The viewers assembled this previous Friday, Nov. 8, for “Paris Impressions,” the second live performance within the Illinois Symphony Orchestra’s new season, was handled to an audacious and vibrant time capsule of early twentieth century Paris. Visitor conductor Alastair Willis, who served as music director of ISO from 2012-2015, offered an interesting and thrilling night of music that was removed from the staid fare one may usually think about when anticipating an evening of orchestral music. Friday’s live performance supplied each whimsical and poignant theatricality. This was alongside fiery and lilting passionately carried out music.
The live performance started with Maestro Willis getting into the UIS Performing Arts stage with a small, cafe-style desk, full with champagne glasses, arrange stage left in entrance of the ISO musicians. When Willis started talking with a French accent (one thing he doesn’t usually have) and launched himself as “Jean-Luc Baton,” it was clear this was to be no common night. He rapidly set the scene of late Eighties Paris from the perspective of fictional conductor Baton (get it?), achieved with the assistance of minimal however efficient photographs and title playing cards projected on an overhead display screen.
The primary time Willis moved seamlessly from his function as vaudeville-style narrator to conducting the orchestra, the ability of this system was revealed. The irony of opening the musical program with a finale (from César Franck’s Symphony in D minor) was obscured by the sudden, palpable energy and pleasure of the music. This was a reminder of how persistently engaged and energized the musicians of this orchestra had been throughout Willis’ 4 seasons as music director. This power solely elevated because the night progressed its historic narrative by the Parisian fin-de-siécle cultural scene.
The story was largely superior by Willis/Baton’s interactions with Bloomington-based actor Robert Mangialardi, performing with appeal and humor in character as real-life Paris impresario Serge Diaghilev, who was inventive director of the Ballets Russes, the legendary ballet firm that was on the reducing fringe of music and choreography through the early twentieth century. The corporate and Diaghilev are sometimes remembered for controversial collaborations with composer Igor Stravinsky, notably the 1913 premier of “The Ceremony of Spring” which brought on such excessive reactions that the viewers famously broke right into a riot. Stravinsky’s usually dissonant music of this era is taken into account revolutionary, however is usually troublesome to understand for contemporary audiences raised on the historically melodic charms of the classical canon. Willis’s program ingeniously positioned this difficult music within the context of the involving story of Ballets Russes and its relation to Stravinsky’s growth. This created an area the place the ISO’s impressed efficiency of the “Infernal Dance” from 1910’s “The Firebird” (in methods extra redolent of utmost jazz and even dying steel than typical classical music) was in a position to be appreciated by Friday’s viewers in ways in which would have been unlikely in any other case.
The primary act – which additionally included a memorable efficiency of the erotically charged prelude of Debussy’s 1894 ballet “Afternoon of a Faun” – concluded with the dramatically efficient however considerably disturbing piped-in sound results of air raid sirens, symbolizing the onset of World Battle I. The musicians of the orchestra filed off the stage in a seeming daze, as if vacating the premises in an precise emergency.
The somber impact was sustained solely briefly after intermission, as Willis returned to the stage as Baton in an extended darkish coat, trying like a refugee. Telling of how the Nice Battle introduced the Paris arts scene to a standstill, the maestro/narrator rapidly transitioned into the post-war blooming of a nation able to occasion after an prolonged interval of problem. Whipping off his coat to disclose a handy guide a rough tuxedo, Willis shocked the viewers as soon as once more by singing the chronologically incorrect however in any other case apropos “The Night time They Invented Champagne” from the hit 1958 musical Gigi (set in post-WWI Paris), with bouncy accompaniment from the orchestra. Spirits continued to rise, with Mangialardi’s Diaghilev becoming a member of Willis to bounce a humorously impromptu can-can.
The second act’s revue-style survey of music of the interval continued with spirited renditions of works by Ibert (“Divertissement,” 1930), Milhaud (“Le Boeuf sur le Toit,” 1920) and Poulenc (“Les Biches,” 1924), showcasing the ways in which Parisian artwork and music moved away from discordant, avant-garde work to extra conventional qualities of magnificence and pleasure. The story and the live performance ended with the orchestra’s ravishing, luxurious model of Ravel’s “Les Valse” (1920), a ballet rating commissioned for the Ballets Russes however by no means produced as a result of Diaghilev reportedly discovered the music so lovely as to threaten to overwhelm any choreography that is likely to be paired with it.
Maestro Willis conceived of “Paris Impressions” and has carried out it with a number of completely different orchestras over the previous 20 years. The idiosyncratic piece brilliantly opens a window into the world of historical past and personalities behind the music. On Friday it supplied a totally satisfying and surprising night time of complete leisure for concertgoers and units excessive expectations for the rest of latest music director Taichi Fukumura’s debut season, which can proceed with “Vacation Pops within the Heartland” on Friday, Dec. 13, and “Spectacle of Mild” on Friday, Jan 17.
Scott Faingold is a journalist, educator and musician. He has been an teacher at College of Illinois Springfield, founding editor of Activator journal, a employees reporter for Illinois Occasions and co-host of Previous Faculty Bleep, a music-centered podcast. He may be reached at [email protected]
