I noticed recently
that Kurt Masur had conducted the premiere
of Bechara El-Khoury’s Violin Concerto
with Sarah Nemtanu and the Orchestre
National de France in Paris, in May
2006. El-Khoury’s profile is, indeed,
a good deal higher in his adopted land
of France than it is in Britain. Born
in Beirut in 1957, El-Khoury has lived
in Paris since 1979, becoming a French
citizen in 1987.
Much the greater part
of El-Khoury’s work is for orchestra.
In the catalogue published by Editions
Max Eschig (http://www.durand-salabert-eschig.com/english/framcat.html),
some thirty three works are listed;
twenty are for orchestra or for orchestra
with soloist. His fascination with orchestral
resources and colour is everywhere evident
and much of the music relies upon large-scale
effects not easily imaginable in, say,
a work for piano trio. This is music
of large gestures, music which paints
with a broad brush - broad enough to
necessitate an orchestral canvas.
These are all early
works, written very soon after the composer’s
move from Lebanon to Paris. During his
years in Beirut, El-Khoury he worked
as choirmaster at the church of St.
Elias in Antelias near Beirut). That
background is evident in the Christian
imagery which informs some of his work.
As a composer El-Khoury
is a powerful creator of moods, a forceful
musical articulator of attitudes and
emotions; he seems less concerned that
his works should follow clear structural
patterns, than that they should conduct
precise musical arguments. It works
by startling contrasts, by sudden climaxes,
by abrupt eruptions in the brass or
by slow, lush passages for the strings.
Much of the music here straddles the
borders between a belated romanticism
with echoes of Scriabin and a modernism
that one might associate with, say Dutilleux
or Penderecki.
To borrow a distinction
from the English poet Coleridge, El-Khoury’s
work seems to belong to the school of
organic form - where a piece evolves
its own form under the pressure of its
content, the achieved form being shaped
from within, as it were - rather than
mechanic form - where a piece is written
in a pre-existing, conventional form
– such as the sonnet or the sonata.
When it works, this is fine and exciting;
when it doesn’t, the resulting music
can seem rather shapeless.
We get a bit of both
experiences here. The brief Danse
pour Orchestre, which opens the
CD, is a miniature of great vitality,
perhaps rather obviously ‘oriental’
in some of its effects, but certainly
striking. Les Dieux de la Terre
works by El-Khoury’s characteristic
method of juxtaposition, rather than
development, and the writing, in contrasting
thick orchestral passages with more
lightly instrumented ones, sustains
tension quite effectively. The suite,
La nuit et le fou, gets
some unity from its use of shared thematic
material, and there are striking passages
for woodwind and brass sections. Le
Regard du Christ is touching in
its sense of innocent awe.
It is in the two longest
pieces, the Requiem pour orchestre
and the Poème symphonique:
Le Liban en flammes that the
relative absence of firm structures
is most problematic. Both are experienced
as a series of episodes which are often
interesting in themselves, often moving
in the emotional intensity with which
they confront the tragic near-destruction
of Lebanon in the 1970s; but in both
cases I was left unpersuaded that all
of these episodes were essential or,
indeed, that none of them were superfluous.
As a result neither work is entirely
satisfying, neither feels altogether
whole, neither communicates that sense
that the composer has achieved the whole
work and nothing but the work.
But, even with this
reservation, and remembering that these
are the works of a young man in his
twenties, there is much to recommend
this CD. El-Khoury is certainly a very
skilled and imaginative orchestrator;
he has some arresting ideas and a musical
voice of his own. The performances are
committed and stirring – if not always
absolutely ‘perfect’ - and well recorded.
Glyn Pursglove
see also review
by Rob Barnett
Orchestre Colonne/Pierre Dervaux 
