Round Top Festival
The wit was French; the wisdom, too
June 9, 2009Much of the all-French 20th-century program on the June 6 opening day and night of the 2009 International Festival-Institute at Round Top brought to mind a line from “My Fair Lady”: “The French don’t care what they say, as long as they pronounce it properly.”
The mode was generally jaunty, witty and charmant, even in chamber works from 1939, not exactly a charmant period in Europe, by Jacques Ibert (a Capriccio for a mixed ensemble of 10) and Darius Milhaud (the neo-Renaissance “King René’s Fireplace” for wind quintet). Those works opened the afternoon concert, which continued with Jean Francaix’s jaunty, witty, charmant Octet for strings and winds of 1972 and Francis Poulenc’s jaunty, witty, charmant Sextet for piano and winds of the early 1930s.
Apart from a few loose gears in the Ibert, the chamber performances hewed to the high standard one expects from Round Top’s crew of elite faculty members, with especially spirited playing from oboist Erin Hannigan (Dallas Symphony), hornist Peter Kurau (Rochester Philharmonic) and pianist Eteri Andjaparidze. Two of the institute’s young artists, cellists Joshua Zajac and Grace Ho, fit seamlessly into the mix.
The musical revelation was the opening work on the evening orchestral concert, conducted by Pascal Verrot. Henri Dutilleux’s “Tout un monde lointain,” a cello concerto composed for Mstislav Rostropovich and first performed by him in 1970, takes its title from half a line in Baudelaire’s poem “The Head of Hair,” from “Flowers of Evil.” Exotic lands “a whole world away, absent, almost dead,” live in the dark tresses of the poet’s beloved. The music reflects the sensuous, allusive feeling of the text without attempting a literal translation. This is music that investigates sound, and expands our understanding of beauty, as Baudelaire’s poetry does. The piece is a miracle of shimmering, astonishing instrumental colors wrapped around deeply cogent structures. Each of the five movements grows branches and tendrils from compact thematic roots. The solo part is more ruminative than elaborate, though not without virtuosic moments. Dutilleux often gives the orchestra dense block chords that are, in the traditional sense, dissonant, but that come off as intensely, fascinatingly seasoned.
Cellist Emilio Colón was the estimable soloist, poised in the slow movements, urgent in the fast ones, though perhaps wanting in freedom here and there. Verrot, nearly always superb in the French repertoire, conducted with a sure sense of the music’s pulse and a great flair for color.
Verrot’s natural sense of line and his attention to gestural details served handsomely in the more-familiar territory of Albert Roussel’s complete “Bacchus et Ariane” ballet score, a feast of vibrant, inventive rhythms, vivid theatrical strokes and astute portrayals of character. The Act II music, which is a bit more jaunty, witty and charmant, is often performed alone (readers of a certain age may recall a delicious performance of Act II by the San Antonio Symphony under Francois Huybrechts in 1979), but Act I also has plenty to offer, most notably the glittering first appearance by Bacchus. The orchestra, which had come together only a few days earlier, performed splendidly.
The exuberantly decorated concert hall, a work in progress since the Crimean War (it sometimes seems), now sports permanent seating with the festival-institute’s logo woven into luxurious brocade upholstery.
The festival continues with mostly Russian music on June 12 and 13. The orchestral concert on June 13, to be conducted by Charles Olivieri-Munroe, holds Dmitri Shostakovich’s Symphony No. 10 and Tchaikovsky’s Piano Concerto No. 1, with festival founder James Dick the soloist.
For full program details of the festival, which runs through July 11, see festivalhill.org.
Mike
Greenberg
