Chloé still beautiful at 100; Yannick Nézet-Séguin with Berliner Philharmoniker

In her "Danse suppliante" near the end of the second part of the complete ballet music, Chloé expresses her sexuality through an english horn solo where the tempo shifts in every bar--oscillating from quarter note=72 in all the odd numbered bars to quarter note=100 in every even numbered bar. Forever young, Chloé turns 100 this year in Ravel's ballet Daphnis et Chloé, which was written for the 1912 season of the infamous Ballets Russe.

That is she turns 100 if, like me you know her through Ravel. If you know her from the Greek writer Longus she could easily be 1,900 years old, but Chloé hides her real age and will certainly never tell.

The French-Canadian conductor Yannick Nézet-Séguin, who will become Music Director of the Philadelphia Orchestra in September, returned to Berlin to conduct this program with the Berliner Philharmoniker transmitted over the Digital Concert Hall. The program was centered on the complete ballet music for Daphnis et Chloé, which comprised the second half of the event.

Nézet-Séguin uses clean patterns that are energized and clear. This helped the orchestra focus the significant challenges in figuration that this work presents to ensembles. There are so many passages of liquid fast notes, particularly in the woodwinds, that it is easy for orchestras to drift in precision, or to sound like machines. Nézet-Séguin found the right cues, the right eye-contacts, the right smiles. This performance could easily become a study in ensemble coordination.

There were also whimsical moments that the digital concert hall allowed us to see, as well as hear. The huge hand-cranked wind machine was fun to watch in action. But so was the "human cellist capo:"

There is a moment in the Danse de Lycéion, at rehearsal [56], where Ravel asked the solo cellist to retune their G string to G-sharp momentarily so that a particular gesture can end on a natural D# harmonic. Instead of tuning, the solo cellist's stand mate reached over and pressed down the string so that no tuning was necessary. It worked. The whole thing was caught on camera. It was quite an entertaining surprise--thanks Digital Concert Hall! I wonder how common this technique is...do others play it this way? Let me know!

Ravel would have been partly inspired by the Nietzschean view of the Greeks in the "Birth of Tragedy;" the idea that prior to the age of Socratic reasoning that folks found ecstasy easily within the music of their lives. This performance brought the dancing and quickly spirited side of this work to the surface.

The concert began with Luciano Berio's "Sequenza IXa for clarinet" played by the awesome clarinetist Walter Seyfarth. Sayfarth brought out the electronica atmosphere of this completely analog work for solo clarinet. He made multiphonics sound like feedback from Woodstock. In the meditative opening segment he worked with the color of each sustained pitch, and in the conversational development he played crisp and frisky.

Sequenza IXa is a work that ends in its own form of hallucinatory ecstasy with seven loud and piercing A-flats amid quiet incantations. It was an ending that made the Romeo & Juliet  Fantasy Overture, which followed it to complete the first half of the program, sound different as it ended. Tchaikovsky closed the work in B major with the sound of harps implying a realm beyond death in which the lovers would be united.

Heard after Berio, the contrast in metaphysics was powerful. I have to admit that after Berio, I was surprised to hear the fateful sword thrust that felled Romeo as an Ab instead of a G#, as notated. Good programming changes our ears.

Introspective Friday Music; a review of the Berliner Philharmoniker from the Digital Concert Hall

"What kind of music," asked Sir Simon Rattle in his preconcert interview, "do you write in the middle of a world war?"

He was introducing Le Tombeau de Couperin by Ravel, which opened a performance that was transmitted live through the digital concert hall and was also the second of three programs this season that will also be beamed to cinemas in Germany, London, Berlin, Prague, Dublin, and Austria. The program itself allowed the great Berliner Philharmoniker an opportunity to express warmth in a collection of works that each sought a better world during a time of personal crisis.

"Often before these great conflicts," said Rattle, "people write music full of tension. Often during the conflict people are writing music that looks back to some kind of idealized past." Ravel dedicated each movement to people he knew who fell in the great war.

Rattle found a quiet ecstasy in this performance of Ravel. He shaped textures with caresses, often looking deep into background textures to focus details. There was a brilliant awakening of sound in the codetta of the Forlane, where the Philharmoniker produced glassy clarity as they tuned the whimsical and unexpected close of this mosaic movement.

The Biblical Songs Op. 99 by Antonín Dvořák and Mahler's Rückert-Lieder, both featuring mezzo-soprano Magdalena Kožená, were the centerpiece of the program, which closed with Schubert's Unfinished Symphony.

Kožená was able to channel the dramatic intensity of the texts in the Biblical Songs while keeping their fragility intact. After intermission we heard the Rückert-Lieder. These songs are performed in one of several different orderings--in this program Rattle performed them as follows:

Liebst du um Schönheit
Blicke mir nicht in die Lieder
Um Mitternacht
Ich atmet einen linden Duft
Ich bin der Welt abhanden gekommen

Usually I prefer to hear Um Mitternacht last, because then it creates the kind of questioning in line with the finale of the Mahler's seventh symphony. In this program the quasi-religious closing of Um Mitternacht allowed it to resonate with the Biblical Songs, and its ending seemed sincere and free of paradox.

Closing with Ich bin der Welt abhanden gekommen was a perfect bridge into the sound world of the unfinished symphony by Schubert..

Rattle led the Berliner Philharmoniker in a performance that voiced the dynamics of this work as Schubert marked them; this is music that presents itself on the verge of the inaudible. The dynamic level changed the meaning of the music itself. The second theme group in G major often sounds joyous in performance. It shouldn't. It is marked pianissimo. It should sound like you are outside on a day like today hearing other folks being happy.

Rattle found the ache within the unfinished and sent it through the digital concert hall intact. Introspective music is especially attractive on cold, rainy days. This program allowed us to make new connections with the music itself, as we shared it live among invisible friends.

Sexy Ravel

Nahandove is a haunting song of anticipation and sexual fulfillment inspired by a woman whose name is called over and over again in the text of this song written by Maurice Ravel. Completed in 1926, it is the first of three songs called "Chansons Madécasses."

Wolfgang Rupert Muhr and Christian Haake, who were students at the University for Music & Performing Arts in Vienna at the time, collaborated to create this evocative videoclip of Ravel's Nahandove. The mezzo-soprano is Maren Engelhardt.

"Nahandove, ô belle Nahandove!" An echoing refrain on a moonlit evening. The nightbird has started to cry and the moon shines. [0:41] "Voici l'heure:" cries the poet "qui peut t'arrêter, (Now is the time: who can be delaying you?)

The musical texture, for voice and cello alone, is aural cotton candy. It prolongs a chord stacked in thirds (ACEGBD) with tones that rub against in gentle frictions created by fourths.

In the second stanza [0:57] a bed of leaves, "strewn with flowers and scented herbs, worthy of your charms," is prepared by the poet. The film is less literal with images of nature contrasting images of the city--the motion of herons balanced by the motion of people.

Excitement [1:27]. "Elle vient" (She is coming). The poet recognizes the sound of her walk, the rustle of her skirt. The music shifts fields as the piano enters. Tritones and syncopation. The flute is revealed at last: this is the ensemble.

"Catch your breath, my young love," [2:07] "Rest on my lap. Your gaze is enchanting. How delightful the motion of your breast as my hand presses. You smile, Nahandove, by beautiful Nahandove."

The music becomes modal again but moves with gentle and directed motion toward G major [2:38]. This chord, the E major chord [2:49] and the A major chords [2:58] are sweet as watermelon.

A new field in F-sharp major [3:02]. "Your kisses penetrate my soul, your caresses burn. Stop, or I will die, if one can die from voluptuousness." The film counterpoints with playfulness, rides, amusements, motion, fun.

[3:30] In D-sharp minor with images of flying: "Pleasure passes like lightening. Your breath weakens, your eyes close, your head leans, rapture fades to weariness. [4:10] Never were you so beautiful."

Rounding in A major with colorful D-sharps [4:40]: "Now you are leaving, and I will languish in regrets and desires until tonight when you return, Nahandove, ô belle Nahandove!"