Piano Concertos from France

* Ravel:
    - Concerto in G
    - Concerto for the left hand
* Honegger: Concertino
* Francaix: Concertino

Jean-Yves Thibaudet (piano)
Orchestre symphonique de Montreal/Charles Dutoit
London 452448-2 Total time: 60:22

Summary for the Busy Executive: Killjoys.

It took the French a while to produce a really great piano concerto.
The Saint-Saens cycle is at least credible and represents a giant step
up from what went on before, and composers like d' Indy, Franck, Hahn,
and Massenet produced charming divertissements.  Debussy's early Fantaisie
probably is the best of these, but one can't really say it comes from
Debussy's top drawer.  It took until Ravel's two masterpieces before the
French had something one could mention in the same breath as, say, the
Brahmses or the Schumann - not that Ravel is the same kind of composer,
although I certainly believe him at Brahms's level.  Nevertheless, Ravel
produced supreme examples of a certain musical viewpoint - one most of
us think of as quintessentially French - as Brahms produced supreme
examples of the German symphonic approach to the concerto.  It represents
a philosophical difference more than a technical difference.  A composer
like Brahms essentially seeks God through music.  Every emotion gets
ramped up.  The highs are empyrean; the quiet is intensely meditative.
Brahms always courts the danger of going over the top, of pretentious
inflation, and indeed many of his extensive revisions of early works aim
to rein in this impulse.  Ravel seeks the sensuously beautiful, the
rapture one feels in the presence of "sensuous form" while simultaneously
maintaining a sense of balance.  There's a slight distance rather than
an heroic identification - as if the stance itself becomes an emulation
of the beauty one feels.  In many ways, Brahms and Ravel's approaches
differ as the German and French view of classical Greece differ.  The
German feels the power the ancient forms generate - Homer, Aeschylus,
and Sophocles - while the Frenchman feels the perfection of those forms
in themselves - the Elgin marbles, the architecture.  If the German risks
pomposity, the Frenchman risks superficiality.

I think the comparison to Brahms even more instructive when we look
at the differences in the piano concertos of both men.  To me, Ravel's
Concerto for the Left Hand is to Brahms's d-minor as his Concerto in G
is to Brahms's B-flat.  That is, the left-hand concerto and the d-minor
are, to use Nietzsche's distinction, "Dionysian," while the G-major and
the Brahms B-flat are "Apollonian." Ravel's left-hand concerto, like
Brahms's d-minor, flirts with the id (without succumbing) while the
G-major and the B-flat are ensigns of the superego, with so much psychic
balance that leaning over the edge poses little danger of actually falling
in.

You'd think that two French guys would have an inside track on this
music, but (in the words of John Belushi) nooo-o-o-o.  I have no idea
what on earth has happened to Charles Dutoit.  In his early days, he
would have been a natural.  His early performances are airy and bright
(I think especially of a marvelous account of Mendelssohn's Midsummer
Night's Dream music).  Lately, however, everything he touches turns to
lead.  The opening to the left-hand concerto plods, and with the exception
of Thibaudet's opening to the allegro, everything drags.  Marginally
better, the G-major concerto is nothing to write home about either.  The
Montreal players attack with all the vim of a Nyquil addict and don't
seem willing to get to the next note.  Ensemble's pretty ragged as well.
And the tone!  They sound so dull they might as well be playing behind
a heavy curtain.  The radiant slow movement grinds along and refuses to
shine.

The same lethargy attacks them in the Francaix and the Honegger, but
it matters less there.  The music doesn't pretend to anything more than
a good time.  The Honegger, a rare example of the composer in his Les
Six mode (not all that apparent even when the group was together), is a
cheeky thing, very evocative of Satie.  I've enjoyed the piece immensely
in its Vox/Turnabout LP incarnation.  Perhaps it's available from the
Vox website.  As far as I know, this is the only alternative to Dutoit
and Thibaudet.  The Francaix is a classic of its kind.  See if you can
find the Dorati recording with the composer's son as soloist.

Steve Schwartz