SEEN AND HEARD INTERNATIONAL

Debussy, Berlioz: Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra, Mariss Jansons (conductor), Carnegie Hall, New York, 4.2.2008 (BH)

Debussy: La Mer (1903-05)
Berlioz: Symphonie Fantastique, Op. 14 (1830)


Still luscious after all these years, the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra pulled off a concert that had me smiling from ear to ear.  Conductor Mariss Jansons opened the three-night stand with two repertory staples that threaten to be overplayed, at least in New York—I've heard Debussy's La Mer three times in the last year alone.  (Why so little love for Images, for example?)  But as many have said, when the musicianship is of this caliber complaints seem immaterial.

The horns in "From Dawn to Noon on the Sea" were so steady you felt as if you could walk across their carpet of sound—this, from a notoriously difficult instrument to tame.  Figuratively speaking, I delighted in just sinking back, gazing into a billow of clouds above the ocean.  Lithe, creamy strings were at the heart of "The Play of the Waves," with sparkling bells and harp entering just in time to keep the treacle from settling in, with the orchestra's wind section scattering notes like so many sonic butterflies.  And in the "Dialogue of the Wind and the Sea," Jansons coaxed remarkable unanimity from the group, rising to peak after peak, then falling over and over, but always with that plush tone.  In the final measures, Jansons wasn't above a little theatricality, his entire body whirling to a stop at the end.

As some have commented, the Berlioz Symphonie fantastique seems even more ubiquitous this season than the Debussy.  That said, it will be a long time before I hear it as freshened up as it was here.  Strings swooped down with a diaphanous accuracy, anchored by a block of eight basses.  The waltz of "Un bal" was graceful yet teeming with details, and the "Scène aux champs" was about as bucolic as it gets, starting with a bravura display of quivering winds, especially the English horn.  Odd, how a stage filled with so many people can evoke solitude.

Jansons held the tempo in check for the "March to the Scaffold," with careful attention to dynamics that created the illusion of a procession passing by, perhaps then disappearing behind a grove of trees.  A conductor aware of this spatial dimension is advanced, indeed. In the final "Dream of a Witches' Sabbath," the flashy colors simply splattered out of the ensemble, with chortling winds, a skeletal offstage gong, and the strings rising up in battalions.  It was easily one of the most vital, most immaculately characterized versions I've ever heard.

Jansons returned for a silken first encore, "Solveig's Song" from Grieg's Peer Gynt, and then came out a second time for more Berlioz, a foot-stomping "Marche Hongroise" from La damnation de Faust.

Bruce Hodges


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