Harpsichord Method

My memories of Huguette Dreyfus, Harpsichord player (November 1928 - May 2016)

When I was still a student in Paris, I loved to play music by Rameau. Though his music was 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. The harpsichord player 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 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 very out-of-character manner 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 of crotchet notes and quavers on the phone. You just come to meet me in person next time you're in Paris!"

The first time I met her in person she gave me extensive notes and feedback on my entire recording - despite never having met, nor heard of, me before. What Huguette advised me was the basics of ornamentation. I had always thought of grace notes as just optional, additional decorative notes on the basic tune, never really paying much attention to them as there were far too many to play perfectly, note for note. But Huguette emphasised that ornaments were in fact the essence of music, encapsulating the playful spirit. She recommended I stop using edited versions of Couperin or Rameau and instead look for 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 how he had envisioned it. As somebody who had bluffed her way through grace notes and played however she wanted, I felt that it was now time for me to reassess my relationship with Rameau and Couperin. Changing the way I thought and the way I played took a long time and much arduous work, but Huguette always provided great advice and guidance.

From then on, whenever we would meet, I would make sure to send her a recording of myself playing before the meeting. Her frankness was always much appreciated. "It's not perfect but you've definitely improved."

During the winter of 2015 I tried to phone her a few times but had no answer. The day I arrived in Paris I phoned her again, and miraculously she replied. She had just returned home after spending a good few months in hospital. This sort of thing happened many times since then, and even now, a year after her passing, I still expect to suddenly hear her voice again on the other end of the line after a prolonged of silence.

Mariko Terashi