BBCSSO: Debussy, Ravel & Rare Gems
City Halls, Glasgow, 11/12/25.
BBCSSO, RCS Chamber Choir (upper voices), Ilan Volkov (conductor), Nicolas Hodges (piano)
The BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra’s 90th Anniversary season continued on the night of Thursday 11th December in Glasgow’s City Halls with a programme of French music titled ‘Debussy, Ravel & Rare Gems’. The orchestral version of Ravel’s ‘Valses nobles et sentimentales’ and Debussy’s ‘Nocturnes’ (for women’s chorus and orchestra) were the familiar goodies after the interval. The ‘rare gems’ before comprised the 1938 3-movement Symphony No.2 by Elsa Barraine and the one-movement 1981 Piano Concerto by Morocco-born (of Andalusian heritage) Parisian composer Maurice Ohana, with Nicolas Hodges as soloist. Israel-born conductor Ilan Volkov, the orchestra’s Principal Conductor from 2003 to 2009, then Principal Guest Conductor until last year, now with the designation ‘Creative Partner’, was our guide on this “voyage of discovery”. Special rapport with the orchestra? Oh yes. The concert was broadcast live on Radio 3 and will be available on BBC Sounds for 30 days. The programme was introduced, for the hall, the airwaves and cyberspace, by presenter Gillian Moore CBE. Our latest guest leader was American violinist and Assistant Concertmaster of the Chicago Lyric Opera Orchestra, Emily Nebel. Attendance was fairly modest but just about satisfactory.
The Barraine symphony is subtitled ‘Voina’ (Russian for ‘War’) and its first movement captures the fear and dread of Europe in 1938 as the inevitable approached. Reading from the programme that the composer was a classmate and lifelong friend of Messiaen, there is no sign of that in the music. Indeed, if I had been asked, without the benefit of the programme, to identify the composer from a cold first hearing, my first tentative guess would have been the Welsh composer and friend of Dylan Thomas, Daniel Jones. The opening is martial and menacing, with the snare drum driving the insistent pulse. After an angry climax, a ghostly flute over tremolo strings reminded me of the first movement of Shostakovich 6. The aggressive martial opening returns for a big finish. The slow movement is a funeral march, declamatory trombones setting up its grim trudge, which underlies a plaintive oboe melody. More ghostly flute over tremolo strings realises the grim forecast of the previous movement. A beautifully elegiac violin solo from Emily Nebel over the fading march rhythm brought the movement to its morendo close. If the slow movement had me recalling Britten in sombre mood, the finale was cheerful “life goes on” music in the mould of a Prokofiev romp, with a tinkling celesta, a chirping piccolo and high-pitched singing from the violins, all in the orchestral texture. A brief timpani cadenza and a final thump and it was done. What an absolutely super piece, with all that drama compressed into under 20 minutes, shorter than a Haydn symphony!
If the absence of Messiaen’s influence in the Barraine merited mention, its presence in the Ohana was a pleasant surprise. Chords built on unusual intervals, characteristic wide separation of sonorities and combinations of timbres, rapid complex pianistic clusters, layering of textures, falling wind chords and a swathe of other hard-to-specify but pointedly redolent features captured my interest. The programme notes made much of the influence of flamenco also. Meditative quasi-improvisatory short discordant phrases built to a dialogue with the orchestra and a first multi-layered climax. A brief cadenza had jazz chords alternating with modernist clusters. A thrilling passage that evoked a menacing, stalking demon moving in fits and starts was followed by an eerie atmospheric shimmering stillness with pianissimo winds and muted brass. Something akin to boogie-woogie in the left hand of the piano launched a more dancelike episode, with tension building to a massive climax, followed by sudden stillness. Shifting chords in the horns and winds launched the coda, another crescendo to a final thud. A fascinating and intriguing piece that seemed to carry a narrative and could bear repeated listening. It received a very compelling outing, with the utmost advocacy from Nicolas Hodges, Ilan Volkov and the orchestra, all of whom clearly rate the work highly and were committed to ‘Creative Partnership’. They certainly convinced me and, when I have a moment, I’ll be back to BBC Sounds for at least one other listen. Whatever its technical challenges, Nicolas Hodges took them in his stride. Is the concerto a ‘rare gem’? Absolutely.
Pre-dating the fabulous (but bonkers) ‘La valse’ by 8 years, ‘Valses nobles et sentimentales’ is a suite of 8 contrasting quirky French-style waltzes written for piano in 1911 and orchestrated the following year. The 7th is the closest to ‘La valse’ in its impressionistic character and scale evoking a grand ballroom scene, while the 8th is more like the beginning of ‘La valse’ in reverse, an epilogue in which the dancing figures are barely perceptible in the mist and fading. The others are mostly elegant and stylish and cut a figure of dapper grace (rather like Ravel himself). The first has more than a hint of swagger, while the second is dreamy and sentimentally smoochy. The middle waltzes vary the tempo and the character with various charming features. One has a graceful neoclassical oboe solo. Another is oddly hemiolic, the waltz pulse almost imperceptible. All-in-all, a delicious piece. It received a characterful performance.
Debussy’s ‘Nocturnes’ comprises 3 symphonic ‘pictures’ (rather than ‘poems’) with the titles ‘Nuages’ (clouds), ‘Fêtes’ (festivals) and .’Sirènes’. (Sirens, the mythical mermaid-like creatures whose singing lured sailors to their deaths). The orchestra has been fortunate in having played under a succession of conductors who excel in sonic picture-painting, none more so than Ilan Volkov. ‘Nuages’ opened with evocation of a spooky dawn, with indistinct shapes in the near-dark, gradually taking form represented by different characterful solos emerging from the texture, notably cor anglais, viola, harp & flute, the bassoons and the cello section, with some oriental and arabesque tropes. Magical. ‘Fêtes’ bristled with nervous energy and a whirling triplet pulse like a demonically driven tarantella, particularly thrilling in the trumpets. After a first flush of vigour, harps and timpani deliciously re-established the underlying triple metre for a gradual build up to a full-fat climax. One more restatement of the main themes before, like a flamboyant procession passing, it moved away, diminuendo to nothing. Fabulous. For ’Sirènes’, a foreshadow of the orchestral timbres of ‘La Mer’ underlay the haunting, mesmerising exotic modal vocables from the RCS Chamber Choir SSAA, 4 to each part. After a dramatic swell in the dynamic, the opening enchantment returned, finally fading to silence. Looks like we escaped shipwreck. A thoroughly captivating piece of musical picture-painting. Full marks from me.