Bavarian Radio photo from rehearsals for yesterday’s and this evening’s concerts – “Kirill Gerstein and Sir Simon Rattle”

Friday, March 27, 2026

Herkulessaal, Munich

From the Spanish side of the Pyrenees, Gerhard (1896-1970) and Coll (born 1985); from the French, Poulenc (1899-1963) and Debussy (1862-1918), the latter at sea for this BR concert. To sunny Spain first for Roberto Gerhard’s Dances from Don Quixote, a ballet score that only became its composer’s desire following several years of revisions and diversions, premiering definitively at Covent Garden in 1950 with choreography by Ninette de Valois. Dances from presents abut half the music (roughly twenty minute) in terms vivid, witty and edgily lyrical (nothing like his advanced modern style to come) with Spanish (Catalan) rhythms to the fore, persuasively best-foot-forward as guided by Sir Simon.

Having written an impressive Cello Concerto (see below) Francisco Coll has now penned a Piano Concerto for Kiriil Gerstein world-premiered twenty-four hours previously. It appears to be in three movements, the first of them opens with an upward thrust to cue a lexicon of rhythmic panache with elaborate writing for the pianist to unravel, heroically achieved by Gerstein, although its successor is intense, anguished and searing, and also lonely, while the Finale is severely dissonant and rapid-fire. I may have got a bit lost, so will listen again, which can be done on BR. Gerstein announced his encore as “two waltzes” but I have no idea what he then played.

The second half began with Poulenc’s music for Les Biches (Ballets Russes, 1924). Insouciant, frothy, chanson-esque and delightfully cheeky, Rattle and the Bavarians irrepressible, although it may be that those with recordings by Roger Désormière and Louis Frémaux (of the Suite) or Georges Prêtre (complete) in their ears won’t have been over-troubled by Rattle occasionally making too much of this entertaining Mozart/Haydn-meets-Stravinskian-neoclassicism invention, however buoyant and charming. La mer was firmly born of its ‘three symphonic sketches’ inscription, as straight as an arrow, transparently sounded, the extra brass-writing in the final movement employed, and the Bavarian Radio SO left the platform with its ‘great orchestra’ status intact.

Programme

Roberto Gerhard

Dances from “Don Quixote”

Francisco Coll

Piano concerto

Commissioned by the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra, the Boston Symphony Orchestra, the São Paulo State Symphony Orchestra, the Castile and León Symphony Orchestra and the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra

Francis Poulenc

“Les biches” Suite

Claude Debussy

“La mer”

Performers

Sir Simon Rattle

Kirill Gerstein piano

Symphonieorchester des Bayerischen Rundfunks

UK premiere @ BBC Proms. Sol Gabetta/BBC Symphony Orchestra/Tianyi Lu. August 18, 2024. Photo/Chris Christodoulou.

Roberto Gerhard: from Violin Concerto (1943) to Symphony 4 (1967)…

Olivier Charlier/BBCSO/Matthias Bamert. Chandos recording.

For the New York Philharmonic; premiere – December 14, 1967 – conducted by William Steinberg.