Ascending

Dan Albertson

[May 2025.]

[Victor Aviat in memoriam. In gratitude to you, the former Lisa Dukaj, for your prodigious memory and for a benevolence that surpasses time.]

Christophe BERTRAND (1981–2010): Skiaï (1998-99)¹; La chute du rouge (2000)¹; Treis (2000)²; Ektra (2001)³; Dikha (2000-01)⁴; Haos (2003)⁵; Aus (2003)⁶; Virya (2004)¹; Quatuor I (2005-06)²; Sanh (2006)²; Arashi (2007)⁷; Hendeka (2007)²; Haïku (2008)⁵; Dall’inferno (2008)⁶; Satka (2008) ⁸; Quatuor II (2010)⁶; Yet (2002)⁹; Mana (2004-05)¹⁰; Vertigo (2006-07)¹¹; Scales (2008-09)¹²; Ayas (2010)¹³; Okhtor (2010)¹³. Zafraan Ensemble & Premil Petrović (cond.)¹, KNM Berlin², Liam Mallett (fl)³, Miguel Pérez Iñesta (cl, bcl)⁴, Clemens Hund-Göschel (pno)⁵, Zafraan Ensemble⁶, Josa Gerhard (vla)⁷, Zafraan Ensemble & Victor Aviat (cond.)⁸, Zafraan Ensemble, KNM Berlin & Victor Aviat (cond.)⁹, WDR Sinfonieorchester, Brad Lubman (cond.)¹⁰, GrauSchumacher Piano Duo, WDR Sinfonieorchester, Peter Rundel (cond.)¹¹, WDR Sinfonieorchester, Baldur Brönnimann (cond.)¹², WDR Sinfonieorchester, Emilio Pomàrico (cond.)¹³. Bastille Musique 14 (3 CDs) (bastillemusique.bandcamp.com).

Time marches on. Almost a decade ago, a modest recording appeared and was covered. The subject was, and is, of enormous importance to the present writer, for personal (we were correspondents for several years) as much as professional reasons. Now, at last, almost all his works (choral and vocal excluded) have been assembled, laying bare the output of his meteoric career. He survives the inspection in style, though with the advisory that small doses are the secret to success.

Christophe Bertrand was a wunderkind – apologies, there is no other word – of the sort that appears a few times a century and, alas, a genius who lacked means to handle his fame. A virtuoso pianist, he graduated from the composition class of Ivan Fedele aged 19. He soon founded Ensemble In Extremis and developed parallel careers as composer and pianist. Several blinks of the eye and 29 works later, the fever was all gone.

The most characteristic feature of his style is the frequent, one could claim obsessive, use of scales with scurrying motifs, creating a rhythmically post-minimal, harmonically post-spectral world in which sonic dominoes are set in motion, allowed to fall at their own predetermined rates and create fascinating interplays along the way. Far from the mechanical limitations of minimalism, Bertrand worked over, intervened with and layered his material for maximal effect and to stave off the austerity of routine: He was nothing if not a hedonist in sound.

Spread across 3 CDs, in a box with ample documentation in words and photographs, the works here, written from 1998–2010, can be split into two periods, the composer of promise and the composer of originality. The breakthroughs occurred with Haos for piano, moving from lilts to mania and back (with more than a passing resemblance, by chance no doubt, to Lepo Sumera’s sublime Piano Piece from the Year 1981), and Aus for clarinet + bass clarinet, soprano saxophone, viola, and piano, with its low registers to the fore. Not all that followed in the seven years left to him is at the same level of intensity, but the real duds are rare and even an average work by Bertrand is worth hearing.

Where to start? The staggering brilliance of Vertigo for two pianos and large orchestra, the two soloists in constant shifts of textural weaves, makes the ideal introduction. Or Hendeka, for the classical piano quartet, whose degree of dazzle may be even higher due to the limits of its instrumentation. Dall’inferno for flute, harp and viola, for sure, as far from Debussy or Takemitsu as is imaginable, and Satka, giving the jaded Pierrot-plus-percussion lineup a rejuvenation. For canonical formations, Quatuor II, in its brevity, and its striking opening chords, outshines the less cogent and more generic Quatuor I.

Among other large-scale works, Scales for chamber orchestra disappoints despite its virtuosity, its ebbs and flows weighing it down and destroying its momentum – Vertigo without the singularity of vision. The earlier Mana for large orchestra (whose première Pierre Boulez conducted, a recording worth hearing), with precocious hints of his mature style coupled with various flash-like episodes, and Yet for chamber orchestra are dense and memorable, the piano-and-mallets unisoni of the latter at times weighting it unduly toward minimalism on either side of a point of ultimate stasis. Ayas for brass and percussion confounds: a fanfare that attempts, and fails, not to be one – but it is less than 2′, so no harm done. Okhtor (its title the name of the equally doomed Rothko in reverse) for large orchestra is a suitable apotheosis, all the tics and routines assembled in a burst of potency, the whole body of sound at times drumming along. Unlike the orchestral swansong of Bernd Alois Zimmermann from four decades earlier, Stille und Umkehr, a study in restraint, Bertrand goes out with blazes of fury, at least until the coda. No more was there to be.

The problem is that his mature music was only the beginning of an epilogue that never arrived, and degrees of self-similarity are to be found everywhere: the young composer trod a narrow path as a way of fulfilling commissions that accumulated faster than any creative mind could have kept up. The intensity of his composing life meant that ideas from one work would be foreshadowed, foregrounded, jettisoned, recycled in subsequent works. Overlap there is, in spades, yet masterpieces there are amid the 22 works here, which are not meant for consecutive listening in any case. Dip in one or two at a time, cherish the tumult of the ocean waves, marvel at the forces of nature that his mind conjured up.

Emphasis must be put on the fact that Bertrand was celebrated in his lifetime, and deservedly so, and that there is no remorse ex post facto, no sympathy. Those of us who knew him cannot help but remember him with gratitude and admiration. Spending hours with this set is a reminder of all that was lost, all that will never be, but more importantly all that endures.