The Orchestre de Paris is in the middle of a deep dive into music of the Ballets Russes conducted by their Music Director Klaus Mäkelä. They have already recorded Stravinsky's The Firebird and The Rite of Spring, and last night they brought those two ballets to Carnegie Hall.
Mäkelä emphasized verticality and gesture in The Firebird, with lyricism taking a back seat. I was actually startled to see how forcefully the string players were bowing at times, half expecting to hear a string break in between viscerally physical rhythmic stabs. Crescendo–diminuendo tremolo passages from the strings had the energy of a caged wild animal. I am in awe of the Paris woodwind section, whose soloists and sections have distinct, idiosyncratic timbral personalities, but somehow manage to blend when necessary.
While the woodwind and string soloists, and especially the solo horn, fulfilled their expressive assignments satisfyingly in the slower, more lyrical sections, the more fully orchestrated lyrical passages seemed limp in comparison. A slow string ostinato near the end was neither directional nor ethereally floating. In general, it was hard to make sense of the rapid succession of changing moods, not surprisingly for a piece composed for a visual medium performed without its visual (one begins to see why Stravinsky extracted three suites from the score). Still, the exciting bits were really exciting, with a fantastic rhythmic vitality. Brass and percussion were thrilling, and nowhere more than in the ecstatic finale, which Mäkelä and the orchestra brought to an absolutely irresistible climax.
By 1913 and The Rite of Spring, Stravinsky had learned to make those sudden shifts of affect integral to the musical structure, and so one misses the dancers not at all. Strangely, though, in this second half of the concert it was the lyrical moments that seemed to be the most thoroughly realized. Again, the truly vehement moments were visceral and engaging (and loud – I hope whichever musician was sitting in front of the bass drum had hearing protection!). But some of the multi-layered rhythmic passages lacked clarity. And one choice raised my eyebrows; in the iconic eighth-note dissonant-chord ostinato that begins the Augurs of Spring section, Mäkelä emphasized downbeats of the 2/4 written meter, which made the seemingly random offbeat accents sound like jazzy syncopations rather than threatening jabs.
These are quibbles, though. Most of the ostinatos gathered tension through repetition, just as they're meant to. Some of the textures were of such solidity that it made me think of the term “wall of sound”, more commonly associated with 1960s rock music. Most of the latter half of The Rite is violence, and the Orchestre de Paris showed a terrifying commitment to it that left me breathless.
