Philadelphia Orchestra Performs Ravel

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Parent Category: Film and the Arts

Category: Reviews

Published on Saturday, 01 June 2024 10:13

Written by Jack Angstreich

Photo by Chris Lee

At Carnegie Hall’s Stern Auditorium, on the night of Friday, May 31st, I had the privilege of attending a splendid concert presented by the remarkable musicians of the Philadelphia Orchestra, confidently conducted by its irrepressible Artistic Director, Yannick Nézet-Séguin. 

The event began strongly with a fully engaging account of Maurice Ravel’s wonderful Piano Concerto in G Major—completed in 1931—dazzlingly played by the celebrated soloist, Mitsuko Uchida. Ravel said, in a 1932 interview with an English newspaper:

I frankly admit that I am an admirer of jazz, and I think it is bound to influence modern music. It is not just some passing phase, but has come to stay. It is thrilling and inspiring, and I spend many hours listening to it in night clubs and over the wireless.

In a very useful program note by Christopher H. Gibbs, he provides some valuable background on the work:

Ravel’s interest in jazz had grown during a successful 1928 tour of America, during which he had chances to hear more of it in New Orleans and New York, where he met George Gershwin. Soon after returning to Paris he began writing the G-Major Concerto, some ideas for which date back more than a decade. The project was interrupted, however, by an attractive commission from the Viennese pianist Paul Wittgenstein (older brother of the great philosopher), who had lost his right hand in the First World War and sought out leading composers, including Richard Strauss, Prokofiev, Hindemith, and Britten, to write pieces for left hand alone. In this way Ravel found himself composing two concertos, both jazz influenced.

Ravel intended the G-Major Concerto as a vehicle for his own performances as a pianist and announced plans to take it on an extended tour across Europe, to North and South America, and Asia. Ultimately, health problems forced him to cede the solo spotlight to Marguerite Long, to whom he dedicated the piece. Ravel assumed instead the role of conductor at the very successful premiere in Paris in January 1932, part of a festival of his music. Against the recommendations of his doctors, the two then took the concerto on a four-month tour to 20 cities, and also recorded it.

Ravel felt the genre of the concerto “should be lighthearted and brilliant and not aim at profundity or at dramatic effects.” On several occasions, he alluded to a famous review of Brahms, saying that the great German’s “principle about a symphonic concerto was wrong, and the critic who said that he had written a ‘concerto against the piano’ was right.” 

He adds:

Ravel acknowledged finding his models in concertos by Mozart and Saint-Saëns: “This is why the Concerto, which I originally thought of entitling Divertissement, contains the three customary parts: The initial Allegro, a compact classical structure, is followed by an Adagio … [and] to conclude, a lively movement in Rondo form.”

The remarkably jazzy Allegramente movement—much of it has a brisk rhythm—is playful and effervescent, but with more introspective—even moody, and sometimes lyrical—passages, strongly recalling the music of George Gershwin—especially Rhapsody in Blue—and it includes an ethereal cadenza for the harp as it approaches its spirited—even triumphant—end. Gibbs records that “Ravel said the utterly contrasting Adagio was inspired by the slow movement of Mozart’s Clarinet Quintet,” and it—the most exquisite of the movements—is meditative and song-like, closing quietly. Its solo piano opening has a not distant resemblance to the compositions for the same instrument by Erik Satie and the scoring recalls that of Claude Debussy’s masterly orchestration of the Gymnopédie No. 1. Ravel here employs advanced harmonies even as the music acquires an almost neo-Baroque character. The Presto finale is brash, virtuosic, satiric, and propulsive, concluding suddenly and forcefully. Abundant applause elicited a delightful—if very brief—encore from the pianist: Robert Schumann’s lovely "Aveu" from his Carnaval, Op. 9.

The memorable second half of the evening commenced with the compelling New York premiere performance of Valerie Coleman’s impressive, colorfully scored Concerto for Orchestra, “Renaissance,” co-commissioned by this ensemble. The composer said the following about it:

The Concerto for Orchestra, “Renaissance,” is centered on honoring and reflecting upon the Great Migration and the Harlem Renaissance. Within the Great Migration, my focus has been upon writing music based on the reaction of hope in discovering one’s freedom, and on life within the discovery of a new life and land.

Within this, I tie the sounds of Appalachia to deep southern bluegrass, to honor future generations: my own roots of growing up in Kentucky and my mother’s roots of growing up in Mississippi.

The Harlem Renaissance reflects upon elements of the great big bands and “Le Jazz Hot,” to commemorate expat luminaries such as Langston Hughes, Duke Ellington, Josephine Baker, Paul Robeson, and many others. There are short bursts of “features” for just about every section within the orchestra, with a nod to the principal players, whom I’ve admired greatly.

The first movement, entitled “American Odyssey,” has a lofty quality and is imbued with dance rhythms and demotic elements—it finishes abruptly and powerfully. The next movement, “Portraits,” starts dramatically but is largely impressionistic and it, as well as the finale, “Cotton Club Juba,” becomes more turbulent and suspenseful until the piece’s emphatic close. Coleman was present in the audience to receive the audience’s acclaim.

The true highlight of the concert, along with the Ravel slow movement, was a sterling realization of what is arguably Claude Debussy’s supreme and most intricate masterwork, La mer, completed in 1905. In another excellent program note, Byron Adams recounts the following: 

In a letter to André Messager dated September 12, 1903, Claude Debussy announced, “I am working on three symphonic sketches entitled: 1. ‘Calm Sea around the Sanguinaires Islands’; 2. ‘Play of the Waves’; 3. ‘The Wind Makes the Sea Dance’; the whole to be titled La mer.” In a rare burst of autobiography, he then confided, “You’re unaware, maybe, that I was intended for the noble career of a sailor and have only deviated from that path thanks to the quirks of fate. Even so, I have retained a sincere devotion to the sea.” Debussy points out to Messager the irony that he is working on his musical seascape in landlocked Burgundy, but declares, “I have innumerable memories, and those, in my view, are worth more than a reality which, charming as it may be, tends to weigh too heavily on the imagination.”

He adds:

Writing shortly after the premiere of La mer, the critic Louis Laloy noted, “In each of these three episodes … [Debussy] has been able to create enduringly all the glimmerings and shifting shadows, caresses and murmurs, gentle sweetness and fiery anger, seductive charm and sudden gravity contained in those waves which Aeschylus praised for their ‘smile without number.’”

The opening movement, “From Dawn to Midday at Sea,” has an understated urgency with Oriental echoes but becomes livelier—even grand—with a stirring conclusion, while the succeeding movement, “Play of the Waves,” is ludic, evocative, dynamic as well as reflective, ending softly. The last movement, “Dialogue of the Wind and the Sea,” which begins portentously, is agitated and tempestuous, sometimes anticipating Igor Stravinsky’s The Firebird and The Rite of Spring, finishing ecstatically.

The artists deservedly garnered an enthusiastic ovation.

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