Royal Academy of Music/BBC SO/Denève - Poulenc and Ravel, 26 April 2013

Barbican Hall

Poulenc – Les Animaux modèles

Ravel – L’Enfant et les sortilèges

The Child – Rozanna Madylus

Mother, The Dragonfly, The Ottoman – Fiona Mackay
The Bergère – Rosalind Coad
The Chinese Cup/The Female Cat/The Wicker Chair – Saraha Shorter
The Fire/The Nightingale – Jennifer France
The Princess – Sónia Grané
The Bat/Animal – Tereza Gevorgyan
The Owl/The Settle – Helen Bailey
The Squirrel – Irina Loskova
A Shepherdess/The Sofa – Alice Privett
A Shepherd/Animal – Katie Howden
The Armchair – Samuel Queen
The Grandfather Clock/The Tomcat – Samuel Pantcheff
The Teapot (Black Wedgwood) – Ross Scanlon
The Little Old Man (Arithmetic) – Bradley Smith
A Tree – Nicholas Crawley
The Frog – Iain Milne
Animal – Gwilym Bowen
Animal – Andri Björn Róbertsson

 Stephen Mangan (actor)

Members of the Royal Academy of Music

Jean-Baptiste Barrière (video)

BBC Symphony Orchestra

Stéphane Denève (conductor)

 

A good number of my finest and enjoyable operatic experiences in London over the past few years have come courtesy of our conservatoires rather than our big houses. Royal Academy Opera seems to be on an especial high at the moment, this season having offered excellent performances of both Lavera costanza – the best performance I have attended of a Haydn opera anywhere – and Eugene Onegin. An enticing double bill awaits next month: Dido and Aeneas and Sir Peter Maxwell Davies’s The Lighthouse. This evening, however, a good number of familiar voices crossed town to the Barbican, to sing in a concert performance of L’Enfant et les sortilèges, with the BBC Symphony Orchestra and Stéphane Denève, a highly laudable form of collaboration, which one can only hope will continue.

 

There is absolutely no need for condescension when treating with these young singers; indeed, their contribution in many respects outclassed that of the orchestra and conductor. Not that, once past some very un-Ravelian imprecision at the opening, there was anything terribly wrong with it, and perhaps I am being grossly unfair, retaining very fond memories of a Berlin performance I heard from the Berlin Philharmonic and Sir Simon Rattle in 2008, but a more luxuriant canvas might well have heightened the sense of fantasy. Denève’s drier approach offered, I suppose, a valid alternative, though I could not help but wonder whether it was in part a response to the thinner tone of the orchestra.

 

Anyway, the singers did Ravel proud. From such an extensive cast, it might seem hyperbole to say that there was not a weak link, but there really was not. Singers, save The Child, centre-stage throughout, came together at the side of the stage for the chorus, whose contributions were notably well directed by Denève, and moved to the front when required for solos. First amongst equals had to be Rozanna Madylus as The Child, impetuous and wide-eyed, as Ravel demands. Equally impressive, if anything more so still, was the star turn offered by Sónia Gráne’s beautifully floated yet splendidly precise Princess; I was delighted to read afterwards in her biography that she is about to join the Berlin Staatsoper, whence I have just returned, as a Young Artist there. It was a pleasure, moreover, to hear light, convincingly ‘French’ voices, with a fine command of language and idiom, from singers such as Ross Scanlon and Samuel Queen. Jean-Baptiste Barrière’s video sequences I found a little on the dull side, too straightforwardly representational, though at least they made a change from his screen-saver-cum-wallpaper contribution to a Philharmonia performance of Wozzeck a few years ago.

 

Perhaps Denève was simply being ‘considerate’ – not that I think it was necessary – to his soloists, since there was more bite to the first-half performance of Poulenc’s suite from the 1940s ballet, Les Animaux modèles. The opening ‘Le Petit jour,’ offered enticing echoes of Daphnis et Chloé, with a definite ‘French’ quality to the BBC SO’s sound, strings especially, with a vibrato it is difficult not to define as ‘glamorous’. The slight lack of body here was less of a problem; indeed, it arguably added to a sense of idiom, recalling recordings of Poulenc’s own time, some of them involving him. I was less sure about Stephen Mangan’s delivery of contemporary versions of La Fontaine’s fables, all too audibly miked. Surely an actor should be able to project without? The greater part of the audience, however, seemed to be eating out of his hand, so perhaps I am just being grumpy. (Might we not at least, however, progress beyond the idea that employment of a generic ‘Northern’ accent is intrinsically amusing?) ‘Le Lion amoureux’ offered similar sonic ‘glamour’ to the first movement, though brass at times seemed a little loud. Denève’s glittering, unsentimental direction of ‘L’Homme entre deux æges et ses deux maîtresses’ again recalled, or in this context, presaged Ravel, though with a more cinematic bent, whilst the opening gravity of ‘La Mort et la bûcheron’ was finally matched by the elegant, vielle France of Death as a duchess in response. Prokofiev-like spikiness at the opening of ‘Les Deux coqs’ was likewise balanced by the most chic of hen-houses. There is surprising weight, relatively speaking, to the final movement, ‘Le Repas de midi,’ though is that what Poulenc does best? I tended to think it was a bit like going to Bach for slapstick. Fine performances, anyway, for a little-heard score.

 

 

BPO/Rattle - Ravel, 27 September 2008

Philharmonie, Berlin

Ravel – Ma mère l’Oye
Ravel – L’enfant et les sortilèges

Annick Massis (soprano)
Mojca Erdmann (soprano)
Magdalena Kožena (mezzo-soprano)
Sophie Koch (mezzo-soprano)
Nathalie Stutzmann (contralto)
Jean-Paul Fouchécourt (tenor)
François Le Roux (baritone)
José van Dam (baritone)

Berlin Radio Choir (chorus master: Simon Halsey)
Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra
Sir Simon Rattle (conductor)

The Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra and Sir Simon Rattle gave us two evocations of childhood from Ravel. Both of course are highly sophisticated evocations of childhood, more likely to appeal to adults than to children; they are not ‘music for children’. Yet, in their loving mixture of wonder and nostalgia, they are if anything all the more enchanting for adults – not least when performed as here.

For all the talk of ‘internationalisation’, the Berlin Philharmonic initially sounded quite German, ‘old-world’ even, in the depths of its string tone. This became less so as Ma mère l’Oye continued but it was good to hear that ‘tradition’ had not been lost. I do not mean that Ravel therefore sounded like Brahms, merely that a certain orchestral characteristic, which one more readily associates with the Staatskapelle Berlin across town, has not been entirely lost. Moreover, the orchestra certainly lacked nothing in agility; there was no ‘trade-off’ in this sense. Rattle offered a moulded reading, which I can imagine some finding a little too much so, but this is highly ‘artificial’ music. (When someone complained about the artificiality of his music, Ravel asked whether it had not occurred to his accuser that the composer might be an artificial person.) There were occasions, such as the second movement, when I should not have minded a little more room for the music to dance more freely and simply, but these occasions were relatively few. Balanced against that should be the orchestral detail and virtuosity to which we were treated. The various solos were all taken impeccably. It is perhaps unfair to single any out but I shall nevertheless do so in the cases of Albrecht Meyer’s beguiling oboe, Emmanuel Pahud’s ravishing flute, and leader Toru Yosunaga’s æthereal yet Romantic solo in ‘Les entretiens de la Belle et la Bête’. Rattle ensured that the added-note harmonies in that waltz-movement were truly made to impart their harmonic worth. ‘Laideronnette’ was characterful without being over-played: colourful in terms of orchestration and harmony but with a certain, most apt restraint. The final movement, ‘Le jardin féerique’ was a veritable garden of delights, which also displayed a winning, almost Elgarian nobility. Its apotheosis was characterised by great warmth, if perhaps a little too much boisterousness. If overall, I missed the X-ray precision of Boulez in this music, there are other ways to perform it. There was rightly none of the vagueness that lies at the heart of Debussy’s music but lacking in that of Ravel, even when it most closely approaches ‘impressionism’. Sometimes I wondered whether there was a little too much languor to Rattle’s reading but on the whole this was a fine account.

I had not even minor reservations when it came to the one-act opera, L’enfant et les sortilèges. The orchestra sounded if anything still finer and Rattle resisted any temptation to linger or to underline. Ravel's music in any many senses requires loving yet clear-eyed presentation rather than ‘interpretation’ as such, at least when it comes to the orchestral part of the score; this is what it received. The still-greater clarity of later Ravel shone through, as did its jazzy inflections. There was a clear shift when the outside world of the garden took over, even perhaps a foreshadowing of Bartókian ‘night music’. The Berlin Philharmonic was beyond reproach both in orchestral blend and once again in its manifold solo opportunities. I cannot but mention Pahud once again but equally impressive were many other instrumentalists, including the solo double-bassist, pianist, and the player of the luthéal (if that is what it was; whatever the instrument listed in the programme as a ‘prepared piano’ may actually have been, it certainly sounded ‘right’). The vocal parts were shared between a fine team of soloists. Magdalena Kožena was fully occupied as the Child. Her finely detailed reading displayed an appropriate air of the tomboy. Petulance gradually metamorphosed into penitence. As with all of the cast, her diction was impeccable. (The acoustic of the Philharmonie helps but it can only help.) The predominance of French singers was definitely an advantage when it came to idiom, both in terms of music and pronunciation. Sophie Koch was a joy in each of her roles, perhaps especially in the genuinely funny Cat-duet with François Le Roux. It was a delight to welcome back José van Dam for his cameo appearance. Jean-Paul Fouchécourt was as wickedly winning a presence as one would expect. In the soprano roles, Annick Massis and Mojca Erdmann both shone, the former proving an especially fine Princess, the latter every inch the nightingale. And Nathalie Stutzmann devoted her inimitably rich contralto to a number of roles, not least that of the Mother. She truly inhabited each of her roles, never at the expense of truly Gallic style. Just as impressive was the interaction between the singers. One might have fancied them directed – and by a stage director who knew what he was doing. The choral singing was excellent: one could hear pretty much every word and with a beguiling timbre too. I very much hope that we shall be treated to a recording.