by Mark Devoto
On its way to Carnegie Hall, the Orchestre National De France brought its estimable wares, including two concerti with Daniil Trifonov, to Mechanics Hall in Worcester on Friday night. The presenter, Music Worcester, has been filling the 1100-seat hall with concerts that Bostonians have envied since 1858. Getting to hear a large and expert orchestra deliver a jaunty all-French program in an acoustically sumptuous, moderate-sized hall left us feeling satisfyingly pleasured…right through the extended simultaneous climax that is Ravel’s Bolero.
Elsa Barraine (1910 – 1999) wrote her 17-minute Symphony No. 2, Voïna (War), in 1938, certainly a time of continental upheaval. According to Nick Barnard,
“…she entered the Paris Conservatoire aged just nine and ten years later became only the fourth woman to win the prestigious Prix de Rome…. Barraine was a genuinely remarkable character. During World War II she ran extraordinary risks as both a dedicated Communist and member of the Resistance – as well as having Jewish ancestry… Laura Hamer considers the symphony one of Barraine’s finest works. She goes on to suggest it reflects “Barraine’s unease over the growing inevitability of a Second World War.”
The structure is a standard fast-slow-fast with the central section a powerful Marche funèbre, the heart of the work in every sense. The piquant harmonies, motoric energy and angular writing are reminiscent of Prokofiev and Stravinsky in his neo-Classical phase.”
The spirited performance responded generously to the emotional turmoil in the score. An agitated Lento gave way rather soon to a rhythmically mysterious Allegro vivace. Adriana Ferreira ’s flute solo and Rémi Joussemet’s muted trumpet moment provided a colorful respite before the horns kindled something of a march leading to a tutti close to the movement. The cosmic March funèbre relaxed into a sad ballad in the mode of the “Field of the Dead” lament in Alexander Nevsky. Some of the harmonies stumped me, but overall this could have been the work of a Gallic Prokofiev or a Russian Poulenc. After lots of tutti gestures, Raffael Perraud’s cello ministrations brought us to a lofty apotheosis. Not a dry eye in the house.
The previous movement’s tragedienne’s bent so soon forgotten, the Allegretto finale materialized as if in frothy dance hall. So carnival-like was the energy, that conductor Cristian Măcelaru might have been dancing with an imagined Nana. Warm riffs from piccolo (Édouard Sabo), flute, and cello deserve callouts. How quickly Barraine’s life must have changed soon after she wrote this simultaneously austere, brilliant, and compact symphony.
Mark DeVoto, who was unable to come to the concert but who knows this music well, sent some notes about Saint-Saëns’s Piano Concerto No. 2:
It has always been one of his most popular, notwithstanding that its full expression and drama are all concentrated in the big first movement and that the last two are much lighter in weight, more frivolous than serious, leading Zygmunt Stojowski to quip that it “begins like Bach and ends like Offenbach.” The first movement is impressive because it builds slowly and expertly. The opening bars are indeed like a Bach organ toccata, soon yielding to a slow nocturne and rising from there to pianistic brilliance. I’ve been looking for some of this first movement’s history — I remember reading somewhere that Saint-Saëns wrote it in just three weeks in 1868, and only barely sketched the piano part in the manuscript full score from which Anton Rubinstein (!) conducted the premiere, with Saint-Saëns playing the solo from memory.
The clownish second movement and the mindlessly trill-bespattered finale can only be considered silly crowd-pleasers; their thematic material is trite. In all the Fourth Concerto is a much better work of serious formal interest, and the Fifth (“Egyptian”), which Norman Demuth called “deplorable,” is a colorful and successful experiment in late style. -DeVoto
The Orchestre National de France serves as an undisputed ambassador of French musical culture. Indeed, the well-worn parts on the music desks looked to be the first edition and testify to the ensemble’s long immersion in this repertoire. The orchestra might have been founded only in 1934, but they are clearly inheritors of a much longer tradition. What confident jollity they dispensed to us after Daniil Trifonov conveyed the Bachian introduction with rhetorical command. Of course Trifonov also commands poetry and emotional projection across the house. His mastery kept us mesmerized. And in this concerto, the keyboard rarely goes silent, though the orchestra often does. The opening unaccompanied piano solo and the slow orchestral recitative that followed meant that the violins didn’t need to turn a page until about ten minutes into the first movement. The older Steinway (2007) quivered on stage in response to the heaviest onslaughts; held in place by some insubstantial shims, it could not absorb Trifonov’s majestic engagement without suffering some serious sagging in pitch. (A technician worked on it for at least half an hour during the intermission, tuning every note.)
The Allegro scherzando, a chef’s brilliant froth, gave players and soloist license to share witty jollity. Oscillating the una corda and employing the damper pedal with micron accuracy, Trifonov seemingly imitated every instrument in the orchestra. No angst-ridden premonitions in this concerto, just unalloyed joy. The Presto begins furioso, like a Hollywood duel, but with epees rather than broad swords. Trifonov, the possessor of 1000 colors and moods, could alternate a dignified chorale with machine-gun exclamation — fast, faster, and immaculate — more fun than I’ve had in a concert hall in years.
The piano having been remediated, Ravel’s Piano Concerto could commence.
Ravel, whose sesquicentennial is being celebrated in concert all around the world this year, supposedly purposefully went to study Saint-Saëns’s concertos when composing his own G major, which has all the hi-jinks earmarks of a Parisian jazz infatuation — maybe it owes something to American blues but even more to Milhaud, Honegger and the music-hall. The slow movement is everybody’s favorite, a 1920s reincarnation of Mozart’s ineffable lyricism. -DeVoto
It made us think of Petrushka, though DeVoto points out that Ravel was writing the Petrushka chord (F-sharp major over C major) as early as Jeux d’eau in 1901, ten years before Petrushka. The jazzy Allegramente gives scope to two harps (one doing glissandi and other playing the tune) as well as some down and dirty flutter tonguing. Trifonov’s very busy cadenza bumblebeed back to the hive. His trilling summoned the orchestra. Sad and flexible of bar lines, the Adagio assai summoned the spirit of Satie and/or Ravel’s Pavane. DeVoto explains that “the Satie-like steady drip in the slow movement is a slow hemiola in the left hand (like 6/8 vs. 3/4). The seemingly strange modalities might be the bitonality in the middle of the movement — G-sharp minor over G bass, etc. Ravel and Satie were good friends, but Satie died in 1925, seven years before the Concerto.” Nancy Andelfinger’s gorgeous English horn solo stopped time as it summoned “Goin’ Home” over piano and orchestral accompaniment. Shimmering ppp upper-string harmonics closed the movement. The wild Presto shifts between motoric 2/4 and 6/8, in mostly regular phrases. It reminds one a bit of Ravel’s own Danse générale from Daphnis et Chloé and Stravinsky’s Danse infernale from Firebird. (Ravel was mostly finished with D & C when he heard Firebird in 1910.) The exciting conflagration left us ready for the quieter opening of Daphnis et Chloé.
Daphnis et Chloé is Ravel’s longest work, an orchestral ballet with wordless chorus lasting nearly an hour, and the Suite no. 2, representing the final third (Daybreak to Danse générale), is performed far out of proportion to the rest of it. It should be studied in harmony courses because Ravel’s richest invention in tonal harmony is a significant part of the work’s unique form. My own favorite parts of the ballet are in the first third. But it’s more of a concert piece than a ballet; Diaghilev never gave it enough of a shove during the same year that he was grappling with Nijinsky’s radical version of Debussy’s Faune. -DeVoto
Oh, how those burbling clarinets and flutes signified the most glorious dawn of musical creation (maybe save Haydn’s, which was a “Representation of Chaos”). Măcelaru inflected with patient elegance and the strings shone bright. The oceanic swell and the ne-plus-ultra orchestration, including an alto flute and just about every instrumental possibility, cast fragrant spells.
A collective sigh of recognition overlapped the beginning of the encore.
The Wikipedia article on Ravel’s Boléro helpfully provided a count of the relentless snare-drum tattoo. The ostinato repeats 169 times as something like 17 instruments each get a lick at the two Sufi-cum-bacchanalistic melodies. (The very long main melody itself repeats only 4½ times in toto.) We particularly reveled in the lubricious utterances of Cédric Carceles’s tenor sax, Julien Chatellier’s soprano sax, and the come-hither trombone’s (Jean-Philippe Navrez) jazzy pitch-bending. Măcelaru acceded to Ravel’s teasingly slow tempo, keeping the pulse very steady and resisting the temptation to play faster as the simultaneous climax approached. DeVoto adds: “I guess Boléro is one of the longest crescendos in the literature, but I don’t really hear it as a crescendo, just a gradual accumulation like a flash mob — I’ve even seen it performed by a flash mob in a railroad station or a shopping mall, years back, very clever. Despite the simplicity of structure, the score of Boléro repays close study, almost like two chapters of an orchestration text, written by a master.”
Some thoughts on attending concerts at Worcester’s Mechanics Hall. The third-floor auditorium is historic and handsome, save the modern portraits hung to make valid political points. Does the balcony seating comply with safety codes when rows span 56-seats between aisles? We must have hopped up and down 20 times to let people pass. The deluxe color handout did not include any essays on the works played. And we waited for nearly half an hour to escape from the garage. Better to park on the street in the lonely downtown.