Strange Aeons of Orchestration from the New York Philharmonic

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Parent Category: Film and the Arts

Category: Reviews

Published on Tuesday, 29 November 2022 15:46

Written by Jack Angstreich

Stéphane Denève conducts the New York Philharmonic. Photo by Chris Lee

At David Geffen Hall at Lincoln Center, on the evening of Saturday, November 26th, I had the enormous pleasure to attend a terrific concert of French music presented by the New York Philharmonic—once again playing at their rare best in an already very strong season—under the outstanding direction of guest conductor, Stéphane Denève.

The program opened promisingly with an excellent performance of contemporary composer Guillaume Connesson’s remarkable, impressively orchestrated Céléphaïs, from his Les Cités de Lovecraft of 2017. Program annotator Kathryn Bacasmot explains that “Celephaïs is a city in Lovecraft’s Dreamlands that he wrote about twice, first as an eponymous short story and again as a featured location in the novella The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath.” I here quote Connesson’s comments on the work:

The Lovecraftian geography is so precise and brimming with imagination that I wanted to paint it with a teeming orchestral palette. I used highly differentiated writing techniques according to the movements to echo this “baroque” folly, so typical of Lovecraft, with the multiplicity of my orchestra’s colors. Céléphaïsis a gleaming port city with marble walls and bronze gates. In four parts, this first movement is marked by its brilliant colors and diatonic melodic writing, with the haunting presence of the fourth. After the introduction (Les portes de Bronze) in which orchestral shocks are superimposed on brass fanfares, the first theme bursts forth (Entrée dans la cité aux rues d’Onyx) in the violins and develops in an orchestral effervescence that depicts the bustling streets. In Le Temple de turquoise, a second theme (still based on the interval of the fourth) appears in the trumpets, giving life to a colorful pagan celebration. The third part(Le Palais de cristal rose des Soixante-dix Délices)is a moment of calm in which we again find the first theme transformed in a chorale of translucent strings surrounded by shimmering sonorities in the winds, harp, and celesta. After a bridge, made up of three trilled chords, begins Les sept processions des Prêtres couronnés d’orchidées, a great crescendo over a seven-beat ostinato led by a theme in fourths (new mutation of the first theme). The “visit” to Céléphaïs concludes with a dazzling fortissimo.

The extraordinary Icelandic soloist, Víkingur Ólafsson, then entered the stage for a brilliant rendition of Maurice Ravel’s classic Piano Concerto in G major. In his very informative notes for the program, James M. Keller provides some useful background to the piece:

Maurice Ravel composed both of his piano concertos more or less simultaneously from 1929 to 1931: the Concerto in D major for Piano Left-Hand and Orchestra (1929–30) and the Concerto in G major for Piano “Both-Hands” and Orchestra (1929–31). As early as 1906, he reported that he had begun sketching a piano concerto on Basque themes, provisionally titled Zazpiak-Bat, and in 1913 he informed his friend Igor Stravinsky that he was re-focusing his attention on it. But in late 1914 Ravel, by then installed in the south of France due to the disruptions of World War I, wrote to his student and colleague Roland-Manuel that he had to give up work on the piece since he had left his sketches behind in Paris. And that was the end of it, except that some material from the project was reworked when Ravel came to write his G-major Piano Concerto.

He adds:

When he described this concerto to his friend the critic M.D. Calvocoressi, Ravel called it “a concerto in the truest sense of the word: I mean that it is written very much in the same spirit as those of Mozart and Saint-Saëns.” He continued:

The music of a concerto should, in my opinion, be lighthearted and brilliant, and not aim at profundity or at dramatic effects. It has been said of certain classics that their concertos were written not “for” but “against” the piano. I heartily agree. I had intended to title this concerto “Divertissement.” Then it occurred to me that there was no need to do so because the title “Concerto” should be sufficiently clear.

The initial, eccentric, percussive, and jazzy Allegrmente was sparkling, with some lyrical moments. The introspective Adagio as saithat followed was gloriously beautiful while thefinalewas simply dazzling. Enthusiastic applause was rewarded by the pianist with two exquisite encores: the Alexander Siloti transcription of the Johann Bach Prelude in B minor and Jean-Philippe Rameau’s Le rappel des oiseux,the latter of which at least he has also recorded.(At the Philharmonic concert on Wednesday, November 23rd, Ólafsson played his own transcription of Rameau’s “The Arts and the Hours,” a piece that he has recorded too.)

The second half of the concert was even more memorable, beginning with the seldom performed but admirableBacchus et ArianeSuite No. 2 by the now underrated Albert Roussel, a work also notable for its masterful orchestration. Keller remarks upon this piece derived from an eponymous ballet score:

Bacchus et Ariane, composed in 1930, reflects the contours of the libretto that Abel Hernant created for what must have been a most interesting ballet as staged at its premiere in May 1931. It was directed by Jacques Rouché, with choreography by Serge Lifar and sets and costumes by Giorgio di Chirico [ . . . . ]

He adds by way of explanation that “Roussel extracted two orchestral suites from his ballet, of which Suite No. 1 essentially comprises the music of Act One and Suite No. 2 (performed tonight) corresponds to Act Two.”

The event concluded stupendously with a sublime account of Ravel’s sensuous, unearthly, astonishing Daphnis et Chloé Suite No. 2, the supreme, ineffable achievement of the evening. To close this review, here is some interesting context from the program note on it:

In his “Autobiographical Sketch,” a brief document Ravel prepared in 1928, he described Daphnis et Chloé:

a great choreographic symphony ... a vast musical fresco, less scrupulous in questions of archeology than faithful to the Greece of my dreams, which identifies quite willingly with that imagined and depicted by late 18th-century French artists. The work is constructed symphonically according to a strict tonal plan, by means of a small number of motifs, whose development assures the symphonic homogeneity of the work.

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