United Kingdom Viva España – Turina, de Falla, Debussy, Ravel: Steven Osborne (piano), Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra / Ludovic Morlot (conductor). Lighthouse, Poole, 14.1.2026. (CK)
Turina – Danzas Fantásticas
de Falla – Nights in the Gardens of Spain
Debussy – Iberia
Ravel – Boléro
Fed up of English winter, tired of a cold, dark and wet January? The Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra’s concert in Poole was just the thing to beat those blues (and a lot cheaper than jetting off to Tenerife): a programme of music inspired by Spain, with Ludovic Morlot, the dapper and stylish Music Director of the Barcelona Symphony Orchestra, at the helm.
The centrepiece was a performance of Manuel de Falla’s Nights in the Gardens of Spain, with that thoughtful pianist Steven Osborne as soloist (I remember well a recital he gave in St Magnus Cathedral, Orkney, which included both of Rachmaninov’s sets of Études tableaux). This was the first time that I have heard de Falla’s atmospheric piece in the concert hall, and the first impression was of its restraint: neither a barnstorming piano concerto nor a Respighi-like set of picture postcards full of garish local effects. The first movement, evoking the Generalife garden at the Alhambra, weaves its evocative spell by the sparest of means: it is almost entirely built out of a simple rocking of two notes a semitone apart. Not a castanet to be heard; nothing more blatant from the percussion section than a brushed cymbal.
Despite its livelier carriage the ensuing Distant Dance is shot through with a sense of mystery: the quiet opening on the violas may remind us momentarily of the Ritual Fire Dance, but there is a sense – finely realised by Osborne and the orchestra – of concentration, of tension never fully released. The final movement, In the Gardens of the Sierra de Córdoba, was certainly Vivo as marked: but through its magical series of episodes to its almost inaudibly voluptuous ending we were never allowed to forget that, in effect, this too is a Nocturne. Sensitively, Osborne did not break the mood with his encore: an improvisation on a theme by Keith Jarrett, a quietly glowing series of chords flowering into music of beauty and simplicity.
Before the de Falla the concert had opened in lively fashion with Turina’s Danzas Fantásticas, the first of which opens (and ends) in mysterious fashion: ghostly strings over muttering bass trombone, tuba and bass drum. It is not long, though, before cor anglais and oboe have us tapping our feet. The second dance – relaxed and playful, rather grand at its centre – brought more fine work from oboe, a pair of flutes and the rest of the woodwind. The concluding farruca brought a display of masculine vigour relieved by pools of quiet from woodwind and strings, and a brief, wistful cello solo before the end. The Bournemouth players, individually and collectively, relished the colours in this attractive music.
It is a truth universally acknowledged that from Carmen onwards most well-known Spanish music was written by French composers (even Turina and de Falla spent productive years in Paris). After the interval we had Debussy and Ravel. It was especially good to hear Debussy’s Ibéria (a triptych within a triptych: the centrepiece of his Images). The first movement – Along the streets and paths – bustled agreeably, Debussy’s textures always crystal clear. The second – its title here translated as The scents of the night – stirred an unwelcome memory of a performance I attended many moons ago with a musical friend (who went on to be a Professor of Music and an expert on Henry Purcell and John Blow). The conductor was Celibidache: and he took Nocturnal Pongs (my friend’s idiomatic translation) so slowly that by the end the whole audience was practically asleep. No danger of that here: Morlot and the orchestra wove a tapestry of sounds that were sensuous, languid where appropriate but never inert. The finale, with its strumming violins, its bright solos and its wonderfully brazen finish, left us in no doubt that this piece – unlike de Falla’s – emerges into sunlight.
To end, Boléro. Plenty of opportunities to admire Ravel’s skilful parade of instrumental timbres, his ingenuity in heating the music gently and inexorably towards boiling point. The side drummer, concealed behind the violas, was a man of imposing size and extraordinary stamina: we were into rock drumming territory well before the deafening end (where he was joined by two further side drummers). Geezer Butler, bass guitarist of Black Sabbath, once described Tchaikovsky’s 1812 Overture as the first piece of heavy metal ever written: on the evidence of a performance such as this, Boléro might well be the second.
Chris Kettle