I was under the impression that Ravel is generally very easy to like, so I didn't spend much time getting acquainted with the works on this program beforehand. Unfortunately it seems that several of the pieces do take some getting to know in order to enjoy or appreciate. I won't say much about those works that I failed to appreciate because that's pretty much all I have to say about them. Alborada del gracioso, the piece that opened the program, was one of these. It was a festive sounding opening to the concert, but it failed to enchant me and I failed to find much beauty in it.
Next Jean-Yves came on stage for the Piano Concerto for Left Hand. Jean-Yves was an incredibly slick fellow. He walked with a suave stride and his shoes were so shiny I'm still seeing spots. Anyways, he sat down at the piano and very impressively performed the entire concerto with only his left hand. He did miss notes here and there (or at least didn't hit them smack on), but all in all he seemed like a mature, competent musician, and I'm not sure exactly what Ravel expected technically out of the soloist with what he demanded from the left hand alone. Thibaudet actually engaged in some "flailing" throughout the work (to use the word of a volunteer usher I overheard during intermission, who by the way was a woman I once provided Mac tech support for and who has a dog named Faust [only because Mephistopheles was too long], but I don't think she recognized me), possibly as a result of having to reach all the notes he did with his left hand. His use of the pedal at times shook the entire piano. Upon the conclusion of the work, Thibaudet immediately got up and went to hug Morlot.
In any case, the music itself in the left hand concerto again did not captivate me very much. I was beginning to think that perhaps I do need to be really familiar with the repertoire in a concert in order to really enjoy it. The last piece before intermission, Rapsodie espagnole, was a four movement work that again I had trouble finding the beauty in. The orchestra throughout the first half of the program seemed to be playing very well though, and Morlot appeared to be in high spirits. He would be, with an all-French program.
After intermission we took up our seats once more and settled in for Pavane pour une infante défunte (Pavane for a Dead Princess). As the piece unfolded I felt myself sinking into it. At last! Beauty! Real, haunting, lush, divine music! I could have heard the theme of this seven minute piece for seventy minutes. It was one of those pieces that after you are introduced to in a concert you go home, buy on iTunes and listen to on repeat for a month. It was one of those works that just kills you, as if Ravel had a map of your soul while he wrote it. By the end of it I felt very much like beauty is beauty, whether or not I've heard it before. So even now I'm not sure what it was about the works in the first half that didn't speak to me. If Ravel could write this, surely those works must be great.
I just took a brief pause of writing this to listen to the Pavane. Sigh. <3
The piano was then brought back on stage for the Piano Concerto in G major. Jean-Yves and his shoes came striding out again, and the musicians commenced with the first movement, another work which I wasn't too crazy about. This is getting old isn't it? At least I liked the Pavane. Anyways, Jean-Yves, now able to use both his hands, didn't engage in as much flailing, and he gave a very accomplished performance of the work. It was really nice to have an adult pianist on stage after Lang Lang the week before.
The second movement of the concerto was quite a nice piece, I did like several parts of that. There were places where it suddenly lapsed out of the romantic beauty and into quasi-modernism, but more often than not the movement was a nice lush interlude between the two outer movements which seemed to me to be rather jagged on the edges. In any case, the audience seemed to like it, and Jean-Yves gave Morlot another big hug upon the conclusion of the work.
The harp played a rather active role in the piano concerto, and during bowing Morlot invited the harpist to the front of the stage for a bow, but she cowered behind her harp blushing. Morlot was undeterred, signaling the whole orchestra to sit back down so that he could at least invite her to stand up by herself. She slowly began to stand up and peek her face out from behind the harp, but just then Jean-Yves came back on stage for another bow so the harpist was 'saved by the shoes' and sat back down. I don't get why someone would be that determined not to receive recognition for their work. If she had a simple preference to not bow that's one thing, but the minute she insisted on that in the face of him emphatically wanting to recognize her, then it became about her and it became a false modesty/ego thing.
The last piece on the program was Boléro, the only piece I was familiar with beforehand. I actually used to hear it a lot when I was little, and I even danced to it at the age of seven or eight. Yeah. Anyways, this was the one piece I was really looking forward to on the program. I hadn't heard it in a very long time, and it proved to be very much to my taste, more so than I thought it would be.
Morlot gave the downbeat and the lower strings began their pizzicati in sync with the snare drum, played by Michael Werner, who was beginning his fifteen minute marathon of playing the same rhythm over and over again with the perfection of a metronome, against all sorts of different rhythms in the orchestra. I noticed the level of skill and focus required in his work early on, and was very impressed with his methodical infallibility.
The violas were strumming their instruments like guitars, which initially had the effect of making it seem like sound was coming from nowhere, because you don't expect sound to be coming from a section if their instruments are in their laps.
The piece slowly began to build up, with the winds one by one taking their turn at the genius and haunting melody. The flute was the first one, and I haven't mentioned this yet but Demarre McGill is on an extended leave this year, replaced by Christie Reside. She is good, but she's not Demarre, and her opening solo in Boléro confirmed that. The clarinet, bassoon and trombone solos are three in particular that stick in my memory because of the mastery with which the players executed their parts, but every player who was passed the melody did it justice.
I really really enjoyed this piece. It's for experiences like this that I go to live concerts. It was absolutely timeless. I was completely immersed. There was no sense of beginning, middle or end; just a continuous beauty and journey from instrument to instrument, constantly rising and growing. This is another Ravel melody that I could hear forever.
I had the sense during this piece that the orchestra was also enjoying it more than the rest of the program. Perhaps I was projecting my own enjoyment, but it seemed almost as if they had played the rest of the program because they had to, and now they were playing the piece that they would all want to play whether or not they were getting paid. It was like a musical party on stage.
At one point a low wind instrument took over the theme and the piccolo was harmonizing it a sixth above. I think the piccolo was supposed to be quieter than it was, because it sounded quite weird, and her notes, while they would have worked as a faint harmonization, did not work when heard tangibly. When that iteration of the theme ended Christine and I gave each other funny looks, and then the piccolo player coughed, which almost sent us into a bad bout of laughter. I was also amused by the appearance of the timpanist, who went about his repetitive motions in the manner of some sort of mechanical circus act.
I gave a standing ovation at the end of the piece. It was such a joy to observe and to hear. Truly excellent, involved, collaborative music-making was evident throughout the work. Afterwards, during the jubilant applause and to my pleasant surprise, Morlot asked Michael Werner to the front of the stage for a bow for his miraculously inhuman performance meticulously laying the rhythmic groundwork throughout the piece. I was really glad to be able to applaud him individually.
So this concert was all in all a great evening. Even one performance like Boléro is worth the ticket price, and there was also the Pavane as well as a host of other very well played works by Ravel, even if they were not justly appreciated by me.
Next up is a concert of Beethoven's Triple Concerto and Schubert's 9th Symphony on October 5th. I'm quite excited about that one.
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http://www.seattlesymphony.org/symphony/buy/single/production.aspx?id=13605&src=t&dateid=13605
http://www.seattlesymphony.org/symphony/buy/single/production.aspx?id=13605&src=t&dateid=13605
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