Juilliard Orchestra Perform Beethoven & Ravel

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Parent Category: Film and the Arts

Category: Reviews

Published on Monday, 19 January 2026 14:35

Written by Jack Angstreich

Photo by Paula Lobo, courtesy Juilliard

At Lincoln Center’s wonderful Alice Tully Hall, on the night of Monday, November 10th, I had the privilege to attend a splendid concert featuring the precocious musicians of the Juilliard Orchestra, here under the distinguished direction of Fabien Gabel.

The event started impressively with an excellent account of Ludwig van Beethoven’s magisterial Violin Concerto in D Major, Op. 61, from 1806, with the accomplished James Birch as soloist. There’s some eccentricity in the introduction to the initial, Allegro ma non troppo movement—it is unusually complex and ambitious—but the music quickly becomes dramatic—the primary melody is especially beautiful, even haunting. The ensuing Larghetto is solemn too, while the Rondo finale, marked Allegro, is lively, dance-like and charming.

The second half of the evening was even more memorable, if only for the sterling rendition of Maurice Ravel’s extraordinary set of orchestrations—from his marvelous piano suite—Le Tombeau de Couperin, from 1919. In useful notes on the program by violist Noémie Chemali, who received a master’s degree from Juilliard 2022, she comments thus:

As Ravel notes, this work is “directed less in fact to Couperin himself than to French music of the 18th century,” a broader invocation of the Baroque keyboard tradition that shaped French musical identity.

She adds:

The movements most directly connected to Couperin—the Forlane and Rigaudon— draw inspiration from the Concerts royeaux, while the Prélude traces back to Couperin's pedagogical treatise, L'Art de toucher le clavier. The original piano suite was completed in 1917 with four movements, including a Fugue and Toccata that Ravel ultimately excluded from the orchestrated version he completed in 1919.

The opening, exquisite Prélude is more sprightly than might be anticipated in a work written as a memorial to fallen soldiers—it ends very softly. Also surprising is the seemingly even more playful Forlane that follows, but it is, again, thoroughly bewitching, if quirky; it too finishes gently. The succeeding Menuet is more lush and yet more transparently elegiac in tone—it closes very quietly. The concluding Rigaudon is energetic and brisk in rhythm—it also has a surprisingly cheerful quality, although the middle section is more subdued and slightly mysterious, but with ludic moments; the movement ends abruptly.

The concert finished enjoyably with a satisfying reading of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s enchanting Symphony No. 39 in E-flat Major, K. 543, from 1788. The Adagio introduction to the beginning Allegro is majestic, like the movement as a whole, and its musical material recurs throughout its main body which is more dynamic and at times celebratory. It precedes an Andante con moto that too has a somewhat weighty ethos and before long becomes more impassioned, but it’s not without serene measures. The consequent Menuetto, marked Allegretto, although less somber, retains an elevated approach, but the delightful Trio section is more jovial in spirit, while the Allegro finale is exhilarating and exultant. The artists deservedly received a standing ovation.