Symphonyconcert05

Robert Schumann initially thought he was holding the score upside down, and was “puzzled, then appalled and finally astounding and admiring” about the risks taken by the “Symphonie fantastique”. Hector Berlioz produced a veritable scandal when he transformed the sublime genre of the symphony into the stage for his own personal drama of the soul. The mistress who spurned him wanders through the movements as a melodic “idée fixe” – the source of grotesque scenes. In the final witches’ sabbath, Schumann even thought he perceived the stink of sulphur. For Berlioz self-therapy in the hallowed halls of art, for listeners even today one of the most fantastic works of orchestral music. The press took to calling Steven Osborne “poet at the piano”, rhapsodising about his talent for combining brilliant technique and musical intelligence with a hypnotic play of timbres. This makes him a perfect interpreter of Ravel’s music. Ravel loved to present his works and himself in dazzling costumes – in the G major piano concerto, for instance, a nimble-footedness as in Mozart in the broken gaiety of jazzy stylistic elements à la Gershwin. In “Ma mère l’oye” Ravel becomes more concrete, telling his “old wives’ tales” en miniature as an homage to a child’s enchanted soul. Conducting the Gürzenich Orchestra: Louis Langrée, vaunted for alert interpretations, a storyteller with style and wit.