Royal Festival Hall
Dutilleux – Correspondances
Ravel – Piano Concerto in G
major
Ravel – L’Enfant et les Sortilèges
Barbara Hannigan (soprano,
Princess)
Dame Mitsuko Uchida (piano)
Child – Chloé Briot
Mother, Chinese Cup,
Dragonfly – Elodie Méchain
Louis XV Armchair, Shepherd,
White Cat, Squirrel – Andrea Hill
Shepherdess, Bat, Owl – Omo Bello
Fire, Nightingale – Sabine Devieilhe
Grandfather Clock – Jean-Sébastien
Bou
Teapot, Arithmetic, Frog –
François Piolino
Armchair, Tree – Nicola Courjal
Irina Brown (director)
Quinny Sacks (movement)
Ruth Sutcliffe (designs)
Kevin Treacy (lighting)
Louis Price (video)
Philharmonia Voices
(director: Aidan Oliver)
Philharmonia Orchestra
Esa-Pekka Salonen (conductor)
Henri Dutilleux’s music has
its devotees. I am yet to join their ranks, but had no reason to think this was
not an admirable performance of his song-cycle, Correspondances. Following its brief, opening Rilke (in
translation) setting, ‘Gong’, ‘Danse cosmique’ offered Barbara Hannigan greater
dramatic possibilities, well taken. The Philharmonia under Esa-Pekka Salonen
provided vivid, often pictorial playing. Singer and orchestra proved tender
indeed during the treatment of ‘solitude’ in the oddly-chosen
extract from a letter from Aleksandr Solzhenitzyn to Mstislav Rostropovich and
Galina Vishnevskaya. Hannigan’s closing repetitions of ‘toujours’ faded away
nicely, as did the orchestra. ‘Gong II’ provided something a little more
labyrinthine, even perhaps Bergian, although Pli selon pli this certainly is not. The closing ‘De Vincent á Théo’
brought beguiling sonorities and, in Hannigan’s performance, a stunning vocal
climax.
Mitsuko Uchida joined the
orchestra for Ravel’s G major Concerto. There were a few occasions when I
wondered whether the Philharmonia had had enough rehearsal here, lapses in
ensemble uncharacteristic for both orchestra and conductor. Otherwise, Salonen
proved general cool but not cold, even though a little more freedom at times
might not have gone amiss. Uchida’s playing was a model of clarity, energy, an
of course grace. It is all too easy to make Mozartian comparisons here, but
they did not seem especially relevant; this was Ravel, and sounded like it.
Uchida’s second-movement cantilena was beautifully judged, a product of
harmonic understanding as much as her melodic voicing itself. Woodwind solos
were exquisitely voiced, with just the right degree of general orchestral
languor. The scampering energy of the finale was occasionally hampered by a
couple more lapses in ensemble, but the ‘sense’ of the music was there,
especially in Salonen’s building of tension. Uchida’s choice of encore was inspired:
the second of Schoenberg’s Six Little
Piano Pieces, op.19, that repeated major third, G-B, making its point of
continuity.
L’Enfant
et les sortilèges
followed the interval. Salonen’s tendency, especially at the start, was towards
fleetness of tempo; there was certainly no hint of sentimentality. Indeed, a
keen sense of forward motion was maintained throughout the performance. The action
took place on a ‘stage’ surrounding the stage proper, a resourceful
semi-staging giving all that we really needed, not least thanks to imaginative
animation (for instance, the confusion of the clock) and atmospheric lighting.
There was great character and chemistry to be experienced between the singers, François
Piolino often stealing the show, whether by himself or in his interactions with
others. Chloé Briot presented a convincingly boyish Child, never forgetting –
nor did the performers as a whole – that this is not really a children’s opera at
all, but an opera about that most adult of preoccupations, childhood. Hannigan,
when she reappeared, now as the Princess, was very much a woman in a man’s
creation of a supposed child’s world. Scenes were very sharply defined as
almost self-contained units; Salonen seemed, at least to my ears, to perceive
Ravel’s opera almost as a cinematic dream-sequence. Certain figures recalled the sound-world of the piano concerto, but there was no mistaking the heady atmosphere of the night.
