More images here.

On this blog I’ve featured the radiant magic of Hélène Grimaud, in

• Ravel (part of a general introduction to Ravel’s music)
• Rachmaninoff (in Historical ears and eyes)
• Mozart (on the A major piano concerto)
• Bach–Busoni (under Alternative Bach)
• Clair de lune

—all of which you simply must listen to. Here’s a further hommage.

See also her 2003 memoir Variations sauvages, English translation Wild harmonies: a life of music and wolves, 2007); and for a most insightful article, do read this New Yorker piece from 2011.

Hélène Grimaud https://stephenjones.blog/2019/11/12/grimaud/

Since her London appearances are far too infrequent (her planned visit in June 2020 had to be postponed—has she really not come here since her numinous “Water” recital at the Barbican in 2015?), I resort to relishing her performances of the two colossal Brahms piano concertos online. Here’s a trailer:

And the two concertos complete:

For a sequel on tempo and timbre in Brahms, with a HIP version of the 1st concerto, see here.

I trust you too will be unable to resist going on to admire her live performances of both works online (here and here)—indeed whole days can, and should, go by as you bask in all of her ouevre there.

OK, one can’t help noticing that she is one of the most entrancingly beautiful people ever to grace the planet—neither here nor there, one might say, but her own unassuming radiance goes hand in hand with her music. She embodies a perfect combination of yin and yang, with both innige spiritual intimacy and intensely muscular emotional intelligence.

Here she gives an interview in French on the Rachmaninoff concerto and Abbado:

Here she plays Schumann with Ann Sofie von Otter:

And returning to the Ravel concerto, here’s the exquisite slow movement again: