Returning to the New York Philharmonic for the first time this season, incoming Music Director Gustavo Dudamel joined the orchestra’s celebration of the 150th anniversary of Maurice Ravel’s birth with a delightful Franco-American themed concert featuring three pieces by the composer – including a world premiere of a work composed during his student days – paired with creations by his contemporaries Edgard Varèse and George Gershwin.
Festivities began with Varèse’s Amériques, a landmark composition in the avant-garde music scene of the 1920s. Leading 125 players (including eleven percussionists) as required in the 1929 edition, Dudamel elicited a remarkably lucid interpretation of the famously discordant work – incorporating elements such as a lion’s roar (a drum with strings attached), sirens and industrial sounds – to shape a pulsating soundscape evoking the bustling energy and chaos of a modern city, particularly New York where the composer lived. The Philharmonic musicians seemed to revel in the polyrhythmic patterns and massive crescendos – reminiscent of, and even larger than, those in Stravinsky’s The Rite of Spring – as they conveyed the tremendous power inherent in the trailblazing score.
The Suite from Mother Goose, Ravel’s whimsical adaptation of French fairy tales, provided a startling contrast to Varèse’s uninhibited invention. The piece was originally conceived for children to play piano four hands, but the luminously orchestrated five-movement version performed on this occasion is more frequently heard today. Under Dudamel’s baton, the Philharmonic captured all the childlike wonder in ths enchanting music, vividly evoking the different moods and characters in each story: the gentle Sleeping Beauty, the mischievous Tom Thumb, the mysterious Empress of the Pagodas, the poignant Conversations of Beauty and the Beast, and the all-enveloping splendor of the closing Apotheosis.
Adding special sparkle to the celebration was the world premiere of a five-minute excerpt, Prelude et Danse, from Ravel’s newly discovered Sémiramis. Composed in 1902 while the composer was studying under Gabriel Fauré, the piece received only one outing – a read-through at a Paris Conservatoire orchestral session – and was given up for lost for nearly a century until the manuscript turned up in a Paris auction in 2000 and was acquired by the Bibliothèque nationale de France. Like all the other items on the program, with the exception of Amériques, Dudamel conducted the music from memory, emphasizing the dark dance rhythms and oriental undertones in Ravel’s youthful score.
The Second Suite from Ravel’s balletic masterpiece Daphnis et Chloé was performed with just the right combination of delicacy and tension. The iconic Lever de jour (Daybreak) opening, with its gradual crescendo and magical woodwind melodies, evoked a sense of anticipation and awakening. The graceful Pantomime, its famous flute solo gorgeously rendered by Robert Langevin, perfectly captured the sensual character of the lover’s dance, and the close-to-frenzied vitality of the final Danse générale created an overall feeling of exhilaration.
Following Daphnis came even more excitement: a spectacularly atmospheric account of Gershwin’s An American in Paris. Dudamel’s dynamic conducting and the Philharmonic players’ flexibility highlighted the music’s jazzy spirit and passionate exuberance, with the syncopated rhythms and percussive elements of the opening theme coming off as especially lighthearted. In the more contemplative middle section Christopher Martin’s sensitive rendition of the bluesy trumpet solo was a standout in an orchestrally virtuosic performance that was as technically impressive as it was emotionally engaging.
