Lemieux/OPRF/Petrenko - Takemitsu, Chausson, and Zemlinsky, 4 May 2018

Grande Salle Pierre Boulez, Philharmonie, Paris

Takemitsu: Toward the Sea III

Chausson: Poème de l’amour et de la mer, op.19

Zemlinsky: Die Seejungfrau

Michel Rousseau (alto flute)

Nicolas Tulliez (harp)

Marie-Nicole Lemieux (contralto)

Orchestre Philharmonique de Radio France

Vasily Petrenko (conductor)

Paris’s now not-quite-so-new Philharmonie remains a thing of wonder. The approach through the Parc de la Villette is a visual feast, especially on a sunny evening such as I was afforded. Lighting works magic after sunset too. If the public areas outside the hall still seem oddly provisional – presumably they are – the hall itself, now named the Grande Salle Pierre Boulez after the conscience of new music, remains also an acoustical wonder, a feast for the ears. I could not help but think, not least after a recent visit to the Barbican, how desperately London needs something similar – or, dare we hope, better. From May in Paris to May in Downing Street remains, alas, a distance of intergalactic proportions.

Although I had enjoyed my first visit, in October 2015, this concert proved the more consistently illuminating musical experience. For one thing, I am not sure that I had heard any of the three works in concert before. Takemitsu’s Toward the Sea III, for alto flute and harp, made for an excellent opening piece: the sort of programming touch, mixing solo, chamber, ensemble, and larger forces, of which Boulez would have approved. Flute and harp could hardly be a more Gallic combination, yet Takemitsu’s music is rarely quite what it initially seems. This, then, was a garden of delights, not least the opening movement, ‘The Night’, but not all gardens, not all Japanese gardens, are the same. Such music tends to reward concentrated, enlightened listening – what music worth its salt does not?! – such as was enabled both by these fine performances, from Michel Rousseau and Nicolas Tulliez, and the fine acoustic. There was a sense of inheritance from Debussy and Ravel, without in any sense being limited thereby. Shifting of roles between the two instruments came to the fore in the second movement, ‘Moby Dick’, played with twin flexibility and purpose: both necessary when finding one’s way around a labyrinth, however esmall. The closing ‘Cape Cod’ followed, so it seemed, consequentially, without one ever necessarily being able to explain quite how. Silences proved pregnant, as telling as the notes. There was no playing to the gallery here; neither music nor hall required it.

We remained with the sea throughout the evening, Chausson’s Poème de l’amour et de la mer our next port of call. Like each of the three pieces heard this evening, Chausson’s work is, surely not coincidentally, in three parts, a ravishing orchestral interlude between the two verse settings: ‘La Fleur des eaux’ and ‘La Mort de l’amour’. Many in the audience were, understandably, disappointed by the withdrawal of Anna Caterina Antonacci from the concert. There was, however, little to regret in the performance we heard from Marie-Nicole Lemieux. Indeed, her rich yet agile contralto offered its own distinctive rewards, which one would have been a fool to spurn. (How often, in any case, does one have the opportunity to hear a ‘true’ contralto?) Her way with the words was impressed just as much as the richly upholstered tone on the low notes.

Rousseau and Tulliez were now joined by their colleagues from the Orchestre Philharmonique de Radio France and Vasily Petrenko. I was struck – perhaps as an Englishman I would be – by the opening phrase and its seeming affinity to Elgar. Tristan-esque harmonies made their mark, of course, so did the Klingsor-like, fin-de-siècle world of the ‘sauvage’ we both heard and embraced. Chamber music, as in Wagner, proved to be much of the story too, Petrenko acting as much as enabler as director, without shirking his responsibilities in the latter role where necessary. Greater urgency in the third section marked out a fresh start: related, yes, but also perhaps redolent of Nietzsche, in The Gay Science: ‘At long last the horizon appears free to us again, even if it should not be bright; at long last our ships may venture out again, venture out to face any danger; all the daring of the lover of knowledge is permitted again; the sea, our sea, lies open again; perhaps there has never yet been such an ‘open sea’. Wagnerism knows no boundaries; nor should it.

Image: Arnold Schönberg Center - Wien

Zemlinsky would surely have nodded assent to that, whether as composer or conductor. Petrenko’s reading of Die Seejungfrau (‘The Little Mermaid’), after Hans Christian Andersen, at least equalled any recorded performance I have heard – with the inestimable advantage, of course, of ‘liveness’. When I hear it I cannot help but think of Schoenberg’s Pelleas und Melisande, not least since both works received their premieres in the same concert, the final, January 1905 outing for the short-lived Vereinigung schaffender Tonkünstler (‘Society of Creative Musicians’). Neither is an easy work to bring off, yet Petrenko seemed to me very much to have the measure of Zemlinsky’s ‘fantasy in three movements for large orchestra’, especially its very own motivic integrity: not entirely unlike Schoenberg’s, yet certainly not merely to be assimilated to it.

Through that joint inheritance from Brahms and Wagner, the three movements seemed quite naturally, even organically – however loaded those terms may be – to emerge. Would it have mattered if it had been called a symphony? Perhaps not. But it was better called, and performed as, something else. The narrative was very much its own, perhaps not entirely unlike another, more celebrated maritime symphonic poem, by a composer hovering at the edges of the programme: Debussy. The waves of La Mer certainly came involuntarily to my mind at the opening of the second of the work’s three movements. Thinking of the symphonic or tone poem as a genre, work and performance sounded not un-Straussian at some points, yet never – quite rightly, I think – displayed Strauss’s cynical and/or materialist delight in phantasmagoria for its own sake. Zemlinsky, for better or worse, was simply too nice a man and composer for that. He withdrew the work, for whatever reason, after that Musikverein performance. Schoenberg, as ever, bore the violent brunt of the reaction. ‘Reviews were unusually violent,’ he would recall: ‘one of the critics suggested to put me in an asylum and keep music paper out of my reach’. Zemlinsky, however, deserved far more than indifference – as Schoenberg and this evening’s excellent performers knew well.

Prom 6: Capuçons/Orchestre Philharmonique de Radio France/Chung - Weber, Brahms, and Stravinsky, 19 July 2011

Royal Albert Hall

Weber – Oberon: Overture
Brahms – Concerto in A minor for violin and violoncello, op.102
Stravinsky – The Rite of Spring

Renaud Capuçon (violin)
Gautier Capuçon (violoncello)
Orchestre Philharmonique de Radio France
Myung-Whun Chung (conductor)

It seems that the core German repertoire is not really Myung-Whun Chung’s thing. Neither Weber’s Oberon overture nor Brahms’s Double Concerto received bad performances, but neither especially impressed – or if the latter did, it was on account of the soloists. Weber’s overture opened beautifully, the opening horn call (unconducted) as weich – the German seeming so much more apposite than ‘tender’ – as any I can recall. The rest of the introduction was very slow, yet retained its line. However, the ensuing Allegro proved too much of a contrast at breakneck speed, with an enormous slowing for the second subject that definitively turned the overture into a mere operatic pot pourri. The Orchestre Philharmonique de Radio France played well throughout, though, clean string playing a decided boon in Weber’s brief fugato passage.

Chung’s Brahms again opened promisingly, the orchestra sounding more at home than it had during the previous night’s Beethoven Triple Concerto. There was a good sense of world-weariness, of swimming against the tide in an expansive account, which permitted one to hear and to consider a wealth of instrumental detail – this truly is the land of developing variation, whence Schoenberg hails – if ultimately there would prove to be a little too much ‘mere’ accompaniment from the podium. The richness of Gautier Capuçon’s cello tone was an immediate joy upon his entry, his brother Renaud’s violin equally delectable, once again displaying a golden-age ability so elegantly to turn a phrase. It was the soloists who performed most of the dramatic shaping, but they accomplished that most convincingly. And how they sang, whether alternately, or in duet, never more so than in the almost Elgar-like lines of the slow movement. The finale benefited from a perfectly chosen tempo, the cello’s voicing of the second theme and the violin’s response a particular joy. Greater fire from Chung would have helped, though; he sounded too relaxed. Once again, it was left to the Capuçons to provide direction, which they maintained, even intensified, in a mesmerising encore performance of the Handel-Halvorsen Passacaglia. It made one long for more Baroque music from this quarter.

Chung emerged as a conductor transformed for The Rite of Spring – which, notably, he conducted without a score. The OPRF sounded in its element too, from the opening, unmistakeably ‘French’-toned bassoon, to the last. I was intrigued by the way the rest of the woodwind blended with and cast into relief the bassoon to turn the Introduction into a strange variety of Harmoniemusik – at least until the intervention of a mobile telephone. Rhythms were tight throughout, but also generative, Stravinsky’s cellular method properly to the fore. (It is perhaps worth noting that Chung appeared to use Boulez’s redrawing of the bar lines.) Energy never sapped, permitting that extraordinary melodic profusion that is the Rite’s greatest boast truly to be heard, never more so than in the sage’s music. If I say that the orchestra’s playing was cultivated, then I mean it in the best sense: it was not precious, but treated the music as music rather than as an extravaganza, dynamic gradations of an almost infinite nature proving especially telling. The percussion section deserves particular note, unfailingly secure in rhythm and in the precise presentation of colour. This excellent Rite was followed by a brief, showy encore from Carmen.

Prom 5: Braley/Capuçons/Orchestre Philharmonique de Radio France/Chung - Messiaen, Dusapin, and Beethoven

Royal Albert Hall


Messiaen – Les Offrandes oubliées
Dusapin – Morning in Long Island: Concerto no.1 for large orchestra (BBC co-commission with the Mitto Settembermusica, Radio France, and the Seoul Philharmonic Orchestra: United Kingdom premiere)
Beethoven – Concerto for violin, violoncello, and pianoforte, in C major, op.56


Frank Braley (piano)
Renaud Capuçon (violin)
Gautier Capuçon (violoncello)
Orchestre Philharmonique de Radio France
Myung-Whun Chung (conductor)


Messiaen’s early Les Offrandes oubliées provided a splendid, indeed resplendent, opening to this concert from the Orchestre Philharmonique de Radio France and Myung-Whun Chung. Its tripartite form was admirably clear, though that is as much Messiaen’s doing as the performers’. The recognisably ‘early’ harmonies of the outer sections, marked ‘Très lent’ and ‘Extrêmement lent’ shone through, recalling the contemporary organ work, L’Ascension, later orchestrated by the composer, perhaps above all the fragrant ecstasy of its concluding ‘Prière du Christ montant vers son Père’. The OPRF’s string tone was recognisably ‘French’ in tone, vibrato sweetly pleasing. If I could have imagined the ‘Très lent’ section emphasising more the ‘très’ part of Messiaen’s instruction, there had to be room for contrast with the third, communion-based section’s ‘extrêmement’. At any rate, the earlier section flowed and thereby doubtless created less of a problem for Messiaen sceptics. The central, ‘Vif’ section provided a brilliant contrast, the musicians’ sharpness of attack and rhythmic command scintillating in its depiction of man’s depravity, though its post-Dukas harmonies sound less ‘characteristic’. It is a pity, however, that such a fine performance was introduced by such a poor programme note. Usually I pass such things over in pained silence; however, it would be remiss to fail to note that that whilst the writer says next to nothing about the music, he nevertheless finds time to make the following extraordinary claim: ‘Messiaen is almost alone among the major figures of the 20th century’s avant-garde years – Witold Lutosławski is closest to joining him – in leaving a substantial contribution to several repertoires which shows no sign of evaporating.’ Boulez? Stockhausen? Berio? Nono? Xenakis? Ligeti? Carter? Henze? I could go on and on, even before coming to composers from our own shores; I shall not go on, but it seems that Robert Maycock would benefit from a crash course in mid-twentieth-century music before writing another such note, especially for a festival such as the Proms, which has always prided itself on its commitment to new music.


‘Stasis’ is a word often employed in connection with Messiaen, perhaps slightly misleadingly: there is progression, but it is often as much ritualistic as, arguably more so than, dialectical in a Beethovenian tradition. Certainly the progression of Les Offrandes oubliées was far more purposeful than Pascal Dusapin’s Morning in Long Island, a BBC co-commission, here receiving its British premiere. I was disappointed, given that I have admired a number of Dusapin’s works, including his string quartets and his opera, Passion, which I reviewed in 2008 from the Aix-en-Provence Festival. Essentially it is a tone poem, though I doubt whether Dusapin would use the term, in three sections, not necessarily evoking in ‘direct’ terms a morning in Long Island, but apparently inspired by it. The first movement ‘Fragile’, culminating in an ‘interlude’, seemed to me the strongest. From the outset, the spatial aspect is to the fore, three brass players – trumpet, horn, and trombone – placed around the hall, inciting and commenting upon the action, providing incidentally a far better impression of a fanfare than Judith Weir’s piece for the First Night. There was certainly a sense of a Sibelius-like landscape, whom Dusapin admires, albeit transposed into more contemporary terms, many long-held, high-lying lines shifting and creating harmonic motion. In many ways, the music, excellently performed, so far as I could tell, proved quite hypnotic. What a pity, then, that the second section, ‘Simplement’, proved more of a trial. It seemed to go on for ever, though my watch claimed that it did not. Perhaps it was that Sibelius became more of a presence still. (I freely admit the Finnish composer to be a blind spot for me.) But there seemed to be no reason why it could not have been half the length, the apparently static music proving resolutely unmemorable, despite two contrasting loud outbursts. The final section, ‘Swinging’ struck me as merely embarrassing, all too redolent of the dreaded ‘trendy vicar’. Though the music may have tried to swing, it seemed studied, forced even, the Latin rhythms sounding all too evidently appliqué; Dusapin’s congested scoring certainly did not help. It never achieved the lift off of riotous apparent predecessors such as the ‘Hunt of the Menads’ from Henze’s The Bassarids or indeed the second of Boulez’s orchestral Notations, remaining resolutely earthbound.


Beethoven’s Triple Concerto seemed an odd companion piece. It would have done so even if Martha Argerich had been able to play, but her exit undoubtedly shifted the centre of programming gravity, even though she was ably replaced by Frank Braley. The problem, then, lay not with the soloists but with Chung, who, at least on the evidence of the present performance, is no Beethovenian. This concerto needs a sharp hand – think of Karajan – to prevent it from seeming unduly discursive; Chung, however, did little other than ‘accompany’. There was no fire; merely ‘pleasant’ Beethoven is, alas, barely Beethoven at all. Tutti passages sounded disconnected from the argument constructed by the fine chamber soloists. That was a great pity, for the Capuçon brothers in particular proved excellent soloists, showing how one might on occasion ‘love’ the music without disruption to its purpose. Renaud’s violin tone was often exquisitely sweet, yet never over ripe, recalling past masters such as Jacques Thibaud; I was left wishing for a ‘Kreutzer’ Sonata or two instead. Gautier’s responses sounded possessed of just as much quicksilver, with finely judged vibrato throughout; indeed, the opening of the Largo made me wish, not for the first time, that Beethoven had written a cello concerto. Braley’s tone hardened at times, especially when it came to repeated notes – it must be recalled that he was a late replacement – but at its best was almost an equal joy: pearly, yet never precious. Perhaps the most magical moment of all, however, was followed the cello opening to the finale, which had sung as beautifully as I can recall, when Renaud Capuçon’s response truly made Beethoven’s modulation tell. If only the subtle elegance with which he proceeded to turn his phrases could have been matched by such commitment from the podium.