It’s not every day that a critic gets to review a premiere by Ravel.
He died almost a century ago, after all. And while some previously unknown works have come to light over the years, it happens considerably less than once in a blue moon.
So my pen was out and alert on Thursday at the New York Philharmonic’s delightful concert at David Geffen Hall, practically vibrating with the opportunity to be among the first to weigh in on a piece by the creator of some of music’s most enduring and gorgeous classics.
The work that the Philharmonic and Gustavo Dudamel, its incoming music director, were playing, part of a program celebrating Ravel’s 150th birthday, was long assumed to be lost. Written around 1900, when Ravel was still a conservatory student stormily at odds with the musical establishment, the score for selections from a cantata called “Sémiramis” turned up at an auction in 2000, when it entered the collection of the Bibliothèque Nationale de France.
An entry in the diary of one of the composer’s friends, the pianist Ricardo Viñes, indicates that it was played, probably as a class exercise, in 1902. (“It is very beautiful,” Viñes wrote.) There’s no record of it being performed in public between then and Thursday.
Grave and gloomy, bronzed by the low luster of a gong, the first section rises to the dramatic punch of an opera overture. The music then accelerates into a gaudy Orientalist dance that looks back to the Bacchanale from Saint-Saëns’s “Samson et Dalila” and the “Polovtsian Dances” of Borodin, one of the Russian masters Ravel adored.
This “Prélude et Danse” is over in five minutes. (The third surviving section, for tenor and orchestra, will be premiered in Paris in December.) The piece is most intriguing as a preview of what was to come: For one thing, Ravel divides the string sections into multiple parts to increase the complexity of the textures, a technique he would use in later masterpieces like “Daphnis et Chloé.”
The Suite No. 2 from “Daphnis” followed the little chunk of “Sémiramis.” This was clever programming, but it came together just a few days ago. The star pianist Yuja Wang, the Philharmonic’s artist in residence this season, was supposed to join the orchestra for both of Ravel’s piano concertos, but dropped out because of a health issue.
Dudamel and the orchestra traded out the concertos for two Ravel suites, “Daphnis” and the exquisite “Mother Goose.” The Ravel pieces were bookended by Varèse’s industrial-size “Amériques” and Gershwin’s jazzy chestnut “An American in Paris,” for what ended up being an excellent immersion in the first three decades of the 20th century.
With well over 100 players, “Amériques” begins plaintively, like Stravinsky’s “Rite of Spring,” but gears up fast into the first of a long series of granitic explosions, with a siren periodically wailing. Powerful but not blaring, the Philharmonic conveyed the work’s elemental force.
On this program, you were more aware than usual of Varèse’s subtlety and range of colors, as in the languid alto flute at the start that reached across the concert to connect with the great flute solo in “Daphnis.” In the jeweled atmosphere of the quiet parts of “Amériques,” like the steady beat in the harp and celesta as muted brasses wandered, there was a sensual suavity not so far from the fairy tale fragrance of “Mother Goose.”
The Philharmonic played both Ravel suites with just the right delicate freshness, and Dudamel’s tempos felt natural: unpressured yet never sluggish. The different sections of the orchestra were balanced with poise, as in the oboe just peeking out from behind the silky violins in the second section of “Mother Goose.”
The final dance in “Daphnis” had, in the context of this program, a ferocity that recalled Varèse. And “An American in Paris,” which usually comes across as blithe, was quite different, its brassiness more relentless, its structure almost as arbitrary-feeling as that of “Amériques.” As with any good musical pairing, the shift in perception went both ways: Varèse’s urbanity suddenly seemed a little more cheerful, Gershwin’s a little more brutal.
Coherently programmed and terrifically played, the evening was a showcase for big sounds and repertory staples. If the brief “Prélude et Danse” from “Sémiramis” got a bit lost in the shuffle, it still offered a glimpse of a rising star.
My report? Not bad for a kid.
New York Philharmonic
This program continues through Sunday at David Geffen Hall, Manhattan; nyphil.org.
