Pierre CHALLIER, journalist La Dépêche du Midi, La Nouvelle République des Pyrénées “Renaissance pyrénéenne” (2007)
“There is nothing to distinguish Diane from Audrey Pleynet. A luminous smile combined with a graceful fragility moving forward in unison, enshrined in the same incarnations of silky flowers… They have all the makings of a magical apparition when they sit face to face, at opposite ends of two grand pianos.
But who will ever be able to measure how much willpower it took them to live through this rebirth, this curtain raiser at the Piano Pic festival, last Monday, at the Escaladieu, when 10 years ago the doctors had ordered them: “You have to stop playing music altogether”…
Because Diane and Audrey Pleynet are the story of a total twinship who have experienced the worst and who have since come together to reinvent the best. (…) And if classical virtuosity is now forbidden to them because of the lack of strength in their hands… it is another form of virtuosity that they have developed, bringing the whole arm into play and working with four hands where two are needed… Fingers caressing the keyboard in an aquatic undulation, each gesture calculated to reach each key with ephemeral grace… under the vault of the Escaladieu, their playing reminds you that true emotion has nothing to do with speed. It’s in the feeling they bring, “because for us, what’s important is the exchange with the audience that carries us along too”.
Crédit photo : mairie de Valence d’Agen
