Igor Stravinsky was Russian, but as far as the Orchestre
National de Lyon is concerned, he’s French: if not by blood
then at least by ear.
Sunday night at Royce Hall Stravinsky’s “The Rite of
Spring” was programmed with two pieces by French masters,
Claude Debussy and Maurice Ravel. For the smooth progression of
musical ideas, conductor David Robertson should be thanked. He came
out on stage looking like a stiff, uninteresting conductor, but
loosened up for the pieces which require feats of timing that even
the best “Dance Dance Revolution” players can only
dream of achieving. Robertson looks and conducts like a taller,
more precise Esa-Pekka Salonen.
The sound of the ensemble was quite good, and no doubt
that’s in part due to their ability to work together. After
all, these are the people who thought up the definitive models for
teamwork, the Three Musketeers. So it was no surprise to see, in
the middle of the performance, an exchange of violins when the
concertmaster’s string broke and a violinist behind him came
to his aid.
Resourcefulness was also the name of the game during
Ravel’s “Piano Concerto in D Major for the Left
Hand.” With a debilitating focal dystonia in his right hand,
pianist Leon Fleisher literally played the piece with only his left
hand. But his playing was fit enough for several hands as he
maneuvered the fast piano runs and carved out beautiful melodies
with his thumb while his other fingers simultaneously supported
arpeggios.
The opening Debussy piece, “Jeux,” was originally
conceived as a dance with a big tennis ball. It’s a good
image for the music, which leaps from idea to idea, never resting,
like a tennis ball carelessly being hit around. Like the title,
which means “play,” Debussy builds tension only to
forget a climax. The orchestra milked this music for all its sonic
shimmer.
Debussy and Ravel led the audience to Stravinsky, whose
“Rite” is constructed similarly to the previous pieces.
Yet with Stravinsky, there is a sense of ugliness, of squalor, of
rhythmic force rather than melodic and harmonic grace. Indeed, this
edge may be the Russian in Stravinsky.
Perhaps that explains why the French orchestra really had to
stretch to make that possible. Robertson was a model of clarity,
twisting his body and swaying like a dancer. At one point, it
seemed that the human sacrifice in the “Rite” ballet
choreography may have here been the conductor himself. The
timpanist and some wind players really went with it.
On the other hand, it’s hard to get an orchestra of a
hundred plus people to truly sound ugly and, while the bang was
still there, there’s the fear that it’s been smoothed
over with refinement. In some ways, the audience wants a violent
riot, which is what literally happened when the piece premiered to
unforgiving ears in 1913.
It’s different to hear the piece today after it has been
appropriated by many, most notably John Williams in his music for
“Jaws” and “Star Wars.” To hear the piece
performed with a French orchestra just like its Paris debut was a
revelation, almost like hearing the music in 3-D and being able to
see all the interesting cultural connections (Russian, French,
non-European non-industrialized cultures) Williams had taken
away.