Varèse, Ravel & Stravinsky :  Hélène Grimaud (pno) SWR Baden-Baden Orchestra, Sylvain Cambreling (conductor) Megaron, Athens, 29.11. 2006 (ARi)

 

Edgard Varèse

Arcana (1925-27), First Greek Performance

 

Maurice Ravel

Concerto for piano and orchestra in G major (1929-31)

 

Igor Stravinsky

“Le Sacre du printemps” (The Rite of Spring. 1912/13)

 

Sylvain Cambreling
Picture © Marco Borggreve

 

 

Last century’s avant-garde was more than welcomed by Greek music lovers who waited 79 years to witness a performance of Arcana; strangely enough we had also waited 86 long years for Mahler’s 7^th symphony to be performed live in Greece; this happened 1994 with the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra under Chailly’s baton. If recordings had not trained our ears in such compositions, the audience’s reactions would have been interesting and probably absolutely different from the ovations the orchestra received in that memorable evening.

 

Arcana’s instrumentation is so rich that makes it unavoidable not to admire the spectacle of the orchestra on the stage and especially the 12 percussionists in action playing some 40 percussion instruments. The opening measures presented majestically the idée fixe that rules the work and is variated in all possible forms. I especially savored the marching tunes performed so gay and fiery as well as the jazzy elements that would lead us to the following work. The mystic aspect of this masterpiece was sealed by the unexpected enigmatical conclusion.

 

 

 

Hélène Grimaud

Picture © J Henry

 

More than half of the orchestra left the stage that carried now in addition the piano and the harp. Hélène Grimaud entered and received a warm applause for her first ever appearance in Greece, which proved to be a highly successful one.  "La musique d'un concerto, à mon avis, doit être légère et brillante et ne pas viser à la profondeur ou aux effets dramatiques" said Ravel and that is exactly what Hélène Grimaud managed to maintain throughout her performance. The phrasing of the introductory cantabile line of the inner part was, for me, an achievement to be treasured. Her effortless playing fitted perfectly with the work’s joyous, dancing aspects. Cambreling led his soloists in accurate contributions full of character and brio in the outer movements’ jazzy moments, and of tenderness and delicacy in the middle one; the cor anglais won again all the praises.  The audience went wild and called back soloist and conductor four times and they  offered us the concerto’s 3^rd movement again.

 

The Rite of Spring was lastly performed in Athens by a visiting orchestra in the late 90s and namely by Zubin Mehta and his Orchestra of the Maggio Musical Fiorentino. Mehta was passionate and restless while Camberling lead his orchestra to an intellectual reading that emphasized the modernistic ideas of Stravinsky. An orchestra, so well trained in this repertory under the previous guidance of Rosbaud, Bour, Gielen and Zender, reacted, as expected, miraculously to the score’s demands. We did not find the warmth of sound  of other orchestras like the Royal Concertgebouw here , but we appreciated a relative dry and metallic texture that fitted perfectly to Cambreling’s interpretative views.

 

A Greek premiere, first appearances in Greece of conductor and soloist together with a terrific program structure made this concert an extremely valuable experience.

 

Alexandros Rigas