Please read my tribute in Sally Gordon-Marks’ article, ‘The Life of French harpsichordist Huguette Dreyfus’ in The Diapason…
While I was still a student in Paris, I loved to play music by Rameau on the piano. His music hardly featured in teaching or piano competition programs; I would play his pieces to take my mind off of things. A few years later, I was listening absent-mindedly to the radio. On the program, Huguette Dreyfus was talking about a piano recording of Rameau’s music. She commented on what a great thing it was for pianists to play pieces originally intended for the harpsichord, and this surprised me. For a long time, I had been under the impression that harpsichordists did not take well to pianists trying their hands at playing a harpsichord piece. This convinced me that if I were to perform Rameau for anybody, it would – first and foremost – have to be for her.
Many years later, I sent her my piano recording of Rameau and Couperin. No response. In a manner that was quite out of character for me, I plucked up my courage and phoned her directly. To my surprise (and also relief), she remembered my recording. ‘I have too much to say, and there’s really no use in talking about crotchet notes and quavers on the phone. Just come to meet me in person the next time you’re in Paris.’
When I did go to see Huguette in Paris, she gave me feedback on my entire recording, despite the fact that we had never met before. She had made exhaustive notes. Her advice focused on the basics of ornamentation. I had always thought of ornaments as being optional, just additional notes decorating the basic tune. I had never really paid much attention to them, as there seemed to be far too many to play accurately, note for note. But Huguette emphasised that ornaments were in fact essential to music, giving it a playful spirit, for example. She recommended that I stop using edited versions of Couperin or Rameau and look instead for facsimiles of the original editions, in which the composers had detailed how they wanted their ornaments to be played.
Indeed, in his manuscripts, Couperin had written that he wished for his music to be played precisely as he had conceived it. As somebody who had bluffed her way through ornaments, playing them in her own way, I felt that it was now time for me to reassess my relationship with Rameau and Couperin. Changing the way I thought and played took a long time and much arduous work, but Huguette always provided great advice and guidance. From then on, before we met, I would make sure to send her a recording I had made. Her frankness was always much appreciated. “It’s not perfect, but you’ve definitely improved.”
During the fall of 2014, I tried to phone her a few times, but there was no answer. The day I arrived in Paris, I phoned her again, and miraculously, she replied. She had just returned home after spending a long time in hospital. This reoccured several times, so even now, seven years after her passing, I still expect to hear her voice again suddenly on the other end of the line, after a prolonged silence.