HELMUT WALCHA: NUIT DE LUMIÈRE Joseph Coppey, Jean-Willy Kunz JerÃ'me, Do Bentzinger Éditeur This is, as far as I know, the first biography on Helmut Walcha. It was written, the authors say, over a long time and after a great deal of research. I saw it announced in Amazon.fr and I rushed to buy it. When I actually held the book in my hands, I was surprised that there was so little text: a huge (and ugly) fount, widely spaced lines, and about 200 pages. I was expecting a detailed biography and, what is more, an in depth analysis of his playing style. The biography is there all right. But it is nothing like detailed: it just presents a succession of addresses, the plan of his last house, many photos and some facts that are quite amusing. For instance, he would play the 2nd Bran-denburg on a portable organ with just one stop: trompete 4. Or he used to play the trio sonatas playing the left hand with the feet and the bass line on the left hand. He was fond of Fischer-Dieskau singing (this one really sur-prised me). The book also tries to present his personality, but it seems almost impos-sible to do so. Many persons say there was nothing to say about him: he was kind and very reserved; he was a bad teacher, too rigorous and mostly ineffi-cient; he did not like people to know about his blindness and some students did not find out about it since he actually knew the setting of the pages by heart and would turn the sheets for the pupils; he had truly incomprehensi-ble memory powers, that allowed him to play a section just after listening to it one time. Nothing is said of his political opinions (it seems he was a total unbeliever in political matters). He was deeply religious. It seems he possessed a con-templative frame of mind: he once said that in the old days people knew less but actually they knew better; and that there is too much information nowadays. He is, therefore, presented as a very kind man, very calm and in peace with himself. How are we to understand his early recordings: Sei gegrusset Jesu gütig, the 6th partita, the Chromatic Fantasy? We are not told. About his technique nothing whatsoever is said. He himself described it, but the book does not mention it. Also, his approach to music seems to have been very matter of fact. However, it is stated that, in his last years, he used to play some fugues very slowly indeed, just for the pleasure of listening to the minute details and overall architecture. He liked Bach and, of course, the so-called precursors (which aren't precursors at all) but also Mozart, Beetho-ven, Wagner (he was actually hooked when he was a young boy) and, of course, Max Reger. There are many photos, and it is said that he was a small man, with big hands. His recordings at Alkmaar seem to have been difficult for him because he could not very well reach the pedals (actually, that explains some impreci-sion in some of his recordings there, but this is not explored any further). The book closes with a great quantity of testimonials. Some are very in-teresting (René Saorgin, Odile Bailleux, Michel Chapuis, and many less known musicians more), but some of them are plain idiotic: there is even an astrological chart about him... The whole book is written in a kind of blind worship of Walcha. It says almost nothing, and the authors keep wondering about his memory feats, to the exclusion of everything else. An interesting book? Not really. For those who are fluent in French it is a somewhat dismaying view of a mysterious character - but mysterious it remains.
