Philadelphia Orchestra programs regularly feature the work of living composers these days, and the artists are often in the audience for the performances. But I’d never seen a composer swarmed for autographs and selfies at intermission until Jimmy López Bellido came to Verizon Hall this past weekend. And with good reason: Ephemerae, his concerto for piano and orchestra, is surely one of the most evocative and memorable new works heard locally in the last several seasons. Over the course of three riveting movements, López Bellido takes the listener on an exciting aural tour of nature, playfully using the nose as a guide rather than the ear.
López Bellido previously tapped into the concept of synesthesia, the phenomenon by which certain people perceive sensation through colors, in his tone poem Synesthésie. He takes a similar approach here, endeavoring to communicate through music the sensory overload that accompanies olfactory stimulation. In doing so, he evokes scenes that other composers have depicted previously – the first blossoming of spring, the teeming energy of an open-air market – but with a greater sense of edge than one might anticipate. The opening movement, Bloom, presents the changing of the season not as a tranquil awakening but as a violent bud-break. Primal Forest, the central movement, unfolds with a dark, earthy sound, moving into the heady, intensely perfumed finale, called Spice Bazaar.
Pianist Javier Perianes, the work’s dedicatee, met the challenges of each section with astonishing virtuosity and a vibrant touch. He brought a muscular energy to the ascending and descending scales of Bloom, which matched the vibrant strings and piquant percussion that suggested a rough awakening from a long winter’s nap. He vacillated between the high and low registers of the instrument in Primal Forest, building to rich climaxes, while conductor Rafael Payare kept the orchestral texture, skillfully managing the interplay between assertive brass, woodwind and strings in forte passages. Spice Bazaar proved seductive and jazzy, with silvery notes from Perianes underpinned by pizzicato, shimmering wind chimes and the enveloping emergence of timpani.
For a living composer who is still relatively young, López Bellido has built a prodigious catalogue – four symphonies, concertos for multiple instruments, several large-scale orchestral works and an opera. Based on the reaction to Ephemerae, it was clear that the Philadelphia audience wants to hear more from him.
Payare paired the new concerto with a stirring performance of Mahler’s Symphony no. 1 in D major. His reading got off to a somewhat rough start, as he bogged down the first movement in an overly detailed manner that bordered on fussy. It caused me to hear the germ of future Mahlerian ideas already embedded in this early work, but it wasn’t always a pleasant listening experience. Yet by the Ländler, his interpretation was firing on all cylinders, with the brusque contrast between the country folk dance and the refined Viennese waltz that follows distinct and jarring. Newly appointed Principal Bass Joseph Conyers played the Bruder Martin solo that opens the third movement with a chilling sense of foreboding energy, and the music charged forward relentlessly until the final pullback of the ethereal ending. Under Payare, the orchestra played less elegantly than usual, with a few noticeable flubs here and there. But who needs perfection when the sound is this exciting?
