Magical French Music
A listener who attended the excellent concert of the Orchestre Philharmonique de Radio France at Carnegie Hall Sunday afternoon might be convinced that only a French orchestra should be allowed to perform the music of Maurice Ravel.
This season marks both the 70th and the 30th anniversary of this ensemble, since the original iteration was founded in 1937, and its new identity was forged in 1976 when Pierre Boulez, fresh from his stormy relationship with the New York Philharmonic, recommended that an orchestra should be much more protean in its approach. Now a modular group that can function as a full orchestra, a chamber ensemble, and a vehicle for experimental musical education, this assemblage is thriving at both the revivified Salle Pleyel and the Theatre du Chatelet under music director Myung-Whun Chung, who took over in 2000 but has been a presence in Paris since the late 1980s.
This concert began with an exquisite reading of Ravel's 1911 orchestration of his own Mother Goose. This is magical music, evocative in a very special way of childhood. I have never heard it played so delicately, so poignantly, so sonically delightful. Every harp and flute sound was rapturous, the overall tone of the strings was otherworldly, and the solos of concertmaster Svetlin Roussev were ecstatic. The interplay of woodwinds in the pentatonic section was crisp and clean. Mr. Chung wove his gossamer web with a good deal of tensile strength. He didn't shortchange the rhythmic drive of the piece for empty beauty, but rather employed the natural propulsion of the writing to increase the sensual tension of the narrative. For music about innocence, this was a pretty daring interpretation.
Vladimir Feltsman was the soloist in a terrific version of the Piano Concerto for the Left Hand. Ravel wrote this piece for the wounded Paul Wittgenstein, but, unlike some of the other works of Prokofiev, Strauss, Korngold, and Britten that he commissioned, the one-armed pianist actually performed this music on a regular basis. Especially impressive were Mr. Feltsman's stylings as he moved effortlessly from the dramatic to the jazzy to the lyrical to the playful. His initial cadenza was an outburst of complex proportions, equal parts of bravado, virtuosity, and anger. Again, the orchestra was delicacy personified, but still capable of rollicking raucousness and primeval growling as appropriate. This was a lively and precise account. On the one hand, Mr. Feltsman made virtually no mistakes.
Had Mr. Chung come back after intermission with "Daphnis et Chloé," this would have been close to an ideal afternoon. Instead, he chose Igor Stravinsky's "Le Sacre du printemps," which was not ideally suited to this refined ensemble's sound. The realization was elegant, precise, tasteful, polite — in other words, just what you don't want in "The Rite of Spring." Inevitable lapses of intonation, endemic to this rather beastly piece, began to creep in, and some of the trumpet work in particular was ragged. Admittedly there is a French connection here, but if you are going to serve up this kind of raw-boned and atavistic music, then you might as well go for a much more percussive sound. Radio France was plenty loud enough, just not unbuttoned.
But all came right in the end, as Mr. Chung announced a rather substantial encore, Ravel's La Valse. Here, the quicksilver changeability that proved so stunning in the concerto allowed the conductor to lead in three distinct styles. First, the orchestra produced a lovely dance, perfectly balanced string and harp blending, luxurious ebb and flow. Then, as the music turned ominous with the advent of Great War storm clouds, the coloration became darker and more mysterious, not murky exactly, but thick with emotional intensity. Finally, the paroxysm that concludes the piece was explosively chaotic, all raveling to a wild conclusion. Just fabulous.
