United Kingdom L. Boulanger, Stravinsky: Véronique Gens (soprano), Andrew Staples (tenor), Jean-Sébastien Bou (baritone), London Philharmonic Orchestra / Karina Canellakis (conductor). Royal Competition Corridor, London, 22.10.2025. (KMcD)
Lili Boulanger – D’un matin de printemps; Faust et Hélène
Stravinsky – The Ceremony of Spring
Right here was a thoughtfully conceived programme which moved naturally from promise to fulfilment. Conductor Karina Canellakis devoted the primary half of the night to Lili Boulanger, a composer whose slender catalogue nonetheless feels just like the prologue to a significant profession cruelly curtailed. What may need been. D’un matin de printemps set the tone: translucent, spring-bright textures carried on an elastic pulse. Canellakis formed the road with unforced readability and drew scrupulous enjoying from the London Philharmonic Orchestra; woodwinds murmured frivolously, harp and higher strings flickered, and balances had been judged in order that brightness by no means hardened and delicacy by no means turned obscure. It was music-making that trusted Boulanger’s craft and allowed the phrases to breathe.
The actual rarity was Faust et Hélène, the Prix de Rome ‘lyric episode’ that compresses seduction and doom into half an hour of tightly argued drama. The principals took a couple of pages to satisfy on the identical temperature. Andrew Staples’s Faust started with clear diction and poised line, which gained breadth and focus because the orchestral passion rose beneath him. Véronique Gens, remarkably making her LPO debut, settled rapidly into Hélène’s shifting colors; textual content sat ahead, the higher register glowed, and she or he resisted the temptation to overheat the model. Essentially the most full assumption got here from Jean-Sébastien Bou, a Méphistophélès of sardonic chunk and theatrical presence who acted by way of the tone and rode tuttis with unforced authority. Orchestrally the work obtained advocacy of the primary order. Strings phrased in beneficiant paragraphs with out smothering wind element, brass spoke cleanly relatively than bluntly, and Canellakis paced the climaxes from inside in order that the piece felt pressing however by no means overblown. A seam or two confirmed at transitions, but the general impression was of a rarity offered with conviction and magnificence.
After the interval The Ceremony of Spring took maintain and didn’t let go. Jonathan Davies’s opening bassoon solo hovered within the air with a pale, unsettled magnificence, and the answering woodwind curled round it like birdsong caught on a chill breeze. From there Canellakis pressed ahead with a studying that mixed agency rhythmic grip with uncommon readability of texture. The ‘Augurs of Spring’ landed with weight, but internal traces – violas, second clarinet, off-beat horns – continued to talk, so affect got here from articulation relatively than sheer noise. ‘Spring Rounds’ moved with a supple rubato that gave the concord area to glow, and the ‘Ritual of Abduction’ flashed by with a harmful, blade-edge brilliance. A few corners had been untidy – string unanimity briefly frayed in Half I, and a brass cue in Half II arrived a contact early – however they hardly dented the blaze of the entire. ‘Glorification of the Chosen One’ crackled with static, the ‘Rituals of the Ancestors’ floor ahead with grim inevitability, and the ‘Sacrificial Dance’ was struck out with precise, stabbing power from timpani by way of to piccolo. All through, the LPO’s enjoying was astonishingly assured: fearless trumpets, disciplined trombones, articulate percussion, and strings that might flip right away from grainy chunk to shimmering veil.
Canellakis has a present for making advanced scores really feel lucid with out sanding off their hazard, and that reward served each Boulanger and Stravinsky properly. The night started by revealing how a lot radiance Boulanger might compress into a couple of pages and a single dramatic arc; it ended by reminding us how ritual, rhythm and color can nonetheless shock when delivered at this degree of depth. Regardless of the occasional smudge, the cumulative affect was simple: an orchestra firing on all cylinders, a principal visitor conductor in clear command of the scores, and a primary half that whetted the urge for food for extra Boulanger on the live performance stage. A compelling night time of music-making.
Keith McDonnell
