Debussy’s Prélude à l’après-midi d’un faune (1894) is often said to be a harbinger of musical modernism. Seeing the orchestra that plays it shows how remarkable that claim is. Yes we are in France so have two harps and a pair of antique cymbals, but otherwise just pairs of woodwinds (and a third flute), four horns and strings – here founded on just three double basses and four cellos. Debussy effectively ushered in a new world with Schubert’s orchestra. The famous opening flute solo, marked doux et expressif sounds improvised, and all that follows is fluid, evocative and atmospheric. Analysts have of course shown how carefully composed such spontaneity requires. “Did I love a dream?” asks Mallarmé’s poem, but it is the music that is dreamlike, far beyond the poet’s now passé symbolism. The players of the London Symphony Orchestra were sensitive to every half-light, conductor Alexandre Bloch finding the ebb and flow of the work, building climaxes that made their mark but were never too heavy for such an intimate piece.
Ravel’s Piano Concerto in G major has jazz-influenced outer movements framing an eloquent Adagio. Alice Sara Ott provided all the flair the first movement requires, even if she and Bloch made decisions now standard in any traditional performance but not always justified by the score. Ravel was a stickler for tempo discipline especially, but most artists now deploy more flexibility, as here. It would be nice to hear it Ravel’s way for once (there is a recording of the composer conducting it with Marguerite Long, who together gave the premiere). Ott favoured slow tempi whenever the music was at its most lyrical, and in the wonderful Adagio it seemed the rubato was more pervasive than persuasive. But it had something of Ravel’s essential tendresse, although ideally that sentiment is tempered by Ravel’s hauteur. To miss the hauteur is to misrepresent the tendresse. It’s a subtly elusive musical voice. But Ott surely came close enough to it at times to get a warm reception, and her encore, John Field’s Nocturne no. 9 in E minor, showed why her recording of that composer has had such success.
Lutosławski’s Concerto for Orchestra is scored for a large orchestra and took him four years to finish (1950–54), and at times the labour shows. Both the opening Intrada and the second movement Capriccio notturno, have loud aggressive central sections, played with plenty of brassy impact by the LSO, but those episodes still seemed effects without causes, rather than growing out of the musical narrative. But how the players relished the difficulties of this score. In a brief spoken introduction Bloch pointed out that almost everyone is challenged at moments, which generated some rueful glances among the players behind him. It made Lutosławski’s name and is worth an occasional hearing, even though the composer later dismissed it as a ‘marginal work’.
It was a little unfortunate that this 30 minute piece that said rather little, was followed by a 13 minute piece that says so much. Ravel’s La Valse portrays Imperial elegance, Viennese hedonism, and fin-de-siècle fatalism. Ultimately we hear a decadent Empire dancing to its doom. All these moods were caught by this fine performance. As in the opening Debussy work, Bloch caught the half-dream, half-reality ambiguities. No wonder that in Bachtrack’s 2022 performance statistics showed Beethoven’s symphonies had lost their place at the top of the classical music world’s performances, yielding top spot to La Valse! And top of the concerto category in 2022? Ravel’s Piano Concerto in G. We are all Ravelians now.
