (Puss in the Corner). Esquisse
IX. Colin-Maillard (Blind Man’s Bluff). Nocturne
X. Saute-Mouton (Leap-Frog). Caprice
XI. Petit Mari, petite femme (Little Husband, Little Wife). Duo
XII. Le Bal (The Ball). Galop
Martha Argerich, Daniel Barenboim, Piano
On May 24, 1861, Liszt was in Paris and had dinner at the home of Fromental Halévy, a composer primarily known today for his opera La Juive. After dinner Liszt played a new piece he had written that was of such enormous difficulty that when he finished he declared, “I know only two pianists in Europe capable of playing it as it is written and at the proper tempo—Hans von Bülow and myself.” Halévy turned to one of the other guests, played a few notes from a section of the work and asked, “Did you notice this section?” The young man sat down and played the section perfectly from memory having only heard it once. Impressed, Liszt put the manuscript of the work on the piano and the guest promptly played it flawlessly. “I was wrong,” Liszt declared. “There are three of us who can surmount the difficulties of this work. And to be fair I should add that the youngest of the three is perhaps the boldest and the most brilliant.”
That brilliant 23-year-old was Georges Bizet. There is no doubt that he could have had a spectacular career as a touring virtuoso, reaping enormous fame and money, but, as a friend explained, “He took as much pains to conceal his prowess at the piano as others take to show off theirs.” In a letter Bizet declared, “Nothing in the world would make me decide to play in public. I find the profession of performer odious!” But refusing to play public concerts meant Bizet was often in financial difficulties, scrapping a living by giving lessons (which he often hated) and doing hack work, like making piano reductions of operatic scores for various publishers. Given his love of the piano, and the fact that he maintained his prowess at the keyboard throughout his life, it is surprising he composed so little for it.
Much of it was too difficult for the amateur pianists, and he never explored many of the traditional forms for piano solo like the sonata. But his last work for the instrument was a masterpiece: the 12 miniatures for piano duet Jeux d’enfants (“Children’s Games”), written in 1871.
Each of the pieces is meticulously judged: nothing lasts too long, every note adds just the right amount of color or texture, without in any way being precious or affected. Taken as a whole Jeux d’enfants is Mozartian in its perfection—“A fine example of high sophistication in the service of apparent naivety,” as Hugh Macdonald described the work.
Originally Bizet composed ten pieces; numbers 7 and 8 (“Soap Bubbles—Rondino” and “Puss in the Corner—Esquisse”) were added during preparation for publication. It is possible that the publisher Durand, with an eye to marketing the music, had a hand in at least some of the individual titles. In Bizet’s manuscript, they are the same size as the generic labels, but in the first edition the labels appear much smaller. When Bizet orchestrated five of the numbers and put them together for his Petite Suite, he suppressed the titles altogether as being “too childish.” Emphasizing them (like “The Merry-Go-Round” or “Leap Frog”) at the expense of the generic headings (Scherzo, Caprice) leads to a distorted view of the music, as Egon Voss points out in his preface to the score: “They give the pieces an after-taste of infantilism, garden bowers and, by association, salon music. Yet this music is neither for children, nor is it childish.”
—Paul Thomason
Notes originally published in the Pierre Boulez Saal program book for the concert of Martha Argerich and Daniel Barenboim on December 23, 2017.
Piano
Daniel Barenboim
Martha Argerich
Audio Producer
Friedemann Engelbrecht
Sound
Julian Schwenkner
Video Technicians
Markus Genge
Piet Grotelüschen
Camera
Michael Boomers (DOP)
Thomas Falk
Winfried Hermann
Martin Roth
Volker Striemer
Jan Lehmann
Lighting Technician
Oliver Kühns
Editor
Peter Klum
Unit Manager
Valentina Schneck
Head of Production Salve TV
Karl-Martin Lötsch
UNITEL
Video Director
Eric Schulz
Producer
Magdalena Herbst
Production Manager
Franziska Pascher
Post-Production Manager
Roger Voß
A Production of Unitel in cooperation with Pierre Boulez Saal.
© Unitel 2018. All rights reserved.
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