Not Only Opera

Good programming bad programming: Boulez and Debussy at the Southbank Centre

Selection of Boulez's Notations and Debussy's Images, Debussy's Fantaisie for piano and orchestra and Debussy's La Mer
Philharmonia Orchestra, Esa-Pekka Salonen and Pierre-Laurent Aimard
Royal Festival Hall
4 May 2017
Choir B56, £9.90 (down from £11 with multibuy offer)
https://www.southbankcentre.co.uk/whats-on/92136-salonenaimard-inspirations-2017

Programming is an art, and it must also be a headache. You must navigate the vast repertory of wonderful music and put together a concert of length and content that will satisfy players and soloists and appeal to a large enough audience and which is also practicable without the stage manager having a heart attack. And affordable in terms of rights and performers. And probably a load of other things that wouldn't even occur to me. The prize for getting it right is essentially a new art work, an experience that enhances the constituent art works and inspires audience and players alike. That prize is not impossible to attain, but it's not easily accessible either.

So cut to the chase already. I loved the first half of this concert by the Philharmonia, with some caveats. Well, really one caveat, aside from that I should really learn not to sit in the Choir because it makes everything sound weird. My real caveat is that the last time I heard some of the Notations live (many of which I think are just magnificent), it was the LSO performing in the Barbican. I admire the Philharmonia, particularly when they programme as thoughtfully as they have here, but in terms of technique they are not a match for the LSO and elements of the Notations seemed a bit beyond them – not the notes, more the ensemble. Still, I think it's a great idea to pair the Notations with the Images, strung together here as a continuous, lyrical whole, with Aimard providing electric accounts of the piano solo Notations.*

A chatty gentleman on my right claimed to know none of the Notations or Images but was a fan of Pelléas, and he queried whether there was too much overlap in idioms between Boulez and Debussy for the format of this first half to work. Well… I see where he's coming from but I don't agree. It's so enjoyable to hear the solo piano version of a Notation followed by its orchestrated equivalent: they're so richly different and so emphatically related. I feel there's a similar link between the orchestrated Notations and the Images, ingeniously exploited by the concert programmers: both Boulez and Debussy have at their hands the same orchestral instrument and some of the same tendencies in orchestration, but directed in such strikingly different ways, with one's tool for expansive lines of a sort of sophisticated naive simplicity becoming the other's for explosive febrile concision. Very smart programming if you ask me. This being the Philharmonia, they also had a lighting designer come and do the concert; Colin Greenfell's delicate interventions smartly differentiated the pieces and on the whole were quite sound, although it did seem ridiculous having two massive floor lights on either side of Salonen (presumably his podium light couldn't be controlled with sufficient accuracy?).

So to my mind the programmers clearly knew what they were about when they put together the first half. The stars were not so well aligned for the second half, I think perhaps because too many boxes had to be ticked. Ideally we would have had a large-scale Boulez in the second half, but I guess it was felt La Mer was needed to entice the punters. No problem: I love La Mer, like everyone else. So we needed La Mer, and on paper it looks like we needed the Fantaisie as well: Debussy's only work for piano and orchestra, little known, little performed, and a sensible way to make use of Aimard, who so far in the concert has played a total of 2 minutes 20 seconds. All very exciting on paper, but in practice it falls down because the Fantaisie is a very long way from Debussy at his best. After this first listen I might even call it bad (although no doubt that's the kind of pronouncement I'll regret in ten years). It is academically interesting to hear how this composer of so many essentially miraculous pieces of music could produce something that seems so banal and awkward, but in situ it's a serious vibe-killer. Apparently after the Fantaisie's cancelled premiere Debussy refused to allow it to be performed during his lifetime, and while it's not always smart to listen to composers when they say that sort of thing, in this case it feels a bit miserable not to heed his advice and delight instead in one of the many wonderful pieces he left us. Or play some Boulez.

I always love La Mer and I loved it here, although this time I could have done without Greenfell's lighting design (I mean, it really is a piece that needs no demonstration), and I could have done with being further away from the percussion section – but that's my problem again.

* Sad confession: I had chosen the stage-right-hand-side of the Choir with the hope that I would be able to see Aimard's hands, but the piano was placed back within the orchestra such that I could only just see the corner of his bald patch (and no hands). The piano was moved to the front of the stage for the Fantaisie in the second half but oriented such that I could neither see his hands nor, really, hear what he was playing. Live and learn (or as usually seems to go with me, live and make the same false economy move next time).