At Lotte Concert Hall, Jonathan Nott conducted the Orchestre de la Suisse Romande through a programme conceived with a clear dramaturgical arc, moving from intellectual fragmentation to visceral power. Each work functioned as a marker in a meticulously calibrated progression.
The concert opened with the Asian première of Morphosis for 42 instruments by William Blank, with the composer present. While its instrumentation references Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony, the work’s primary concern is the deconstruction of orchestral hierarchy into dispersed, microscopic dialogues. These fragmented textures delineate a contemporary nervous energy with unvarnished immediacy. Nott approached this complex sonic field without imposing excessive polish, allowing its abrasive qualities and stark resonances to project directly into the hall.
Violinist Inmo Yang’s interpretation of Mendelssohn’s Violin Concerto in E minor occupied a distinct aesthetic position. From the outset, his bowing produced a focused, pure tone with minimal vibrato, favouring crystalline intonation and a decidedly modern timbre. His phrasing was characterised by a flexible agogic approach, more akin to the natural cadence of speech than to strict metronomic discipline. Technical demands – ricochet passages, octaves, and the double‑stops of the cadenza – were executed with precision, yet the dynamic range rarely extended beyond a controlled mezzoforte. The Andante emerged as a refined meditation – a pressed flower between pages – its quiet melancholy suggesting elegance rather than grief. Even in the animated finale, Yang’s virtuosity was more refractive than incendiary, casting a cool, analytical light.
Nott and the orchestra provided a transparent and supportive framework that matched Yang’s restraint. Aside from luminous clarinet interventions, the accompaniment consciously avoided emotional extremes. The result was a performance of impeccable refinement, yet one that left a residual desire for the more instinctive fire inherent in the score.
The evening’s culmination was Stravinsky’s The Rite of Spring. Part 1 commenced with what seemed like hesitation, the opening bassoon solo drifting with a degree of uncertainty. The famous polychords of the Augurs of Spring then arrived not as a brutal assault but as static, lithic objects – rhythmic impacts placed with surgical precision. Even in the ensuing Ritual of Abduction, the strings appeared to hold back from the collective weight of their downbows, reinforcing the sense of latent power. This reticence, however, soon revealed itself as calculated restraint. Nott was not aiming for primal shock but was instead constructing a complex ecosystem awakening to consciousness. The turning point arrived with the Dance of the Earth, where the meticulously accumulated tension was finally unleashed.
In Part 2, the suspended stillness of the Mystic Circles of the Young Girls briefly stilled the hall before the orchestra cohered into a single, formidable organism. The labyrinthine rhythms of the Glorification of the Chosen One emerged with suffocating clarity and tectonic force, leading inexorably through the brooding Evocation of the Ancestors and the grinding Ritual Action of the Ancestors to the final Sacrificial Dance. Here, Nott fused the analytical transparency of Pierre Boulez with the instinctive, elemental fire of Valery Gergiev, achieving a synthesis that felt both preternaturally lucid and overwhelmingly physical. Sound seemed to conquer flesh and bone, leaving the audience ravaged yet exalted – unwilling participants in a ritual that progressed from cool observation to all‑consuming physical annihilation.
This was not a performance of two halves but a single, vast architectural crescendo. Nott’s Rite transcended a mere depiction of pagan ritual to become an enactment of it, transforming civilised listening into a primal, unsettling and ultimately ecstatic experience.
