Secession Orchestra (live streaming), 09/12/2020

Novecento
Respighi : Trittico Botticelliano

Mascagni : Excerpts from Cavalleria rusticana

Dallapiccola : Piccola musica notturna

Puccini : "Sola, perduta, abbandonata" - Manon Lescaut

Casella : Pupazzetti

Tosti : Quatro canzoni d'Amaranta (orch. Mao-Takacs)

Rota : Sonata per orchestra di camera

Marie-Laure Garnier, soprano

Secession Orchestra

Clément Mao-Takacs

The Secession Orchestra is a Paris-based formation, created in 2011 by the conductor Clément Mao-Takacs.  It ranges from around 60-strong down to chamber ensembles, and focuses on 20th and 21st century music, in the main.  The present concert was originally scheduled for March, and as an evening concert, which means that we got a generously filled 90 minutes' worth of playing in this lunchtime rescheduling, still held in the Auditorium du Musée du Louvre.

The binding theme of the concert was Italian music in the early decades of the 20th Century.  This covered wide, but (at least outside Italy) often little known territory, from the oldest, Tosti and Puccini, through several exemplars of the generazione dell'ottanta, to the start of what would be the avant-garde with Dallapiccola.  As you simply can't do Italian music without any opera - it's unthinkable, if you're honestly trying to present a broad canvas - as soloist we were introduced to Marie-Laure Garnier, a young soprano born in French Guiana, who appears to have recently completed her 'competition phase' with numerous successes. 

The concert began with one of Respighi's finest pieces, the Trittico Botticelliano, from 1927.  Those who find his Roman Trilogy noisy and meretricious need to listen to this, which is a miracle of delicacy and shimmering orchestral colour, for comparatively modest forces, but beautifully balanced.  Respighi was the finest orchestrator in Italy, of his age, in my opinion, and these three musical translations of magnificent Renaissance paintings demonstrate exactly why.  La primavera didn't quite click for me, I found the rhythms a little jerky, but the string trilling was very nice.  The Adoration of the Magi, however, sank you into a pastoral, reflective atmosphere immediately, archaic modality lightly tinted with orientalism, and a well-contrasted central section, as the caravan of the Mages approaches.  Finally, the luminosity of the Birth of Venus, which is possibly the most powerful and most direct of the three evocations,  sunlit, flower-scented and radiant.

Two extracts from Cavalleria rusticana followed, Santuzza's "Voi lo sapete", and the Intermezzo.  What was immediately apparent was that the music had had to be adapted for the smaller forces present, and that this was not entirely successful.  The strings sounded too thin, and the winds too dominant, and this affected the Puccini as well, while the Intermezzo, despite some eloquent wind playing, never really took off, more than a little too sedate.  Garnier has a good quality of voice, quite opulent, a little heavy on the vibrato at times.  What, I think, she doesn't have yet, is the experience to put the emotion of the moment, the drama, into her voice, at least not for the operatic repertory - later she did do much better in some art-songs.  At any rate, I didn't feel much for this Santuzza, neither in her present torment, nor in her past happiness.  Similarly, when she came to sing "Sola, perduta, abbandonata" from the last act of Puccini's Manon Lescaut, I just felt she might have done better with something a little less melodramatic.  There was no horror, no despair here.  The very last "no, non voglio morir" did reflect more raw emotion, but it was too little, too late.  I believe this is an issue that will be resolved quite rapidly as she makes more appearances on stage, but at this point it would have been better to choose less histrionic repertory.

In between the Mascagni and Puccini, Mao-Takacs changed register very thoroughly, and very successfully, with the Piccola musica notturna of Luigi Dallapiccola.  This "little night music" was originally composed in 1954, and it is for full orchestra, with a substantial, if very delicately used, percussion section.  Here in the Louvre, we got a severely reduced version, for eight players, and no percussion at all, but the adaptation has been very well done.  If anything, it makes the piece more mysterious, a little more nervy and sensitive, yet losing nothing of its dream-like, nocturnal quality.  Dallapiccola was the first true serial composer Italy produced, in consequence his music tends to be parked in a niche, and the term serialism is scary to a lot of listeners.  This, however, is beautiful, intense and poetic, an evocation of an enigmatic and magical summer night, and it was beautifully played.  I'm not quite sure if it was the complete piece, because the only orchestral version I know comes in at a little over 9 minutes, while this was more like 6, which is a big difference, but it could still simply be a matter of conductors' preferences.  

Alfredo Casella's music is even less well-known than Dallapiccola's, but his memory endures because he was a highly influential teacher (including of Nino Rota, with whom the concert closed), and bit by bit, we are seeing recordings emerge, bringing his scores to our attention.  Puppazzetti was originally composed in 1915, a five-movement suite of "easy" pieces for piano four-hands, later orchestrated by the composer in 1920.  Puppets or marionettes appear in quite a lot of music of this period, both inside and outside Italy, but it's particularly marked in Italy where they had a vivid tradition of puppetry, associated with the commedia dell'arte.  That said, Casella wrote this suite near the end of his 10-year sojourn in Paris, and there is a hint of Stravinsky - also working in Paris at that time - in the writing.  The suite alternates fast and slow pieces, with the faster ones evoking the movement of the puppets, as strings are pulled.  It's quirky and original, a little unsettling at times - these puppets don't seem entirely friendly - and in a couple of places, notably in the last movement, the playing got a little ragged, but on the whole, it was persuasively delivered.

Francesco Paolo Tosti, slightly older than Puccini, remains widely known for his salon and Neapolitan songs, but there was clearly more to him than that, based on these "Four Song of Amaranta", which are serious art-songs, set to texts by Gabriele d'Annunzio.  As you might expect from D'Annunzio, the poems are extravagant evocations of love and death.  The first is a woman bemoaning the coming of dawn and the inevitable parting from her knightly lover that she compares to dying, the second is on a similar theme, but in a less gloomy mode.  The third questions the use of prayers and sighs of regret, all is dream and forgetfulness, while in the last, the speaker is given words of advice, about moving on and forwards, but knows that her/his tomorrow will be in the land of Death.  It's hothouse stuff, but Tosti's settings are lyrical and tender.  They have been orchestrated here by the conductor, and very nicely too, with eloquent winds and rich harp, but never overpowering.  Here, Marie-Laure Garnier was much more satisfactory, expressive and sweet-toned, with excellent dynamic range, and that sense of intimacy you always want with the art-song repertory.  Here she showed to true advantage, the vibrato just right, plenty of variety of colour in the voice.

Finally, Nino Rota, universally known for his film music but, again, with a substantial and more than a little neglected catalogue of concert works to his name.  The Sonata for Chamber Orchestra is a fairly early work, from 1938 - it's a little confusing that there's an earlier piece with the same name, but it is usually identified by its subtitle of "Canzona".  In three movements, the flute holds a prominent place in it, not surprising as this is an arrangement of his 1937 Sonata for Flute and Harp.  The harp, though still present, has lost out somewhat in the arrangement, but the flute has kept much of its importance.  It's music that is easy on the ear, lyrical and charming, and the last movement has a touch of the neo-classical about it - a musical movement very much on the go at the time of writing - and Mao-Takacs and the orchestra played with relaxed grace, to bring to a satisfying conclusion one of the most interesting concerts I've seen in some time,

[Next : 10th December]