Live in Concert 12.02.14 - Poulenc, Ravel

[Eine Alpensinfonie]

Wednesday 12th February
7.30 p.m.

Charles Dutoit conducts the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra in Poulenc's Gloria and Ravel's Daphnis et Chloé.

Charles Dutoit, Principal Conductor of the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, is renowned for his interpretations of 20th-century music. Tonight's concert offers an opportunity to hear him guide the RPO through Ravel's complete ballet Daphnis et Chloé -
an evocative, sensual masterpiece, full of precisely articulated colours and seductive sonorities.
Also performed is Poulenc's Gloria - one of his finest works, brimming with rich harmony, sinuous melodies and rhythmic verve.
Dutoit and the RPO are joined by the Philharmonia Chorus and soprano Nicole Cabell for this programme of glorious French music.

Francis Poulenc: Gloria
Maurice Ravel: Daphnis et Chloé (complete)

Nicole Cabell, soprano
Philharmonia Chorus
Royal Philharmonic Orchestra
Charles Dutoit, conductor

Live from the Royal Festival Hall.

[BBMmk2]

What a great programme and the combination of the RPO and Charles Dutoit! Yes CD has a great affinity with a lot of 20th Century repertoire. Although I do not think I have heard him conduct an y Shostakovich?

[teamsaint]

yup, very much looking forward to this one.

Ticket sales so far don't look too good though.Hopefully a good walk up on the night.

[Gordon]

Yep!! Going to this having got my tickets a week ago. The house wasn't looking too full then!! Just looked again and there's plenty left. Tube strike might affect the house though.

[Nick Armstrong]

Tube strike might affect the house though.

It's off

Might try to swing by for this super concert at t'last minute if I finish work in time

EDIT - still at work so that's 'Daphnis' on the way home I think ... Could be worse!

[Petrushka]

Superb sound coming through my speakers tonight from R3 via Freeview, as close to CD quality as makes no difference.

The Poulenc Gloria a great work to cheer us up on a thoroughly awful day. Train delayed for 45 minutes while a fallen tree was cleared from the line so just made the radio relay in time!

Greatly looking forward to Daphnis - catch the wind machine

[Alison]

What a great programme and the combination of the RPO and Charles Dutoit! Yes CD has a great affinity with a lot of 20th Century repertoire. Although I do not think I have heard him conduct an y Shostakovich?

There was a fairly good CD coupling of Symphonies 1 & 15.

[Nick Armstrong]

The Poulenc Gloria a great work to cheer us up on a thoroughly awful day.

...and the last half-hour of Daphnis coincided with my journey home from a late one at work, and that was pretty cheering (and warming) too!

Sounded a very good performance though my audio situation was less good....

[Gordon]

Superb sound coming through my speakers tonight from R3 via Freeview, as close to CD quality as makes no difference.

The Poulenc Gloria a great work to cheer us up on a thoroughly awful day. Train delayed for 45 minutes while a fallen tree was cleared from the line so just made the radio relay in time!

Greatly looking forward to Daphnis - catch the wind machine

Sound in hall good too!!

For the techies out there - Impressed by array of mics but not all may have been used: one co-incident pair [looked like cardioids not Blumlein fig of 8] about 20 odd feet back from podium and up high, just in front of that a parallel AB pair with clear plastic baffle, then about 15 feet above front row of stalls a set of 4 "Mercury" equally spaced mics looking straight down, across almost full stage width, then a spot for the soloist [removed after Poulenc]. 6 spaced mics for chorus. 6 kitchen staff across to left from centre + wind machine sort of half left with 6 mics but 2 of these mics on set of 4 tymps R of centre!! 2 harps hard left with celeste but not spotted. Harps clearly audible even with tuttis. 4 spaced mics for woodwind, 4 again on brass, 3/4 right but set back. Horns behind woodwind in centre with a large space behind violas [centre right] in front of brass. 8 DBs behind cellos.

I was in aisle seat of R flank [Green side] of front stalls about half way down. Splendid performances with the RPO following every drop of the Dutoit shoulder!! During loudest parts one could not hear the sections clearly but around mf or less the instrumental colours and balance were clear, rich and sonorous. Dynamic range very wide - opening of Daphnis pins could have been heard dropping. That Hall is still very dry.

[jayne lee wilson]

Yes, magnificent tonight, with Nicole Cabell a wonderfully operatic, catholic-melodramatic, wine-and-wafer soloist in the Poulenc, a great favourite of mine - and I thought Dutoit's remoulding of the RPO into a truly french-sounding orchestra was almost the equal of those 60s classics with Pretre, the same brightness, agility and transparency in winds and brass, a fluidity, warmth and rhythmical poise in the strings.

This was even more evident in the Daphnis and Chloe, where that lighter attack of bow-on-string Dutoit spoke of was clearly evident, the slightly foregrounded winds primary-coloured yet alive to each expressive nuance, the solos (flute in the pantomime!) very clearly and individually projected above the texture. Then the brasses were lighter and brighter than the more usual Austro-German resonance and blend, but with a wonderfully sensuous fullness in the rich and very powerful climaxes. Scene 2 with the Piratical dramas had a cool, knives-between-the teeth savagery, choreographically alive and tonally brilliant (literally and metaphorically). An action thriller you could almost watch. Yet after this, and the gorgeous, carefully-graded dynamics of the sunrise, the final bacchanale was a little too civilised - not quite the relentless drive nor enough sheer power to overwhelm.

Very easy, tonight, to let the glorious waves of beautiful sound wash over you - but plenty of exquisitely natural detail to observe too, never a moment when you felt conductor or orchestral soloists preferring their own self-expressions to the music itself. There have been many great, indeed legendary, recordings of the Daphnis, from the 1950s on, including Dutoit's own in Montreal - well, tonight was a vital reminder that there are still performers who can play this wonderful music comme il faut, joyfully showing that this tradition is still a living one.

(HDs 320 AAC, running wireless from BT Infinity HH5 to Macbook/DAC)

[teamsaint]

Thought the chorus were excellent too, from start to finish.
I was interested in Dutoit's comment about continuity being difficult in the Poulenc. Other than achieving a well integrated performance, I'm not clear what it is that he was seeking. Perhaps a continuity of feel? That aside, it was a fine performance, (though I wasn't quite as enamoured of the soloist as JLW, despite her lovely description) .

[edashtav]

I was interested in Dutoit's comment about continuity being difficult in the Poulenc. Other than achieving a well integrated performance, I'm not clear what it is that he was seeking. Perhaps a continuity of feel? .

Was it not Dutoit's point that continuity is difficult to achieve in Poulenc's Gloria because it isn't there, ts? Poulenc offers us an undigested, raw dog's dinner, a mosaic comprising wonderful but unrelated moments: from music based clearly on Gregorian chant to obeisance to Stravinsky and modernisn ( e.g. in Laudamus Te)). There's even a quotation from Stravinsky's Serenade. It's a memorial to Poulenc's close friend, the composer Pierre-Octave Ferroud, who died a violent death in a car crash. That violence is depicted in Poulenc's neo-modernism, but alongside there is Poulenc's rediscovered simple Catholic faith, the faith, as he remarked, of a country Cure. Maybe, its fractured structure is a reference to a life smashed before Ferroud could achieve synthesis and show his fully fledged personality in his compositions. I see it having a position in Poulenc's output similar to Hymnus Paradisi in Howells' output - except that the Gloucestershire composer achieves a greater unity of style in his longer work. Whatever, the piece was important to Poulenc - he quoted from it in his late Clarinet Sonata.

[Nick Armstrong]

Poulenc offers us an undigested, raw dog's dinner

Thank heavens for that!

....we all know what digested dog's dinner looks like...

[teamsaint]

Ed......I caught Dutoit's comments as I was settling down, slurping the last dregs of tea from my saucer(as per Queen Mary), moving cats, adjusting headphones etc, so I probably missed the great man's nuances.
Interesting thoughts Ed, and it just seems amazing to me that such a "mosaic" seems to work so well.
Re your comments, I'm afraid Howells is mostly untrodden territory for me, but that is another journey waiting for another time.

[edashtav]

Re your comments, I'm afraid Howells is mostly untrodden territory for me, but that is another journey waiting for another time.

Hymnus Paradisi is a good entry point, as it can claim to be the dog's bollocks amongst his oeuvre and its chromaticism does not show hyper ventilation, in the manner of Max Reger, a tendency that causes some listeners to turn away from Howells.