Gabriel Fauré (1845-1924)
Wednesday, September 4, 2024
Royal Albert Hall, London
Today marks Bruckner’s bicentenary. So, what do the Proms programme? French fancies. C’est la vie. Actually, this was an excellent concert, opening with Lili Boulanger’s rather austere yet strangely effective setting of the Pie Jesu, with Golda Schultz, which folded nicely into a persuasively restrained reading of Fauré’s (anyway reserved) Requiem, devout, not seeking anything beyond itself, except for the words’ sentiments, handing Schultz her second ‘Pie Jesu’, albeit a little off-pitch/over-vibrating at times, and which found Jacques Imbrailo as a gentle preacher, with the BBC Symphony Chorus radiantly contemplating. Stéphane Denève (music director, St. Louis Symphony) brought sovereign shape to each movement, carefully calibrating dynamics so that there was no question of the Hall’s large space forcing his hand, nor were there suggestions of sameness across the whole.
In the second half a score that Fauré composed for a London production of Maeterlinck’s play Pelléas et Mélisande, deeply felt music that Denève conducted with affection and insights, introducing pianissimos that daringly went to the edge of inaudibility, while remaining intrinsic, as did emotional swells in ‘Death of Melisande’. A ‘Buddhist prayer’ by Lili Boulanger followed (tenor, choir and orchestra), pleading and incantatory (Laurence Kilsby magnetic), music quite filmic and certainly image-creating. Finally the Second Suite (with chorus) from Ravel’s Daphnis – from rapturous dawn to joyous bacchanal via expansive pantomime (flautist Daniel Pailthorpe once again floating some silvery magic), this brought the curtain down on one of this BBC Proms season’s highlights.
Lili Boulanger: Pie Jesu
Gabriel Fauré: Requiem
Gabriel Fauré: Pelleas and Melisande – Suite
Lili Boulanger: Vieille prière bouddhique
Maurice Ravel: Daphnis and Chloe – Suite No. 2
Golda Schultz (soprano)
Laurence Kilsby (tenor)
Jacques Imbrailo (baritone)
BBC Symphony Chorus
https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m0022c66
https://www.classicalsource.com/cd/stephane-deneve-conducts-debussy-chandos
Spot on as always, sir. It was magical in the hall and it was great to see 12 violas on the conductor’s left and 12 cellos to the right with the 22 violins (no seconds in the score) behind them. Kilsby wore a lovely bright green shirt. He will be soon at the Wigmore Hall in a Faure concert with Degout and Gens.