The Philharmonia (live streaming), 29/10/2020

Ravel : Pavane pour une infante défunte
Britten : Les Illuminations (Julia Bullock, soprano)
Ravel : Ma mère l'Oye

The Philharmonia
Esa-Pekka Salonen
Three days after the concert with the upcoming Principal Conductor of the Philharmonia, the incumbent took the podium for a rather short, but beautifully shaded concert of Ravel and Britten.  A delicately balanced Pavane began the proceedings, restrained and melancholy, creating an atmosphere of quiet reverie that pervaded the whole evening.  

Julia Bullock's approach to Britten's Les Illuminations was surprisingly dramatic.  She wasn't exactly trying to create a meaning or a story for each poem, but she was being more literal about much of the text than is normal.  The Rimbaud poems are more an exploration of sound, of the play of the sound of the words off each other, than of a real meaning of the text.  However, Bullock made her reading work for her, with a vibrant timbre  and a particularly rich lower register, and finely partnered by the strings of the Philharmonia, darting and fluttering around her like moths before a flame.

The last piece was the complete Mother Goose ballet score.  It was here that I truly got the quality of sound I had not heard on Monday.  It's true that the American programme didn't need this same type of sound, but this, these sumptuous textures of silk and velvet and gossamer, are what I knew the Philharmonia for.  Salonen sculpts and shapes the music with fluid hands, and the orchestra responds in shimmering swathes of fantasy.  Rouvali has some big, big shoes to fill.  

[Next : 31st October]

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