Pianist Andre Laplante plays a rewarding program

by David Gordon Duke

Andre Laplante
In recital for Vancouver Chopin Society
Queen Elizabeth Playhouse, Sept. 29

The Vancouver Chopin Society has specialized in presenting up- and-coming pianists who include works by the Polish master in their recitals. For the opening of the VCS’s eighth season, artistic director Lee Kum Sing chose to feature an established artist in mid-career: Canadian pianist Andre Laplante, currently artist-in- residence at the Royal Conservatory of Music in Toronto.

His rewarding program of 19th- and 20th-century repertoire demonstrated the virtues of maturity, technical mastery, and taste to an enthusiastic audience with a particularly high proportion of student listeners.

Laplante’s program had a well-thought-out symmetry: fantasies by Chopin and Schubert began and ended the evening, buttressed by several shorter pieces by the same composers. Laplante’s approach to Chopin’s F minor Fantasy was measured: refined romantic playing, powerful when appropriate, but clean and elegant. The three Opus 63 Mazurkas that followed were more aphoristic but again thoughtfully conceived.

The first half ended with Quebec composer Francois Morel’s Deux Etudes de sonorité — classics of the Canadian repertoire written in a sort of Messiaen-in-Montreal idiom, and familiar to countless upper level piano students who joyfully bash out the jazzy second etude. Laplante’s playing was both subtle and electrifying. But his earlier performance of Ravel’s gem-like Sonatine was even more impressive. Laplante’s meticulously considered pallette was in flawless synchronization with the formal considerations of the piece, sensuous and sensitive playing that seemed effortlessly cool and remarkably assured.

After the interval came three of Schubert’s Moments musicaux, D. 780, which, like the earlier Chopin Mazurkas, focussed on small- scale, finely delineated moods and textures. Aside from their own intrinsic value, they were a natural key to the evening’s most extended work, Schubert’s “Wanderer” Fantasy, D. 760. The four- movements-in-one design of the Fantasy makes it a keyboard landmark of the early 19th century, but performances by players who view it merely as a technical challenge are too often vulgar and noisy.

Laplante was always aware of the work’s complex interconnections, taking care to make his audience understand the work’s inventive structure as well as its obvious virtuoso demands.

Vancouver Sun
1 Oct. 2004

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