 Virtuose considérable, et volontiers dévoué à des causes difficiles – ses Alkan feront date- mais pas seulement il est aussi inspiré par Brahms, Liszt, Schumann, Vincenzo Maltempo vient enfin à Beethoven, année anniversaire oblige. Il laisse les Sonates, ose un double disque dont le programme est peut-être plus risqué encore. Que d’étrangetés, que d’accents délétères, que d’effets déstabilisants dans ses Bagatelles, qui sentent le souffre et semblent ici comme relues par Busoni. C’est singulier, irritant mais je ne peux m’empêcher de les écouter encore et encore, tellement surpris par tout ce qu’il met en relief, les jouant comme des musiques futuristes. Le pari, aussi déconcertant qu’il soit n’est pas loin d’être gagné, mais en me laissant emporter dans ses Diabelli sans aucun charmes, rageuses, un doute me vient : saura-t-il atteindre à la dimension supplémentaire qui s’ouvre derrière les jaillissements d’humeurs, les flamboiements de l’écriture ? J’arrive esseulé à la Quinzième Variation, et soudain l’espace s’ouvre, tenu dans la diction d’une quasi marche funèbre, effet saisissant et je crois bien inédit. Dés que les variations lentes paraissent Vincenzo Maltempo semble passer de l’autre coté du miroir, translation fascinante. Les Eroica, droites, fusantes, avides presque ne lui offrent pas les mêmes ambigüités, il les joue, comme les petites Variations op. 34 et le Rondeau sur un sous perdu, avec un tel appétit de doigts qu’on en sort esbaudi ! (Discophilia - Artalinna.com). (Jean-Charles Hoffelé) Winner of the prestigious Premio Venezia prize, Vincenzo Maltempo ‘rides high among many young and gifted Italian pianists.’ (Gramophone, January 2015). His recordings on Piano Classics have won critical acclaim for their technical finesse and musical sensitivity. His album of Liszt’s Hungarian Rhapsodies was an Editor’s Choice in the February 2017 issue of Gramophone: ‘exceptionally fine interpretations’. Regarding his most recent issue of the complete sonatas by Scriabin (PCL10168): ‘Maltempo has an excellent command of the instrument and is responsive to the multi-dimensional texture and complex harmonies of the music.’ (Gramophone, December 2019) His latest release is a timely one, celebrating the 250th anniversary of Beethoven’s birth in Bonn with the two major variation sets and the ever-elusive, whimsical Bagatelles which have taxed the hands and imaginations of all the greatest pianists. All the works here derive ultimately from the composer’s instincts as an improviser and thinker at the keyboard: playing continually with ideas both physical and intellectual, working them over and around the body of the instrument that was his own principal medium of expression. Between 1782 and 1800, he composed twelve variation sets for solo piano, almost all based on popular or operatic melodies. For the last of them, however, Beethoven drew on a theme of his own, initially composed for a contredanse but then reused in his ballet The Creatures of Prometheus, and later immortalised as the subject of the variations in the finale of the Eroica Symphony. The Op. 34 variations marked a seachange in the composer’s treatment of his form, sharing the expressive reach of his sonatas and concluding with an ambitious fugue. Even the Eroica Variations, however, give little notice of the visionary transformation wrought upon an upbeat but modest waltz, sent to him by his publisher Diabelli, in his final work in variation form. They occupied Beethoven on and off for five years, during which time he explored every possibility of the theme and of variation-form itself. The result is, in the words of Alfred Brendel, ‘the greatest of all piano works.’ Here and in the final Bagatelles we find Beethoven challenging even the outer limits of his own prodigious imagination as well as the fingers of his performers and the minds of his listeners. Amid the cavalcade of Beethoven releases in 2020, Maltempo’s new album is a big event.
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