Tonight's NY Philharmonic concert, third in a series of four performances of early 20th-century music led by Esa-Pekka Salonen with piano soloist David Fray, was notable particularly for the brilliance of the climaxes in all three works.
Before the intermission, we had Bartok's Music for Strings, Percussion & Celesta (known among abbreviation-prone music lovers as MUSPAC - because life is too short to say Music for Strings, Percussion & Celesta every time you want to refer to this piece). After intermission, there was the Ravel Piano Concerto in G and Debussy's La Mer ("The Sea").
It was an occasion for spectacular playing. Every true symphonic movement builds to a climax at some point, a moment of ultimate glory where everything comes together. Sometimes climaxes are quiet, moments of aching beauty, and sometimes they are loud and assertive. This concert featured both, in virtually every movement of all three pieces. But the one that really took my breath away was in the first movement of La Mer. Debussy's description title of this movement is "From Dawn till Noon on the Sea," as translated from the original French in the Philharmonic program book. Never before has it struck me so forcefully that the extraordinary climax, the surge of brilliance from the entire orchestra, shortly before the end of that movement, truly celebrates the sun bursting brightly from its highest point in the sky at noon. The sonic image was startling in its clarity at this performance.
What Salonen brings to these works is a composer's sensibility and desire that all the details tell. With him you don't just get the general picture, you get many felicitous details of figuration and scoring, never detracting from the overall effect, never unduly calling attention to themselves, but all contributing to a very rich awareness of the inner life of the music. I thought there were a very few times in the quieter moments when he let the tension get just slightly too slack, but these were fleeting impressions. On the whole, I think the necessary dynamic tension was maintained, and as noted above, climaxes were truly spectacular.
In the Ravel, of course, this also meant that the piano soloist was quite sympatico with the conductor's approach. I know not how they came to their understandings, but in his Philharmonic debut young David Fray found a perfect collaborator in Salonen for his own individualistic approach to the piece. This concerto is sometimes called a "jazz" concerto for the obvious influences of "Le hot Jazz Americaine" that was all the rage in Paris when the piece was being written. Ravel certainly knew his Gershwin. But on this occasion I was also struck by the notion that Ravel really knew his Prokofiev as well. Ravel was original; nothing in this piece could have been written by anybody else, and yet it is clear that Prokofiev's Piano Concerto No. 3 must have been known to Ravel. (Is this possible, chronologically? I think so. The Prokofiev was premiered in Chicago by the composer early in the 1920s, but he must have played it in Paris during that decade, and even if he didn't the piece was published and Ravel could have known it from the sheet music.) In any event, it struck me quite forcibly while listening to the third movement how Prokofiev's keyboard style in his 3rd Concerto bears certain similarities to what Ravel was doing.
At any rate, I was much taken with Fray's playing of the Concerto, especially in the middle movement, where the ability to sustain a long line and to vary it with coloration through touch, accent, slight rhythmic variations, is so important. This young pianist has the touch. I've already enjoyed his Bach and Boulez recordings on Virgin. Hearing him again inspires me to seek out the newest release (Schubert) and to hope he gets to record more French music as well.
And hearing this concert leads me to hope that now that he has retired as music director in L.A., Salonen is more available to guest conduct and will show up more often in New York. His Janacek at the Met this week was marvelous, and his work with the Philharmonic was marvelous as well. Please invite him back, Messrs. Gilbert and Mehta!!