Our very own Cecile Licad, breezing through Maurice Ravel's towering finger breaker, Le Tombeau de Couperin, especially in the finale marked Toccata. Contrasts abound in this work, which Ravel composed as tributes, or more precisely, obituaries to friends killed during World War I. It takes the form of stylized suite of ancient dances, Prelude, Fugue, Forlane, Rigaudon, Menuet and Toccata, paralleling earlier "tombeau" works, such as Couperin's tributes to even earlier composers going back to Baroque, such as Corelli and Lully.
Licad's playing is wonderfully flowing, like the sound of cascading waterfalls or of a pebble hitting the pond, that's how delicate and light-footed her touch is. Even the slow passages have a certain nobility to it, and the quiet ones are like a search light in the dark.
Ravel's music can be devastatingly difficult. And the finale, the toccata (3rd video, 2:50 onwards) is almost like a response to the keyboard works of Liszt and his disciples, especially Balakirev's Islamey, a litmus test for virtuosos brave enough to scale the heights of extreme virtuoso writing.
In this video, Cecile Licad rose to the challenge, gave life to a Ravel masterpiece and made the piano sing. Bravo!
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