Thrills without chills in Aix-en-Provence

Enticement, intrigue, gauntlet-laying, drama… not every concert programme has these qualities in such sizzling abundance as that currently being toured by Mikko Franck and the Orchestre Philharmonique de Radio France. A high-contrast portrayal of the two sides of the Russian coin, it opened with Tchaikovsky’s First Piano Concerto – unabashed imperial pride and majesty with not a negative bone in its voluptuous musical body, for which Franck and his musicians were joined by a soloist long known for making this work her own, Italian virtuoso Beatrice Rana. Then next, the shattering of that vision as heard in Shostakovich’s Tenth Symphony, completed the year Stalin died in 1953 – a blistering meeting between iron-fisted, compassionless menace and searing terror and darkest despair but for a final minute or so’s worth of grimly-grasped triumph, widely interpreted as a depiction of Russian suffering under Stalin’s regime. In other words, not just two mighty, hall-filling crowd-pleasers, but a pair demanding two very different sound worlds.

It was impossible to know, as the orchestra touched down at Aix-en-Provence’s Festival de Pâques on Thursday night, how many in the packed Grand Théâtre de Provence were wondering whether it was about to serve up the complete sound-world coin-flip suggested by the above. What was certain was that Rana’s presence – her first return to the festival since her Bach recital in 2017 – was much-anticipated; and also, that from its first sharp chordal punch, the Tchaikovsky did not disappoint. Rana’s piano chords arrived with power, majesty, shapeliness and nuance. The string theme glided buoyantly in with poised, elegantly shaped, satiny rise and fall. Then onwards, from every soul on stage, into glowing opulence, sensuousness and pizazz, all coloured with an abundance of nuance and delicacy. 

To Rana, the work’s physical demands on its pianist appeared as water off a duck’s back as she dished out power, fiery technique and technical fireworks. Still more powerful, though, was the softness and poetry she brought; diaphanous upper-register cascades of a gauzy sparkle you wanted to run your fingers through; the phrasing imbued to a line as it wove its way through a force-filled note-y blizzard; the mystery she found in the first movement cadenza; the impishness of her “Il fait s’amuser, danser, et rire” central Prestissimo. The orchestra’s magical moments included an Andantino semplice opening flute solo of such huskily open-toned beauty that you wished it were double the length. Rana’s final conjuring act was a deliciously sensuously tip-toeing Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairy over which the piano’s upper registers sounded for all the world like some enchanted golden celesta.

The Shostakovich, by contrast, ended up not delivering on contrast. Not so much a flip of the stylistic coin as spinning it on its edge, this was a reading which only rarely sounding truly sharp-edged or menacing. The March was rhythmic, but never stonily vicious. Col legno tapped more than rapped. Essentially, the imperial ballroom was never quite left behind, and although this in in itself made for the odd eerily beautiful moment – as though we were genuinely back in Tchaikovsky’s balletic ballroom, now wrecked, abandoned, dust hanging mournfully in its air – it was as well they'd brought an encore, a darkly, suavely poetic reading of Sibelius’ Valse triste, that could bring things back up to a concluding high. Still, as Franck finally brought said waltz off with a balletic twirl of his hand while simultaneously swivelling from violins to the audience, his smile radiating “I mean, come on, aren’t they sublime?”, it was hard to disagree. 

Charlotte's press trip was funded by the Festival de Pâques d'Aix-en-Provence