The Orchestre de Paris’ 2013/14 season opened with a cymbal crash. Orages (meaning “thunderstorms” in French) was commissioned by the Orchestre de Paris to the Lebanese composer Bechara El-Khoury. In this musical storm, sounds hurt each other, as if superimposed. Rain-like strings, thunder-like percussion, lightning-like brass collide upon several short thematic cells – among them, the principal theme is played fortissimo by trombones and tuba. We might find here some echoes of the military outburst heard in Richard Dubugnon’s Battlefield Concerto, played by the Orchestre de Paris on 15 March 2012, but the brass timbre development is far more appreciable in El-Khoury’s piece. The composer does not seek to hide his love for storms – his vision is conquering, brilliant, and he puts the audience in the situation he describes himself in the concert’s programme: a child fascinated with storms’ anarchy, storms’ madness, with this “triumphant ceremony of nature”.
Thunder explodes in a striking apotheosis – and is brutally cut off. Silence smothers us suddenly to let the gigantic thunderbolt resound in nothingness: the storm has disappeared, letting a devastated but appeased landscape. Strings unwind a beautiful pianissimo major chord – tonal peace seems to have won against atonal anarchy. Some squalls go through the orchestra, from a section to another, disappear, come back, rise; the storm re-emerges little by little, destroying all on its way. New rhythmic themes and imperial calls appear among the winds, especially from the horns, wonderfully led by André Cazalet. The piece ends with a second apotheosis, more sophisticated and longer than the first one, with mad, fortissimo, high-pitched brass. Dedicated to Paavo Järvi, this musical storm sounds more like a pleasurable firework of titans than a devastating hurricane. Except for the brass and percussion sections, which deserved the short rest that almost all these players could take during the following piece, Prokofiev’s Second Violin Concerto.
The audience enjoyed this little rest too. After El-Khoury’s storms came Prokofiev’s quiet dawn – wet mist, sunrise, sweet breeze. The long and passionate violin melody was sung through Janine Jansen’s delicate but precise hands, combining worried rhythms and subtle harmonies. Her playing was particularly enhanced by the delicate instrumentation of this chamber concerto (strings; woodwinds, horns and trumpets in pairs; and one percussionist).
Paavo Järvi and the whole orchestra seemed to be attentively listening to Jansen in order to let the violin melody stand out throughout the piece. We missed perhaps a bit more sound among the strings – this delicate concerto sounded more French than Russian. Prokofiev was living in Paris when he composed it and was hesitating between America and the USSR... and finally chose his homeland. Paavo Järvi and Janine Jansen gave more importance to the long hesitation than to the final choice, letting their audience wonder the same on their own.