This beautiful program of French music was chosen by Music Director Sir Simon Rattle and features world class soloists Leonidas Kavakos and Julia Bullock.
Book-ending this concert are two works by the master of orchestral texture, Maurice Ravel. First, Le tombeau de Couperin; an expertly orchestrated version of a 1914-17 piano piece that brings sharpness to the original’s classical dance rhythms. The work calls for an oboe soloist of virtuosic skill, which is expertly handled here by LSO Principal Olivier Stankiewicz. At the other end, Rattle closed the concert with the popular second suite from Daphnis et Chloé.
Following Stankiewicz’s display of woodwind mastery, violinist Leonidas Kavakos presents his intepretation of Henri Dutilleux’s violin concerto L’arbre des songes. Composed between 1983 and 1985, the title translates as ‘The Tree of Dreams’ and the work is based on a process of continual growth and renewal. As the composer explained:
‘All in all the piece grows somewhat like a tree, for the constant multiplication and renewal of its branches is the lyrical essence of the tree.’ Rattle also presents a second work by Dutilleux, 1964’s Métaboles. Written for George Szell and the Cleveland Orchestra, it is a diverse sequence of orchestral études given symphonic coherence by stealthy motivic evolution.
Rounding out the program, American soprano Julia Bullock shines in Maurice Delage’s Quatre poèmes hindous. Written in 1912 for a chamber ensemble of two flutes, oboe, two clarinets, harp, and string quartet, this hidden gem has been described as ‘one of the first attempts to introduce the melodic and rhythmic forms of Indian music to the language of Western music’.
