Music Director Ludovic Morlot opened Seattle Symphony’s new season with an all Ravel program over the weekend.
Ludovic Morlot, just beginning his third year on the podium of the Seattle Symphony as music director, has shown he is a master at programming. This is particularly noticeable in his choices to open this season.
Last weekend, he and the orchestra gave a wildly successful gala performance with pianist Lang Lang; this week began the first of the season’s Masterworks series and, judging by Saturday’s audience, the program brought in a big, enthusiastic, and attentive crowd.
Morlot went with an all Ravel program: two piano concertos with Jean-Yves Thibaudet as soloist in both, and four works all with the Spanish flavor so loved by the composer. With composer, conductor, and soloist all French, how could there not be a sense of complete understanding of the music on stage?
The D major Concerto for the Left Hand was written for one-armed pianist Paul Wittgenstein (he lost the other in World War I), and seemingly makes no allowance for the pianist performing with one hand what would normally take two. It’s fiendishly difficult, yet Thibaudet played with ease, from the first long meditative solo to the colorful cadenza just before the end.
In the program’s second half, playing Ravel’s only other piano concerto, Thibaudet displayed the same ease and innate understanding of Ravel’s music, with both hands bringing to life the composer’s newfound interest in Jazz. This alternated with languorous sections, sensual and relaxed, in the first movement. The quite short second one is notable for its peace and quietude, soft and unhurried, utterly beautiful in the way the music unfolds. You could have heard a pin drop in the audience as Thibaudet caressed the music out of the keys and the orchestra kept with him as support. The third movement is a total contrast, jaunty, fast, and jazzy with many solos from individual orchestra members, who were recognized in the prolonged applause.
In Ravel’s Spanish-inflected music, Morlot chose works with different aspects, from the effervescent yet sultry “Alborado del gracioso” to the swirling, sensual “Rhapsodie espagnole” to the elegant and stately “Pavane pour une infante defunte” — not, as often thought, intended as a dirge for a dead princess, but intended to remember how she might have danced, the young girl in so many of Velasquez’s paintings — and ending up with the mesmeric “Bolero.” In each, Morlot created transparency, so that all the inner voices of Ravel’s masterly use of instrumental colors could be heard. There are many solos for different instruments, showing a particular love, in these works, for the bassoon. Often, Morlot trusted the musicians to phrase each solo their own way, without conducting them.
Morlot starts his new season with community and musicians respecting his musicianship, enthusiastic about his programming and performances, appreciating his venturesome ideas, and enjoying his determination to include musicians of all different stripes. He is consolidating his hold now that he is a more known entity, and we are lucky to have him.
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