Unmistakably French in Music & Vision 27 gennaio

Unmistakably French
'Les Nuits d'Eté',
heard by GIUSEPPE PENNISI from
Rome's Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia

After the unmistakably Italian Cassandra by Gnecchi and the unmistakably American A View from the Bridge by Bolcom, we could not miss something unmistakably French. The opportunity was offered by the Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia with a concert mostly based on late nineteenth century music. I say 'mostly' because the introduction was a quite sleek and contemporary but very British piece: Dance Figures by George Benjamin, a fifteen minute compact and highly rhythmical composition summarizing nine choreographic scenes for orchestra. Benjamin's work is skillful and pleasant but has very little to do with the rest of the program which included two quintessential French compositions: Les Nuits d'Eté by Hector Berlioz and the Third Symphony of Camille Saint-Saëns. The former is a short piece (of thirty minutes) for a mezzo and a comparatively small number of instrumentalists. The latter is not much longer (forty minutes) but with a huge oversized orchestra: as vast as that required for Wagner and Mahler with the addition of two pianos and an organ.
Berlioz' Les Nuits d'Eté dates from around 1860; Saint-Saëns' Third Symphony was premiered in 1886. They are very different in style and approach, but are unmistakably French, specifically in between the Second Empire and La Troisième République -- when France was in the triumph of industrialization and of a growing high-income bourgeoisie, not the aristocratic upper class. The concert was performed three times between 22 January and 25 January 2011. This review is based on the 22 January performance. As originally scheduled, the conductor should have been Kazushi Ono, who had to cancel a long tour to various cities due to illness. Thus, in Rome, Carlo Rizzari (assistant to Antonio Pappano and a young and valuable conductor on his own account) took up the slack.

Carlo Rizzari. Photo © 2011 Musacchio and Ianniello. Click on the image for higher resolution
Les Nuits d'Eté is almost an anomaly in Berlioz' production. Like Lélio, Roméo et Juliette and La Damnation de Faust, the cycle of six songs cannot be classified within any classical musical genre. The melodies are based on six precious poems by a single author, Théophile Gautier. Gautier's poems are neither love songs (like many German lieder) nor philosophical reflections (again as several German lieder are) but evocations or description of atmospheres. They are both sensual and elegiac -- once more, quite distant from German, British, Italian and Spanish songs. Thus, both the text and the music is unmistakably French. In a first version, the cycle was conceived as a chamber music piece, with only piano accompaniment; thus, it was perfectly intended for a soirée in an elegant Parisian salon. Later, Les Nuits d'Eté became a concert piece with an orchestral accompaniment. In Rome, the mezzo was Sonia Ganassi, whose voice was in tone and in timbre for the whole work, rich in coloristic resources, while the singing was sensitive to harmonic nuances, at ease in ornamentation, impeccably tuned, superbly controlled. Rizzari kept the orchestra to support the vocal emission, as intended by Berlioz.
Saint-Saëns' Third Symphony was quite different but still very French. Firstly, it is vastly distant from Romantic and late Romantic German symphonies. Saint-Saëns does not want to deliver 'a message' on the political or private future of humanity, but considered music in a purely classical sense: a perfect form of sound. Thus, the four tempos of the canonic symphony are grouped into two and the interest is in the clarity and transparency of the musical language which must be gentle and harmonic in spite of the oversized orchestra. It is, no doubt, a challenge for conductors and instrumentalists. Rizzari and the orchestra of the Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia took it up and responded quite well.

Carlo Rizzari conducting the Orchestra of the Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia. Photo © 2011 Musacchio and Ianniello. Click on the image for higher resolution
Even if not accustomed to French music as much as that from Germany or Italy, the audience clearly appreciated it.
Copyright © 30 January 2011 Giuseppe Pennisi,
Rome, Italy

HECTOR BERLIOZ
CAMILLE SAINT-SAENS
FRANCE
ACCADEMIA NAZIONALE DI SANTA CECILIA
ROME
ITALY
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