LSO - Roth - Debussy

[Belgrove]

I attended an all Debussy concert at the Barbican on Thursday evening principally to hear the rarely performed Piano Fantaisie played by Cedric Tiberghien, a charming and delightful work that I never have never seen performed live. But the entire and attractively programmed concert proved to be one of unalloyed pleasure, with the LSO in fine form conducted by Francois-Xavier Roth. The Fantaisie is a joyful piece and was played with elegance and élan by the pianist. The concert also featured Jeux, another work that I have never seen performed live (is it regularly if ever performed as a ballet nowadays?). It took a long time for the scales to drop from my ears on first encounters with this work, most of the highly recommended recordings failed to make sense of its dissonances and quicksilver changes in tempo. This was a superb performance with the mosaic-like musical fragments and punctuations eventually cohering. Such a virtuosic piece for the large orchestra too. The orchestra also got a work-out of a different kind in the Nocturnes, with Nuages rendered in subtle shades of gris, contrasting with the technicolor-kaleidoscopic Fetes. The Hall's acoustic perhaps brought the ladies LSO chorus into too sharp a focus in Sirens, but I've never found this part of the work entirely convincing (always conjuring the thought of a perky 'Yoo-hoo' from across the garden fence rather than an alluring come-hither from across the waves). L'apres midi d'un faune formed the slinky pheromonal prelude. The concert was recorded for later release on the LSO Live label. Definitely worth watching out for.

[Serial_Apologist]

It can't have been easy to get the sound right for Debussy in that hard acoustic - which may have accounted for the over-prominencing of the female voices.

[BBMmk2]

I’ve heard a lot of criticism about this Hall. Never been but I hope things will improve elsewhere!