BBCSSO: Ravel ‘Daphnis et Chloé’
City Halls, Glasgow - 22/09/22
The opening night on 22nd September of the 2022/23 season of the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra was billed as “Seductive, Dreamlike, Ravishing Ravel”, a fair description of the sumptuous score of the composer’s ballet masterpiece, Daphnis et Chloe, which comprised the second half of the concert. But the first half was no less engaging. The concert, marking Ryan Wigglesworth’s debut as Chief Conductor of the BBCSSO, opened with the world première of Jonathan Woolgar’s Symphonic Message in Memory of L.R., followed by two Messiaen pieces: the unaccompanied choral motet O Sacrum Convivium!, sung by the BBC Singers, and the orchestral version of his settings of his own love poems addressed to his first wife, Poèmes pour Mi, sung by Canadian soprano Jane Archibald.
The City Halls have undergone some alterations since my last visit. In particular, some “mood lighting” (for want of a better term) has been installed, including vertical cool blue strips at intervals below the front of the stage and warm vaguely orange round flower-like lamps shine dimly onto the stage from its periphery. The house lights have been significantly dimmed, even before the start of the performance when they are further dimmed. I have to record that reading the programme is difficult before the performance and impossible during it. I find it bizarre that, even though the text of the vocal pieces was considerately provided in the programme, little or no thought had been given to how the concertgoer might access it.
The concert was broadcast live on Radio 3 and television cameras captured it for later broadcast on BBC4. With the exception of the motet, the whole programme used a large orchestra with quadruple wind. Unusually (at least, I have not seen this before), the 6 double basses were ranged high up at the back of the stage facing forward, lending them a presence that was both visually and aurally impressive throughout the evening. I hope that this innovation is permanent because I am most definitely a fan.
The L.R. of Yorkshireman Woolgar’s dedication is a drama teacher, from his high school days, whose influence he acknowledges, in music that is original and characterful, dramatic and expressive, without eschewing tonality. Some of his musical gestures seem, to my ear, to embrace Mahlerian influence. The piece commanded my full attention from start to finish and I very want to hear more from this composer. The playing from the BBCSSO was superb. The composer was present and came to the stage to acknowledge the applause.
Messiaen’s offertory motet O Sacrum Convivium! a serene and subdued, yet radiant, unaccompanied choral liturgical piece in F# major, was performed with great delicacy by the BBC Singers. A slow, irregular tread draws the attention of the listener, through a gentle build-up to a peak of expressive radiance, then back to a soft worshipful afterglow. Quite magical.
The same archlike (Bartók-influenced?) structure underlies the ‘9 Poèmes’ but charged with passion and orchestral power and expressed through Messiaen’s unique inimitable musical language. The first song is the longest and Jane Archibald’s flawless French diction and full clear tone delivered its message of earthly and heavenly love combined with peerless clarity, the writing restricting the blaze of the orchestra to between sung phrases. Unfortunately, as the cycle progresses, Messiaen does not resist the temptations of a huge orchestra at his fingertips and the balance is occasionally lost. How valuable it would have been to have been able to read the text – tant pis!
When performed complete as a concert work, Ravel’s 3-part ‘Symphonie Chorégraphique’ is indeed a symphonic work and a veritable feast of masterly orchestration (incorporating a wordless chorus, provided on this occasion by the BBC Singers). But it is also a ballet score, from which two suites were extracted by the composer as concert works in their own right. Of these, the second suite, virtually identical to the third part of the symphony, is by far the most well-known and loved, comprising as it does the “best bits”: Daybreak, Pan & Syrinx, and the Bacchanal. So, with the best will in the world, the first part’s scene-setting and evocations of Arcadian bliss, though sumptuously orchestrated and skilfully performed, do suffer from an element of sameness and more than a hint of longueur. That said, the performance was absolutely superb and the BBCSSO is set fair for some great music making with Ryan Wigglesworth at the helm (and those double basses safely anchoring the bass line in the aftercastle). At any rate, the applause was tumultuous!