United Kingdom Stravinsky, Francisco Coll, de Falla: Javier Perianes (piano), London Philharmonic Orchestra / Gustavo Gimeno (conductor). Royal Festival Hall, London. 16.2.2024. (CSa)
Stravinsky – Scherzo fantastique; The Firebird Suite (1919 version)
Francisco Coll – Ciudad sin Sueño (Fantasia for Piano and Orchestra)
de Falla – Nights in the Gardens of Spain
An unseasonably warm February evening and a programme which promised ‘Colour and Fantasy’ lured a near capacity audience to London’s Royal Festival Hall for an intoxicating concert of fairy tale early Stravinsky, de Falla’s atmospheric Nights in the Gardens of Spain, and a newly commissioned world premiere of Francisco Coll’s piano concerto, Ciudad sin Sueño (City That Does Not Sleep), a startlingly original reworking of flamenco themes.
The programme opened with the Scherzo fantastique which the 26-year-old Stravinsky composed while still under the influence of his mentor and teacher Rimsky-Korsakov. While Rimsky’s orchestral colours can readily be discerned, the voice and structure of the piece are unmistakably and uniquely those of his young pupil. The first section of the score, a shimmering, buzzing soundworld inspired by Maurice Maeterlinck’s philosophical essay Life of the Bees – evoked by ceaseless chattering from the London Philharmonic Orchestra’s strings punctuated by sonorous conversations between woodwind, celeste and three harps – was meticulously played under the sensitive baton of Gustavo Gimeno. A magnificent alto flute solo representing the nuptial flight of the queen bee and her doomed suitors ushered in a lushly Wagnerian middle section, and ended with an ecstatic finale.
Stravinsky’s light and sonorous musical landscape stood in marked contrast to Francisco Coll’s earthy and red-blooded Ciudad sin Sueño, the centrepiece of the concert’s first half. The three-part work is richly inventive and musically innovative. It takes its name from the third section of Federico Garcia Lorca’s Poet in New York. According to its young Spanish composer, Ciudad sin Sueño, like de Falla’s Nights in the Gardens of Spain, is more a fantasia than a concerto. Joined by seasoned soloist Javier Perianes, to whom the piece is dedicated, the orchestra and piano burst into an explosively percussive first movement entitled Desplantes, which in Spanish is both an insult and a proud gesture made by a victorious bullfighter. Here, Coll’s bold flamenco rhythms are, like cubist portraits by his fellow countryman Picasso, deconstructed and reassembled into angular but recognisable images. The darkly-hued second movement – Duende – takes its name from the ghost-like spirit of Spanish folklore. It can also be used to describe a heightened state of emotion which was conveyed by music of poignant longing, while the final movement Orgía (a reference to secret Dionysian rites) injected a wild and festive note in which orchestra and piano engaged in a feverish exchange.
After the interval, Javier Perianes rejoined Gimeno and his players to give a magical account of de Falla’s sultry, atmospheric Nights in the Gardens of Spain. Each of the three movements is a dramatic dedication to different gardens in the composer’s beloved Andalusia. Perianes and the orchestra at once entered into a beautifully balanced conversation in which the staccato guitar-like flamenco rhythms on the piano combined with the sensual intensity of the orchestral score.
As good as its word, the programme concluded with a work abounding in colour and fantasy: Stravinsky’s Firebird Suite, a ballet commissioned by Sergei Diaghilev in 1910, which was transformed into a concert suite nine years later. The work, based on a Russian fairy tale, depicts an incandescent bird whose help is enlisted by a prince to free thirteen princesses from the spell of an evil sorcerer. In a lustrous performance, and one that showcased the depth and sophistication of the orchestra, Gimeno conjured a magical obsolescence of tone and texture from every section. The tumultuous applause was well deserved.
Chris Sallon