United Kingdom ‘Playing Picasso’: Katharine Dain (soprano), Jorge Navarro Colorado (tenor), Michel de Souza (bass), BBC National Orchestra of Wales / Ryan Bancroft (conductor). Hoddinott Hall, Millennium Centre, Cardiff, 8.12.2023. (PCG)
Stravinsky – Pulcinella; Ragtime
Satie – Parade
Falla – The Three-Cornered Hat (2nd suite)
There is a most ingenious idea behind this programme. It is built around the music for which Pablo Picasso constructed designs for Diaghilev’s Ballets Russes in 1917-1920. It would have been unnecessary to worry about a lack of variety in four ballet scores from such a short period. The three composers’ distinct styles ensured that monotony was the least of concerns. The switching of personnel on the concert platform was required, from the chamber ensemble in Ragtime through the concertante treatment of Pulcinella to the full orchestra of the Satie and Falla scores. It all went smoothly and efficiently. The cimbalom in Ragtime, for example, slid easily onto the stage when required and made its exit with equal aplomb.
Stravinsky’s Ragtime is more suited to the recital room than the concert hall, but the performance was crisp and efficient in the hands of Ryan Bancroft and his band of solo players. Only the cymbalom threatened in places to subside into the resonant acoustic of the hall, and to lack definition in its quirky contributions. A discreet amplification might have helped and might indeed be supplied when the performance is broadcast in January.
Similar observations might have justifiably been applied to some of the many eccentricities in Satie’s Parade. The typewriter clattered away efficiently enough from the back row of the percussion. Even so, a 1917 model would have made more sheer noise than the efficient machine here, probably from a couple of decades later when people sought to reduce the ambient din in offices. The pistol shots, too, were faked, less shocking than Satie clearly intended. There is no virtue in discretion when one plays this music. The ‘sound effects’ were meant to be comic, and to benefit from a full in-your-face treatment.
The orchestra certainly delivered such effects in their performance of the suite extracted from the second act of Falla’s ballet. It was his most substantial orchestral work; his total output is remarkably small for such a major figure. The Spanish rhythms and the impressionist textures got equal prominence. Bancroft niftily managed to avoid the danger that the riotous final section runs away altogether. One tends to forget the brilliance of Falla’s orchestral technique. In many ways, he surpassed Ravel in the imagination and audacity. The concluding bars of the Miller’s dance, for example, looking so obvious on the page with its repetition of two contrasting chords, acquired here an outright sense of bravado that brought a premature ripple of applause from the audience. We would, I am sure, have welcomed the opportunity to hear the complete score. The suite omits some of the best numbers, which appear in the First Suite.
As it was, we heard the complete score of Stravinsky’s Pulcinella, rather than a suite without the vocal parts, more often heard in the concert hall. Stravinsky’s wryly skewed view of the eighteenth century features music by Pergolesi in an unholy mix with other music supposed to be by Pergolesi and yet more music clearly not by Pergolesi at all. It is sometimes a little severe in what should surely be an essentially light-hearted and humorous diversion. It is also far from clear why the music he included in the suite is demonstrably superior to what he omitted. It is undeniable that the ballet as a whole benefits from the inclusion of the vocal passages (and would have benefitted further had the audience had a translation, no matter how whimsically irrelevant this poetry might be).
Katharine Dain stood out among the singers with her pliant and richly contoured tones. Michel de Souza, in what is probably Stravinsky’s least Russian score, would ironically enough have benefited from deeper Slavic resonance in his bottom notes. And the constant – although not unattractive – flutter in Jorge Navarro Colorado’s delivery gave the decidedly peculiar impression of a singer trying to add ornamentation to a vocal line in true baroque style, in a work whose whole ethos is in direct opposition to any such authenticity of treatment. One would certainly imagine that singers in modern performances of Pergolesi would expect to interpolate trills onto many of the sustained notes. Stravinsky resolutely does not write them, even when he is at pains to insert them into the orchestral parts. But throughout the performance there was a general sense of awareness of the distinction between styles that is such an essential element of the score. The differentiation between the solo string quintet and the tutti concertante forces was carefully observed.
The programme is to be broadcast by BBC Radio 3 after Christmas and will doubtless make an excellent impression with some subtle adjustment to microphone levels. The season in Hoddinott Hall is set to resume with the first of a whole slew of first performances and other premières running through to June 2024. I look forward to them with eager anticipation.
Paul Corfield Godfrey