Stella Tsolakidou for Greek USA Reporter, Chicago Events
May 14, 2012

The MCA Stage presents a concert of new works by composers Georges Aperghis, Juan Pablo Carreño, and Patricia Alessandrini, along with an important early work by Aperghis, performed by ICE (International Contemporary Ensemble). Aperghis has been a central figure in the music theater movement that breaks genres and features playful, humorous, or aggressive performance techniques in which musicians act and react to their playing. The concert is guest conducted by renowned Ludovic Morlot and is the final ICE concert of the MCA Stage season, and takes place Saturday, May 26, 2012, at 7:30 pm.

Georges Aperghis is one of Europe’s most influential experimental composers. His compositions are theatrical and provocative, ignoring boundaries and expectations, much like his mentor and fellow Greek Iannis Xenakis. Both Carreño and Alessandrini have been inspired and influenced by Aperghis to explore new directions and expressions in their work. All three currently live in Paris, but were born in other countries: Aperghis in Greece, Carreño in Columbia, and Alessandrini in Italy.

The program’s most significant performance is the premiere of George Aperghis’ Shot in the Dark (2011, 30 min). It was commissioned by ICE and created in close collaboration with Ludovic Morlot. It features sixteen ensemble members and soprano Tony Arnold, and is intended to portray a woman sliding from one state of consciousness to another. Musical sequences and Arnold’s voice come and go, playing with and taunting each other. Arnold plays the role of a storyteller using a hybrid language created by Aperghis.

Aperghis’ early work, Signaux (1978, 11 min), was designed as a social experiment that features four string players – two violins and two violas — who musically follow each other too closely and have to engage non-verbal signals to perform this playful, fast-paced chamber music without error.

Juan Pablo Carreño’s Golpe en el diafragma (2012, 14 min) uses noise as a theatrical structure to create sound clusters and waves that collide into a wall of sound by the fourteen member ensemble. The complete range of acoustic instruments is employed, from piccolo to tuba. Carreño composed the work for ICE through an ICElab residency; he will be in attendance.

Patricia Alessandrini’s Ommagio a Berio (2012, 8 min) is a quiet contrast to Carreño’s piece and serves as an ode to the Italian composer Luciano Berio’s Folk Songs, a catalog of international folk melodies. A pianist plays silently while six musicians, crowded around the piano, are challenged to reconstruct a melody by plucking its strings and playing around the instrument. The piano acts as a resonator, capturing fragments of sounds made by the players and soprano singer, Tony Arnold, who performs at the end of the work. She composed the work for ICE through an ICElab residency; she will be in attendance.

Georges Aperghis, born in Athens in 1945, studied music and piano in Greece. He was almost self-taught before he moved to Paris in 1963 and began musical training. Aperghis has paved the way for a new type of music/musician that is political, relevant, and not confined to the conventions of music, theater, and dance. He was a pioneer in this movement and now it is a more common model for contemporary and new music composers. In 1976, Aperghis founded the music and theater company ATEM (Atelier Théâtre et Musique) in Bagnolet, France, outside of Paris. In 1997, he left ATEM to work on personal projects and focus on writing.

Patricia Alessandrini creates all her works from existing music because she sees the act of composing as an interpretation or performance. She has become increasingly involved in multimedia and theatrical work, using live electronic and interactive situations with video and other media. Her work often engages in social and political issues. Alessandrini has a BA in composition from Queens College, CUNY, a PhD from Princeton University, and a diploma from the Conservatoire de Strasbourg. She has taught at Queens College and Princeton and the Accademia Musicale Pescarese in Italy. She is participating in ICELab’s 2012 residency program.

Juan Pablo Carreño is influenced by traditional Columbian music and focuses on sonic and tonal theories in his music. He studied composition at Javeriana University in Bogotá, Columbia, and Florida International University before moving to Paris to study at the Conservatoire de Nanterre. He has participated in multiple residencies, including the 2012 ICELab.

Ludovic Morlot, an acclaimed French conductor, is the recently appointed Music Director of the Seattle Symphony and Chief Conductor of La Monnaie/De Munt Opera in Brussels. Trained as a violinist, Ludovic studied conducting at the Royal Academy of Music and then at the Royal College of Music, both in London, as the recipient of the Norman del Mar Conducting Fellowship. In 2001, he was the Seiji Ozawa Fellowship Conductor at the Tanglewood Music Center in Massachusetts and subsequently appointed Assistant Conductor for the orchestra and their Music Director James Levine. He also served as Conductor in Residence with the Orchestre National de Lyon. Morlot will participate in the Saturday Speakeasy post-show gathering at the MCA.

(ICE) International Contemporary Ensemble is in the second year of a three-year ensemble-in-residence at MCA Stage. The organization was founded in 2001, and has established itself as one of the leading musical ensembles of its generation as well as one of the most innovative young arts organizations in the US. ICE has created a pioneering performer/presenter model that sets a bold new standard for the future of music in the 21st century. A champion of music by young composers, ICE has also given more than 400 world premieres by composers under the age of 35. They are artists-in-residence at the Mostly Mozart Festival of Lincoln Center in New York through 2013.

George Aperghis and the New Generation takes place on May 26 at 7:30 pm, at the MCA Stage, 220 East Chicago Avenue. Individual tickets are $28. Student tickets are $10 and subject to availability. MCA Box Office is at 312.397.4010 or www.mcachicago.org. One free museum admission is granted with an MCA Stage ticket stub, valid up to seven days after the performance.

See the first post in our Journal section for a discussion of the program for
the May 12 performance at La Monnaie de Munt.

Benoît Jacquemin for La Monnaie De Munt, MYMM
May 11 2012

As the new resident conductor of the Monnaie Symphony Orchestra, Ludovic Morlot will be entitled to a much longer interview in the next issue of MMM. In this interview he talks about two composers very dear to him, Beethoven and Schumann, who he has decided to include in the programme for his second full concert in charge of his new orchestra.

The Pastoral Symphony occupies a special place in Beethoven’s symphonies. What do you think of this work? How will you tackle it in order to avoid the clichés?

Beethoven’s Sixth Symphony is, without doubt, along with the Ninth, the most difficult work in the composer’s symphonic repertoire. It is conceived with a romantic form but requires the discipline of a classical interpretation. It has to be, I think, approached like a piece of chamber music with special attention paid to the smallest details of phrasing, articulation, nuance. Nothing can be left to chance in order to be able to add that final touch of magic which makes it so special. As for the clichés maybe we can avoid them by exaggerating them! We know that each of the movements is intended to awaken our feelings and moods by evoking rather than describing the countryside scenes. The storm in the fourth movement makes us feel the emotions only if each of the gestures is exaggerated and, therefore, it inevitably belongs in the world of cliché. It is the same thing with the bird song at the end of Scene at the brook and the Country dancing in the scherzo.

The classic orchestra of the Pastoral is treated with new colours. Does this entail adopting a different attitude to the orchestra? Does the form require a special approach?

The kettle drums only appear after 25 minutes of music, likewise the trombones and the piccolo. This speaks volumes about the world of sound into which Beethoven invites us. Even more than in his other symphonies the first seconds of each of the movements must offer the listener the colours and the energy necessary for him to abandon himself to his different emotions. As to the form, that is the mark of genius in Beethoven. The dancing interrupted by the storm is a romantic gesture par excellence. The finale is the most difficult movement as it remains harmonically very static and in it we have to find the nuances and the most exact phrasing.

Die Weihe des Hauses is not the best known or the most played of Beethoven’s overtures: why did you choose it?

Exactly for that reason! It is a magnificent overture. It predates the composing of the Ninth Symphony and comes just after the Missa Solemnis. Listening to it we witness Beethoven’s incredible contrapuntal writing. Composed for the opening of Vienna’s Theater in der Josefstadt in 1822, it is a celebratory piece which seems appropriate to my new role as resident conductor at the Monnaie. Just for the record, I started my first season as musical director of the Seattle Symphony Orchestra with this same overture.

We often talk of Schumann’s ‘awkwardness’ in his orchestral writing. His Concerto for Violin is not a very popular work: are you aware of that and, if so, in what way?

I love Schumann’s music with a passion and it is true that his Concerto for Violin remains one of his least popular works, perhaps because it is rarely played. I hope, with the help of Thomas Zehetmair and the orchestra, to stir up the Brussels’ audience and convert them to this magnificent work. It’s true that it is more uneven than the concertos for piano and cello but, in spite of that, it’s very moving. I wouldn’t call Schumann’s orchestral writing ‘awkward’. He often writes a sole nuance for the whole orchestra or again a succession of semi-quavers with no break. We can improve the transparency of the orchestra by editing the nuances for each part, inserting phrasings in the middle of the progression of semi-quavers, etc. That is why, rather like Beethoven’s Sixth Symphony, you have to interpret his orchestral music in the way you would chamber music or a piece of music for voice.

Have you already come across Thomas Zehetmair at other concerts? How do you work together on a piece like Schumann’s Concerto?

This will be our first collaboration and I am thrilled to share a stage with this extraordinary artist. The work with a soloist follows the same pattern as for any kind of repertoire: exchange of ideas, listening to each other in order to arrive at a coherent reading of the work which is both aesthetically and emotionally satisfying to us both.

How’s it going with the Monnaie’s Symphony Orchestra? Does a programme like this help to create common ground between the conductor and the orchestra?

There is a huge amount of enthusiasm but also a strong feeling of responsibility. I can’t wait to work with the Monnaie Orchestra again after our marvellous collaboration last year in the Mozart, Dutilleux and Britten concert. This concert programme is ideal as it requires great attention to detail. We are taking a risk: it would have been easier to give a passionate rendition of a work by Tchaikovsky or Mahler. But I want to build something long term with the Orchestra. The process of mutual understanding between a conductor and an orchestra is like any meeting between two individuals: you have to be ready to listen to each other in order to establish a common ground which can be used to build a common artistic vision. This programme offers us that opportunity.

Rosa Sanz en ABC.es
Día 07/05/2012 – 12.23h

OSCyL Ludovic Morlot, dtor invitado; S. Osborne, piano; Cynthia Millar, ondas Martenot; Programa: «Turangalila» (O. Messiaen); Valladolid, Auditorio;3-05-2012

Messiaen estrenó «Turangalila» («Sinfonía para piano solo, ondas Martenot y gran orquesta») en 1949. No era la primera vez que el compositor francés recurría a un instrumento novedoso como las ondas Martenot; ya lo había hecho en obras como «Trois petites liturgies de la Présence Divine» (1944), «Deux monodies en quarts de ton» (1938) o la «Fête des belles eaux». Esta última pieza, que incluía un conjunto de seis ejemplares del instrumento electrónico, se interpretó en la Exposición Internacional de París de 1937, en la que curiosamente también se presentó la primera orquesta de ondas musicales Martenot. Evidentemente para un músico como Messiaen, profesor de armonía y composición en el Conservatorio de París, esta especie de primer sintetizador encerraba extraordinarias posibilidades que ilustraban bien algunas de sus novedosas teorías expuestas en su tratado «Técnica de mi lenguaje musical». Su peculiar espectro sonoro remite tanto a arcanos remotos como a espacios utópicos.

«Turangalila» sigue constituyendo hoy día uno de los paradigmas de la música contemporánea con sus imaginativas combinaciones tímbricas, su original entramado armónico, sus texturas sorprendentes y sus dinámicas cambiantes sometidas a continuas permutaciones rítmicas. La monumentalidad de esta sinfonía (duración, efectivo instrumental, exigencias técnicas) hace que se programe de forma esporádica en las temporadas de conciertos. De hecho nuestra Orquesta Sinfónica la ha abordado por primera vez en la doble sesión de abono de esta semana, bajo la dirección de Ludovic Morlot y la intervención de Cinthia Millar a las ondas Martenot y Steven Osborne al piano. Morlot ha realizado una ejecución brillante y vigorosa, consiguiendo transmitir a través de las contrastantes capas sonoras de la partitura (pasajes violentos e inquietantes seguidos de otros calmos y seductores) el mundo visionario, perturbador y desbordante de Olivier Messiaen en este canto al amor, la muerte y la vida. Extraordinario el pianismo de Osborne, poderoso y frenético (según requiere la obra), y la precisa interpretación de Millar.

ResMusica par Jean-Christophe Le Toquin
Le 2 mai 2012

L’année 2012 voit Ludovic Morlot accéder à ses deux premiers postes de Directeur Musical, l’un à la tête d’un orchestre avec le Seattle Symphony pour la saison 2011-2012 et l’autre à la tête d’une maison d’opéra avec la Monnaie de Bruxelles pour la saison 2012-2013. « Ludovic Morlot, a new era » clament des bannières dans les rues encerclant le bâtiment, allusion non voilée à la fin du très long mandat de son prédécesseur Gerard Schwarz, entamé en 1983. ResMusica a rencontré le jeune chef dans son bureau du Benaroya Hall, belle salle de 2500 places qui abrite le Seattle Symphony depuis 1998, pour découvrir comment se vit la musique classique au nord de la côte Pacifique.

ResMusica : Vous êtes désormais le double Directeur musical à Seattle et à Bruxelles, 2012 est l’année de la consécration ?
Ludovic Morlot : Après Boston où j’étais assistant de Seiji Ozawa et James Levine, j’ai passé beaucoup de temps sur la route, pendant trois ans ; ces nominations se sont construites sur l’énergie.

RM : Tout arrive en même temps ou est-ce une coïncidence ?
LM : L’un a pu précipiter l’autre. Je voulais trouver le projet avec le potentiel le plus intéressant. Le choix qu’a fait la Monnaie a pu être influencé par ma nomination à Seattle, mais ce sont des fonctions très différentes.

RM : Est-ce qu’un mandat ne va pas prendre le pas sur l’autre ?
LM : Ca va être intense, mais c’est mon idéal de pouvoir m’imposer un régime orchestral et d’opéra. En termes de calendrier, on a dû faire des modifications, mais je n’assure que deux productions à la Monnaie, ce n’était donc pas très compliqué.

RM : Comment un Français parvient-il à convaincre un orchestre américain de le choisir comme Directeur Musical ?
LM : Depuis l’annonce du départ de Gerard Schwarz, tous les chefs invités étaient des candidats potentiels. J’étais observé, il y a eu beaucoup de rencontres avec moi et avec d’autres chefs. En avril 2010, je devais remplacer Roberto Abbado. C’était durant l’éruption du volcan islandais, il n’y avait plus d’avion ! J’ai réussi finalement à arriver la veille du concert. Les répétitions ont eu lieu toute la journée, ça a créé beaucoup d’énergie, un coup de cœur.

RM : Les bannières autour du Benaroya Hall saluent votre arrivée par « Ludovic Morlot, A new era », c’est-à-dire « Une nouvelle ère ». Le slogan de votre prochaine saison est « Listen boldly », c’est un appel à « écouter avec audace ». Qu’allez-vous apporter de nouveau ?
LM : Il faut créer une dynamique de concert, il s’agit que le concert soit une histoire, pour l’auditeur il faut ouvrir son cœur, et qu’il sache qu’arriver avec zéro connaissance est OK. Dans notre programme j’essaie de créer un maximum d’opportunités pour un premier contact du public avec l’expérience symphonique « live », en concert, parce qu’il s’y crée une rencontre. Plus qu’une question de répertoire, créer ce premier contact est pour moi comme une mission, pour que se crée un souvenir qui fera que ceux qui ont vécu un concert y reviendront, même dans 20 ou 30 ans. C’est toute ma philosophie derrière la création de tous les types de programmes.

RM : Qu’entendez-vous par là ?
LM : Par exemple, la série de concerts Sonic Evolution est un projet qui s’inscrit dans l’histoire musicale de Seattle, et vise à ouvrir des fenêtres pour expérimenter dans la salle de concert symphonique le son d’autres musiques que celui de la musique classique. On prend des musiques qui font partie de la légende de Seattle, de Jimi Hendrix à Nirvana en passant par Quincy Jones, et elles sont transposées à l’orchestre par des compositeurs locaux ou nationaux. On joue ces musiques avec d’autres œuvres de compositeurs internationaux. En octobre prochain, on reprendra des compositions d’Alice in Chains, Blue Scholars et Yes. Cela fait partie de ma mission de créer des musiques qui traversent les barrières.

RM : C’est un programme assez éloigné de la musique classique…
LM : Pour les mélomanes citadins et pressés, nous avons la série Untuxed, qui est une formule décontractée avec un concert plus court, uniquement les vendredi soirs, qui commence à 19H00 et n’a pas d’entracte.
Au sein du festival d’art et de musique Bumbershoot, nous avons une autre formule : on place un court concert dont le répertoire va de Vivaldi à Philip Glass, avec une création pour basson électrique solo, un quatuor de Glass, et une pièce pour basson où le musicien engage une conversation avec le public pendant qu’il joue. Plus on peut être versatile, le mieux c’est pour élargir le public.

RM : Es-ce que cela laisse de la place à la musique contemporaine ?
LM : Untitled est une série de musique contemporaine jouée dans le hall d’entrée à 22H00, les mêmes soirs que les concerts Untuxed. La prochaine saison on jouera Xenakis, Feldman, Ligeti, Cage, mais aussi de jeunes compositeurs.

RM : Comment faites-vous venir le public à la musique contemporaine ?
LM : On commence avec trois concerts pour la saison, et ce sont en fait des groupes de rock qui nous servent de locomotives ! C’est l’élément social qui compte, quand on dit « Listen boldly », c’est aussi pour dire qu’il faut du courage pour écouter son premier Mozart.

RM : La musique contemporaine est finalement plus accessible pour les jeunes publics !
LM : Mozart attire une autre communauté de mélomanes.

RM : Et vous avez des programmes éducatifs ou pédagogiques ?
LM : On propose la série de concerts multimédia « Beyond the Score » dont le concept a été créé par le Chicago Symphony Orchestra. On propose trois concerts la saison prochaine, autour de la Symphonie n°4 de Mahler, les Variations Enigma d’Elgar et la Symphonie n°5 de Beethoven. En première partie, l’histoire et le contexte de l’œuvre sont présentés par un comédien et des acteurs avec des illustrations par des images, et l’œuvre est jouée en seconde partie, comme un concert habituel. Je ne suis pas favorable à la diffusion d’images mais c’est un enrichissement pour l’appréciation d’une œuvre musicale.
Et nous avons une série de cinq concerts familiaux et pour les écoles, où nous traiterons la mélodie, le rythme, l’harmonie ou encore la narration sur la musique. J’en dirigerai trois et j’en écris les scripts. J’aime bien le faire moi-même, j’ai des enfants en bas âge.
Nous avons aussi un atelier pour les jeunes compositeurs, et le compositeur Samuel Jones qui a été en résidence avec notre orchestre a écrit une chanson qui est devenue très populaire, on la joue au début et à la fin de chaque concert familial !

RM : Amenez-vous une touche française dans la programmation ?
LM : Oui, j’ai commencé un cycle Dutilleux, c’était la première fois que l’orchestre jouait sa musique. C’était une des demandes du public. On donnera aussi la Turangalîla-Symphonie, pour la première fois, c’est une mission et une urgence. Gerard Schwarz avait mis un énorme focus sur Mahler et Chostakovitch, j’ai prévu de jouer Dusapin, on jouera Xenakis à la prochaine saison, j’aimerais faire Boulez, Aperghis, Dalbavie, et aussi Chabrier. On a donné Amériques de Varèse et on fera Déserts dans deux ans. J’aime préparer et répéter. Faire deux pièces de Dutilleux ne suffit pas, il faut répéter, rejouer les mêmes œuvres.

RM : Et parmi les compositeurs américains ?
LM : Aussi, je veux faire jouer Charles Ives, Elliott Carter, Lou Harrison…

RM : Vous vous êtes installés avec votre femme et vos enfants à Seattle. C’est un choix politique, un signal envoyé à la ville et au public ?
LM : Pour se mêler à la communauté, c’est ce qu’on peut faire de mieux. Récolter des fonds est capital pour l’orchestre, et pour cela il faut que le chef soit le visage de l’orchestre.

RM : La construction d’une programmation qui touche différents publics, la levée de fonds, vous imaginiez faire votre métier de chef d’orchestre comme cela ?
LM : Mes mentors Ozawa et Levine ont grandi à une époque où le focus était sur la musique, et où on pouvait faire carrière avec Brahms et Mozart, trois violonistes et deux pianistes. Oui, je suis surpris par tous les projets qu’il faut mener comme directeur musical aujourd’hui, mais plus on y passe de temps, et plus c’est intéressant !

Bernard Jacobson for Seen and Heard International
United States Schubert, Janáček, and Brahms Jennifer Koh, (violin), Seattle Symphony, Ludovic Morlot (conductor), Benaroya Hall, Seattle, 24.3.2012 (BJ)

It was just the other day, reviewing Ludovic Morlot’s recent French program with the Seattle Symphony, that I was expressing the view that “a little more of the flexible pulse exhibited throughout this concert would be beneficial to Morlot’s performances of the Viennese classics, where, for all their concentration of form, flexibility is no less appropriate.” Well, the performances that began and ended his concert on 24 March delivered amply in that regard.

It might, indeed, have been possible to feel that in three orchestral numbers and three rarely heard choruses from Schubert’s incidental music to Rosamunde flexibility was carried to a degree of excess–but I most emphatically didn’t feel that way. It all sounded quite fine, especially the sensitively tuneful Entr’acte–the one with the tune Schubert soon recycled for the slow movement of his A-minor String Quartet–in which the orchestra produced some caressing sonorities and some telling rhythmic punctuation under the conductor’s increasingly assured and instinctive leadership.

In the Brahms Violin Concerto the conductor’s job is not so much to lead as to follow. Here we were presented with a soloist in the young Jennifer Koh (whom I had not previously heard) with a cast-iron technique but also, more importantly, with a strong sense of music’s meaning. In his book Piano Pieces, the great American pianist Russell Sherman insists as one of his cardinal principles that, if you are not prepared to take risks, there is no point in performing music. Ms. Koh took every risk in the book, and made almost all of them pay off richly. Occasionally, her treatment of the big multiple-stopped passages was perhaps a bit over-fierce–but she managed to integrate them firmly into her conception of the work, and my goodness, how divinely and uncompromisingly she stretched and cosseted the high-lying lyrical passages in which Brahms explores the implications of his superb main themes!

Certainly this was not the kind of interpretation that would appeal to devotees of metronomic regularity of pulse; but there is scant reason to believe that any of the great Viennese classical composers were numbered among such devotees, and a great deal of evidence from the period to the contrary. Morlot fulfilled his role of accompanying partner faithfully, which, given the sheer heft of his soloist’s playing, explains why this was not the most refined account of the work’s orchestral part I have ever heard. It certainly was among the most exciting ones, distinguished by zestful and disciplined tutti work and by some magical solos, including Ben Hausmann’s beautiful shaping of the slow movement’s theme. The only tiny lack I felt was of sufficient emphasis on the short drum-roll that underpins a couple of transitional measures in the first movement. By contrast, the double-basses’ insistent repeated-note triplets near the end of the movement’s development section were unusually clearly and effectively balanced. Ms. Koh’s cadenza, by the way, was a blend of material from Kreisler’s with ideas of her own; it was stylistically apt enough, but perhaps a little too much of a good thing.

Combining Schubert on a program with Brahms, the man who was to be one of his most devoted admirers and the co-editor with Mandyczewski of his collected works, is an excellent idea. Between the two, suitable contrast was provided by Janáček’s stirring three-movement tone poem Taras Bulba. This is one of the greatest works of a composer who is still not as well known as he deserves to be: an intensely dramatic musical evocation of a story of heroism and tragedy, set in the days when war was much more a matter of individual heroism than it is in these mechanized days. Scored with sumptuous beauty, with soaring strings and ripely romantic textures, it was played with total conviction. Brasses and woodwinds made their contributions highly effective. There was an accomplished violin solo from the week’s concertmaster, Emma McGrath, and a firm handling (and presumably pedaling) by Joseph Adam of the organ part that adds spine-tingling power to the piece at climactic moments.

Melinda Bargreen, Special to the Seattle Times
March 17, 2012

Over the years, it has been highly enjoyable to watch the evolution of Renée Fleming from ingénue soprano to opera star to iconic diva. While her career has taken a consistently upward trajectory, she has never lost the knack of surprising and delighting her audiences — as she did in Friday night’s recital at Benaroya Hall with the Seattle Symphony and its music director, Ludovic Morlot.

Most opera divas don’t pick up the microphone in mid-concert and sing indie-rock songs from the repertoire of Death Cab for Cutie and Muse. Most divas don’t include new works (like the eloquent “We Hold These Truths,” by Todd Frazier) among the familiar bonbons (“O Mio Babbino Caro”) in the encore lineup. But then Fleming always has been a singer who does it her way: singing the blues as well as art songs, and bypassing a lot of the usual Verdi and Puccini roles in order to star in operas by Tchaikovsky and Carlisle Floyd.

At 53, Fleming is in the late-career phase, but there was little to suggest this in her Seattle recital — from her appearance, dazzling in two spectacular diva gowns, to the creamy warmth of her expressive soprano. As she always does, before she even started to sing, Fleming somehow drew the audience toward her just by standing there and smiling, and she enhanced that communication Friday evening with informal commentary from the stage. Introducing Gounod’s famous “Jewel Song” (from “Faust”), Fleming quipped that “This song is about seduction by jewelry… it never worked for me.”

What did work for her, vocally at least, was an expressive and sensuous account of Ravel’s “Shéhérazade,” in perfect sync with Morlot and the orchestra; a fervent reading of the “Jewel Song” from “Faust” and an exquisite performance of the “Vilja Song” from “The Merry Widow.” For this listener, the evening’s big surprise was hearing Fleming’s heartfelt, lovely “Marietta’s Lied” (from Korngold’s “Die Tote Stadt”). Her first encore, “Io son l’umile ancella” (from Cilea’s “Adriana Lecouvreur”) was eloquently presented.

Less convincing were the miked selections; symphonic versions of rock are seldom successful, and Fleming’s voice (even amplified) was hard to hear in that low register.

Morlot and the orchestra provided spirited overtures (to Gershwin’s “Girl Crazy” and Offenbach’s “Orpheus in the Underworld”), as well as a lively “Bacchanale” from Saint-Saëns’ “Samson and Delilah.” It was Fleming’s first collaboration with Morlot; the cheering audience was clearly hoping it will be the first of many.

Bernard Jacobsen for Seen and Heard International
United States: Debussy, Dutilleux, Martinů, and Ravel: Xavier Phillips (cello), Seattle Symphony, Ludovic Morlot (conductor), Benaroya Hall, Seattle, 15.3.2012 (BJ)March 17, 2012

This well-designed program was devoted exclusively to one side of the two-branched stream that has constituted Western music history through the past century and more. There is the Germanic side, which focuses primarily though not of course exclusively on structure. And Ludovic Morlot on this occasion flew the French flag, under which color trumps form, in offering four works by composers who either are or were French or, in Martinů’s case, chose the French side by virtue of stylistic sympathy and long Parisian domicile.

The program itself amply demonstrated how wide a range of musical manner and content is embraced within the confines of the term “Gallic”: we were treated to sybaritic sensuality in Debussy’s Prélude à L’Après-midi d’un faune, quicksilver delicacy leavened with momentary bolts of lightning in Dutilleux’s Tout un monde lointain, ballroom gaiety shading into the violent disintegration of a world in Ravel’s La Valse, and, in Martinů’s Les Fresques de Piero della Francesca, what might well be called a “teeming canvas” of alternating radiance and dark power, despite the fact that canvas is not what frescoes are painted on.

And so far as the performances are concerned, what the concert most strikingly demonstrated was that Morlot is well on the way to making the Seattle Symphony emphatically his orchestra. Seven months into his tenure as music director, he has, like an expert driver, mastered the controls, and can handle them without needing a sideways glance to see where they are; and the musicians, for their part, are beginning to respond to his demands in a manner not prescribed by tradition or artistic precedent but direct and instinctive.

La Valse, with its nostalgic yet acerbic celebration of the luxury-loving Viennese waltz-culture that was soon to be no more, showed clearly how personal Morlot’s interpretations can be. By comparison with the stunning performance of the work that JoAnn Falletta conducted as a guest a couple of years ago, Morlot chose to emphasize not so much the internal continuity of the music but more the recurring disruptions that presage the death of a civilization—and it was, as much as anything else, the instantaneous orchestral response to his sudden explosive gestures that bore witness to his growing control.

Speaking of control, I might have said that his direction of the Debussy piece indulged in rather more subdivision of the beat than was really necessary, except that his differentiation between contrasted units of pulse served to reinforce the richness of the sonic conception in preference to any supposedly Gallic lightness of texture.

Now 96, Henri Dutilleux writes the kind of music many composers think they are creating. It enacts the same processes lesser men try to enact. But it does so without any dogma, and with the focus and intensity that can come only from the working of a resourceful mind and an uncommonly expert ear. It may be that what until recent years impeded Dutilleux’s popularity at the international level was the sheer independence of his musical thought. Globe-trotting arbiters of taste tend to shy away from what they cannot readily pigeonhole. And just as in politics non-aligned nations often find themselves left not merely alone but lonely, so Dutilleux’s resolute avoidance of stylistic schools and factions tended to alienate those whose minds—like the blasphemous young man in the limerick—move in predestinate grooves. The theorist’s loss is, happily, the ordinary listener’s gain. Not only is Dutilleux’s music essentially unlike anyone else’s. It is also consistently well-written, shapely, and, in one word, beautiful; Tout un monde lointain, moreover, is one of his most beautiful works, and a considerably stronger one in my opinion than the corresponding work for violin and orchestra, L’Arbre des songes, that Morlot conducted at the beginning of the season.

Given the composer’s insistence, in interviews about his artistic method, on his “careful avoidance of prefabricated formal scaffolding,” it’s a pity that the presentation of a work like Tout un monde lointain (“A whole far-off world”) is often, as in the Seattle Symphony’s program book, saddled with the label “Cello Concerto”—a term that appears nowhere in Dutilleux’s score, whose title and movement-heading quotations are taken from the poetry of Baudelaire. Nevertheless, the solo writing certainly calls for a cellist with not only the musicianship but the technique to tackle concerto-like challenges, and Xavier Phillips has an ample supply of what it takes. As in his Dvořák performance here back in 2008, he drew wonderfully warm and powerful tone from his 1710 Matteo Gofriller instrument. He threw off every last spurt of pyrotechnics and cosseted every tender moment with equally impressive command, and the orchestra supported him brilliantly. (I think, by the way, that a little more of the flexible pulse exhibited throughout this concert would be beneficial to Morlot’s performances of the Viennese classics, where, for all their concentration of form, flexibility is no less appropriate.)

The other relatively unfamiliar work on the program was Martinů’s set of three pieces inspired by Piero della Francesca’s Arezzo frescoes. Using a big screen above the platform, Morlot helpfully had Piero’s paintings displayed, and explicated them, before (with the screen sensibly retracted) beginning the performance, which was excellent. In a work whose visual inspiration led the composer to a more demonstratively romantic vein of expression than his familiar somewhat neoclassical manner, the conductor gave full value to each shifting mood, from the heady exaltation of the first movement, to the intermittently dramatic, even threatening, but ultimately peaceful gestures of the other two.

The orchestra, again, provided sumptuous sounds in ensemble, and there were some superb solos, including a particularly hectic one for viola that Susan Gulkis Assadi tackled with uncompromising aplomb and skill. Morlot clearly has a strong sympathy for Martinů’s too often underrated music, so it is good news that one of his first programs next season will include what is probably the composer’s greatest symphony, No. 6, the Fantaisies symphoniques.

Philippa Kiraly, Special to the Seattle Times
March 16, 2012

Seattle Symphony music director Ludovic Morlot is back for a couple of weeks, and then he’s gone until June. Next year we will have him for more concerts, and, to judge by the pleasure in his presence taken by orchestra and audience Thursday night, that is good news.

Most of Thursday’s Masterworks series concert at Benaroya Hall was French, in keeping with Morlot’s comment at the start of the year that he expected to bring more of his countrymen’s music to audiences.

Two very different works were familiar to many: Debussy’s “Prélude à l’après-midi d’un faune” (“Prelude to the Afternoon of a Faun”), which opened the program, and Ravel’s “La Valse,” which ended it. In between came two much less familiar pieces: Bohemian composer Bohuslav Martinu’s “The Frescoes of Piero della Francesca” and Henri Dutilleux’s cello concerto, “Tout un monde lointain” (“A Whole Distant World”).

Guest cellist Xavier Phillips — also French — is considered by the 96-year-old Dutilleux to be the quintessential performer of his concerto, and he made an appealing case for it.

The soloist never stops from first note to last in the concerto’s 27 minutes, which is played without a break between the five movements. Written between 1968-70, the piece puts the soloist out front and center, not intermingling much with the orchestra, which at times maintains an undercurrent of sound in slowly changing waves with blasts of brass. Phillips accomplished the technically challenging cello role with ease, from skittering plucked sections to a high, eerie melody in the second movement to doublestops (playing in two string at a time). Much of the work is dissonant, there is little that’s hummable, but it holds the interest with orchestral textures, harp and percussion accents and the ever-present cello soliloquizing above it all.

Morlot prefaced Martinu’s musical portrayal of three Arezzo frescoes with a short description of them, their images projected on a screen above the musicians. The music itself gives more of an impression of the first two frescoes but moves toward battle music in the last, with attendant marching and the disorganization of fighting in progress. Morlot’s affinity for this music, and the Ravel and Debussy, came through clearly in this concert, where all the works were portrayed to their best: alive and vibrant in their varied styles. (A special mention to the expressive flute playing of principal Demarre McGill in the Debussy.)

Audience and orchestra responded with gusto.

from Music in Cincinnati
February 25, 2012

Friday morning’s Cincinnati Symphony concert at Music Hall was a time to smell the flowers, February or not.

Guest conductor Ludovic Morlot led a program comprising Beethoven’s “Pastoral” Symphony (No. 6), a CSO premiere by Franz Liszt and Schumann’s Piano Concerto in A Minor. Making his CSO debut in the Schumann was American pianist Jonathan Biss (a “neighbor,” you might say, having been born in Bloomington, Indiana).

Biss is superbly musical and with technique to match, but for this young man (31), the music is first and foremost. He demonstrated this in the Schumann, which had a warmth and artistic integrity that engaged and touched all within hearing (including a number of young piano students brought to Music Hall to hear him).

Biss is from a musical family (his parents are violinists Miriam Fried and Paul Biss, his grandmother was cellist Raya Garbousova, for whom Samuel Barber wrote his Cello Concerto) and nature and nurture shine through his playing. The first movement of the Schumann Concerto, Allegro affetuoso (tender), was warm but never gushy, with a beautifully rendered cadenza. The Andante grazioso was appropriately winsome, followed without a break by a bright, outgoing finale (Allegro vivace). Morlot kept the CSO closely in sync with Biss and the performance won an enthusiastic response from the audience.

Beethoven’s “Pastoral” Symphony is one of his most popular. Filled with tone painting, it anticipated the programmatic music of Liszt, Richard Strauss, etc. Morlot, 37, a native of France in his first season as music director of the Seattle Symphony – and an extremely popular one, reference the New York Times of January 27 — led a welcome reading of the familiar work, one that was designed to please and inspire the audience.

The opening “Arriving in the Country” (first movement) was filled with charm, as was the “Scene by the Brook,” taken in a brisk, flowing tempo, with every ripple and rivulet audible. The “Jolly Gathering of Country Folk” flashed smiles and the “Thunderstorm,” underlined by principal timpanist Patrick Schleker, tossed thunderbolts. The “Shepherd’s Hymn” (thanksgiving after the storm), crowning movement of the Symphony, ended the concert on a triumphant note.

Still, playing by the CSO was strangely uneven, with occasional faulty ensemble in the strings and some gaffes in the brass. Stars of the performance were the CSO winds, including flutist Randolph Bowman, oboist Dwight Parry, clarinetist Jonathan Gunn and bassoonist William Winstead, who lit up the work with their solos. The “aviary” in “Scene by the Brook,” with bird calls by Bowman, Parry and Gunn, was completely disarming.

The concert opened with a fine exposition of Liszt’s “From the Cradle to the Grave,” last of the composer’s 13 tone poems. Its three movements, “The Cradle,” “The Struggle for Life” and “To the Grave: The Cradle of Future Life,” deal with the three stages of life. “The Cradle,” a lullaby-like movement for muted upper strings, flutes and harp, began with a soft, caressing melody by the violas — who, by the way, covered themselves with glory throughout the concert, belying the customary, wickedly humorous denigration of the violin’s larger relative. The agitation of the second movement transitioned into the inconclusive, but optimistic finale, which took the audience somewhat by surprise.

Morlot conducts with precise, fluid gestures and communicates easily through his facial expressions (the latter less obvious to the audience in over-sized Music Hall). Though he would make a fine candidate for CSO music director (unfilled since the departure of Paavo Järvi at the end of last season), Seattle is both wild about him and offering him significant programming opportunities.