*** Brussels Philharmonic kicked off their new season at home in Flagey with a match. With both Le Sacre du Printemps on the program, as well as Renaud Capuçon joining the ranks, the orchestra hoped to score immediately.
The season opener was announced in grand fashion as Le sacre du printemps and a new work by Guillaume Connesson. If that's your pitch, everything else on your program is just filler. The work by Vaughan Williams was nothing more than cheap crowd-warming, to put everyone in a favorable mood for Connesson's more dissonant new violin concerto. There's little to fault about such a work. Don't make gigantic missteps and you can't really go wrong.
Guillaume Connesson's new violin concerto was quite interesting. Stylistically somewhere at the intersection of Stravinsky and Copland, and therefore also a perfect bridge between the popular opening work and the later Sacre. Despite the driving rhythm and the shrill violin solos by Renaud Capuçon, the composer guides you smoothly into a Buddhist story about Shangri-La. The eastern percussion was at times a bit too gratuitous, but Connesson mainly built a good arc of tension in his work and managed to keep everyone engaged. Not least because he brought out the best in Renaud Capuçon.
Yet the star of the evening began rather nonchalantly. Violin loosely in hand, he stood at the front waiting to start. Almost bored, as if he had nothing to play. That nonchalance is also in his playing technique. He glided effortlessly through his part, but makes it all look so effortless. You can be annoyed by that quasi carelessness, but it befits an artist to make this kind of work look so deceptively simple.
Blood, sweat and tears
Coincidentally, that perception of the musicians was also important for Le Sacre du Printemps. A work where blood, sweat and tears splash out of the music. If your violin section then works through their part rigidly, you haven't understood the work properly. Especially during the Augures Printaniers, the syncopated energy of the work did not fully come into its own. The bassoon had already worked through its opening measures far too quickly for that. The drawn-out laments of the opening passages did not do justice to themselves.
After such a double false start, you're essentially already disqualified. Although the musicians grew into the piece, the expected ecstasy never came. The decibels did increase, but vitality was lacking. Next time, come back from vacation a bit earlier. The three stars are mainly for Connesson, who effortlessly held his own against an icon of modern music.
- WHO: Brussels Philharmonic, Vlaams Radiokoor & Renaud Capuçon
- WHAT: Le Sacre du Printemps, Le Roi des Étoiles (Stravinsky), Concerto pour Violon (Connesson), Serenade to Music (Vaughan Williams)
- WHERE: Flagey, Brussels
- WHEN: Friday 14 September 2018
- PHOTO: © Wouter Vaerenbergh