Dissonances Chamber Music Series #1
Opéra de Dijon, 18th June 2020
They’re baby steps, but another country has reopened its concert halls to the public. In the heart of France, Opéra de Dijon is in the midst of a 36-programme streamed festival entitled Artistes en résidence, Artistes en résistance. But on Wednesday, a festival within this festival began, the Dissonances Chamber Music Series, curated by the violinist David Grimal (of Les Dissonances) and pianist Philippe Cassard. And it played to an audience for the first time since lockdown… not that you’d know it from this stream.
David Grimal, Philippe Cassard, Victor Julien-Laferrière © Gilles Abegg/ Opéra de Dijon
Each evening, Dijon admits 150 lucky punters for free, socially distanced in its auditorium, which can usually accommodate just over 1,600 people. You’d think this would be cause for celebration but, apart from a single cough heard during Debussy’s Cello Sonata, there were no detectable signs of any audience at all. Applause was edited out and the four works – two each by Ravel and Debussy – ran back to back with indecent haste. But this air-brushing out of the audience was my only quibble with a quite magnificent performance.
Cassard and Nelson Goerner opened with the four-hand piano suite Ma mère l’Oye (Mother Goose), played not just with meticulous attention to Ravel’s precision timing, but also with a wonderful feel for sonority. The Pavane de la Belle au bois dormant unfolded with touching simplicity, but it was the exotic Laideronnette, impératrice des pagodes, mostly evoked on the black keys, which really tickled the ear. Four hands intertwined, we were given lots of close-up footage, especially of Cassard’s glissandos which glittered at the end of Le jardin féerique.
Philippe Cassard and Nelson Goerner
Each pianist then took turns to accompany the two Debussy sonatas. Victor Julien-Laferrière brought the Cello Sonata leaping off the page. His lean, wiry tone and light touch made for an athletic interpretation, well matched by Goerner. Grimal’s muscular playing drew earthier colours from the Violin Sonata than we often hear, but Cassard’s luminous partnering offered the perfect foil, with a brief sense of reverie in the middle of the Intermède. The Finale was dispatched with élan, from Cassard’s cascading rivulets at the start to Grimal’s final flourish.
I sometimes think that the Piano Trio in A minor is my favourite Ravel work. Finished in August 1914, just as the Great War had broken out, there’s a nostalgic yearning about the opening, limpidly played here, which is most affecting. The playful Pantoum – a Scherzo based on a Malaysian verse form – skittered, with plenty of byplay between the players. Grimal and Julien-Laferrière were well matched in string tone in the Passacaille, the emotional heart of the work, while the finale, unsettling in Ravel’s choice of irregular time signatures, was brought to a close with a scintillating coda.
These streams are broadcast the evening after the concert. Sadly, only about 80 people were watching “live” on Opéra de Dijon’s Facebook and YouTube channels which, in theory, is fewer than the number of people in the hall. Spread the word.
Link to concert stream (I’ve no idea when this will expire as France Musique is set to broadcast the series in July and August)