Concert - Reading at Château de Montauban

It is the latest, almost experimental Fauré that sets the pace for the magical evening offered by Aline Piboule and Pascal Quignard. The pianist, seated in front of the curved Steinway, begins by announcing the title. The pianist follows with an Improvisation from Huit Pièces brèves, brimming with tenderness and light, and the writer bounces back with a short phrase: ‘In Béziers, in 1900, a young woman appears’. In her beautiful deep voice, slightly veiled, she draws us into the whirlwind of love and creativity that swept Fauré and Marguerite Hasselmans, thirty years his junior, away. The music, full of finely nuanced passions, fills in the gaps in the text, which is magnificent for its concision and poetry. The writer and pianist pass the ‘word’ back and forth smoothly, listening to each other with astonishing intensity, as is customary in a chamber duo.

This is the third time that Pascal Quignard and Aline Piboule have built a bridge between literature and music. They began in 2020 with Boutés, inspired by the story of an Argonaut prepared to die to hear the sirens sing, and continued with Ruines (...)