SEEN AND HEARD INTERNATIONAL

Stravinsky, Ravel, Fauré, and Debussy:  Stéphane Denève, cond. Frank Braley, piano, Seattle Symphony, Benaroya Hall, Seattle, 2.11.2007 (BJ)


Another fine guest conductor, currently music director of the Royal Scottish National Orchestra, made his appearance with the Seattle Symphony at the beginning of November, and led a basically French program with enormously impressive results. Stéphane Denève’s demeanor on stage evinced an almost ostentatious absence of charisma–I don’t think I have ever before seen a conductor nonchalantly hitch up his trousers before turning around to take a bow–but anyone who drew negative conclusions from the French conductor’s unfussy manner would have been seriously mistaken.

French performers have no monopoly in the interpretation of French music. I have never heard the Ravel Piano Concerto played with quite the strength, poetry, and sheer clarity the Czech pianist Ivan Moravec brings to the work (as you can hear from his Supraphon recording). But between them Denève and his young compatriot Frank Braley delivered the piece with a quite wonderful spontaneity and sparkle, and Valerie Muzzolini’s harp solo was only one of many stellar contributions from the orchestra. Braley comes with an already considerable reputation among connoisseurs, and his unforced brilliance and warmth in Ravel made me eager to hear what he can do in such very different works as the Schubert and Beethoven sonatas he has recorded.

If still fundamentally French in spirit, the first and last works on the program brought us piquant elements from other musical traditions. Stravinsky lived for some years in France, but there is still something ineradicably Russian about the bluff squareness of his “ballet in three deals,” Jeu de cartes, or Card Game, despite all the supposedly Gallic wit of its allusions to the music of Rossini, Johann Strauss, et al. Denève established his authority from bar one. He has a baton technique at once graceful and blessedly clear. He uses his left hand to give just enough expressive shaping to the music and not too much. But it was the sensitivity of his ear, his rhythmic intensity, and his unerring sense of style and emotional tone that most clearly evidenced a maestro of more than ordinary gifts.

The program ended with music indeed composed by a Frenchman but richly imbued with Spanish rhythm and atmosphere–Ibéria, the central panel of Debussy’s Images for orchestra. Here the opening movement, Par les rues et par les chemins, burst on the ear with an  élan and a wealth of color and textural intricacy that were positively intoxicating. Every facet of this and the succeeding two movements was realized to stunning and enchanting effect, and Frank Almond, one of the orchestra’s four recently appointed concertmasters, played his solos beautifully.

Fauré’s Pelléas et Mélisande suite had begun the second half of the program. This is, to be sure, excellent music, and again Denève, with some lovely solos from principal flute Scott Goff and associate principal horn Mark Robbins to back him up, was equal to all its demands. But his Debussy was so good that I couldn’t help wondering why the Fauré was played, when the inclusion instead of the two other sections of Images would have made this a perfect program.

Never mind. As it stood, what we were given added up to a surfeit of sensuous pleasure and artistic satisfaction. I hope we shall hear Denève again very soon.


Bernard Jacobson

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