The quicksilver of Saint-Saëns and the gold of Ravel with Les Siècles in Tourcoing

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Tourcoing. Raymond Devos Municipal Theater. 07-11-2024. Camille Saint-Saëns (1835-1921): Danse macabre op.40, Cello Concerto No. 1 in A minor op.33. Maurice Ravel (1875-1937): Daphnis and Chloé, ballet. Sol Gabetta, cello and conductor of the Cello Concerto by Saint-Saëns. Les Siècles, direction: Ustina Dubitsky

A quicksilver Saint-Saëns and a solar Ravel (Daphnis and Chloe in its full version) were on the program of the concert given in Tourcoing by the Les Siècles orchestra conducted by Ustina Dubitsky, in the company of cellist Sol Gabetta.

François-Xavier Roth is no longer at the head of the Les Siècles orchestra that he founded, for the sad reasons that we know. But it was one of his most brilliant assistants who took the baton this Thursday evening in Tourcoing, to direct an exclusively French program of high quality. Winner of the La Maestra 2022 competition (Orchestra Prize), Ustina Dubitsky is also assistant conductor at the Güzernich in Cologne. She therefore knows Les Siècles perfectly and the specific qualities of this symphony orchestra playing on period instruments.

It is these particular colors, the warmth of the strings, the dullness of the winds and woodwinds, the dry brilliance of the percussion, excelling in the French repertoire, that we find this Thursday evening in Tourcoing in the concert dedicated to Camille Saint- Saens and Maurice Ravel.
Saint-Saëns is French “bon chic” in the best sense of the term. A master of grand classical form, orchestral flamboyance and eternal melody.
The very famous Danse macabre op. 40which opens the concert, is one of the composer’s “hits”. An irresistible sepulchral round which Ustina Dubitsky and Les Siècles seize with relish.

An ideal introduction to Cello Concerto No. 1 in A minor op.33 who succeeds him. The no less flamboyant cellist Sol Gabetta is the soloist of this splendid score which she conducts from her music stand. Played in one breath, this concerto is first and foremost an ode to the timbre of the cello. By turns angry, mischievous, tender, willful, the instrument is treated here like an opera singer. Sol Gabetta, with her warm sound and discreet vibrato, flows with ease into this role of “diva”, however without ostentation.

It is not surprising that she offers as an encore an adaptation for cello and orchestra of the famous tune “ My heart opens to your voice » from the opera Samson and Delilah by the same Saint-Saëns.

In the second part of the concert, Ustina Dubitsky takes over the baton for the ballet Daphnis and Chloe by Maurice Ravel, in its complete version of almost an hour. Composed between 1909 and 1912 for Diaghilev's Ballets Russes, Daphnis and Chloe is in fact more often played in its abbreviated version in two orchestral suites. “ My intention in writing it was to compose a vast musical fresco, less concerned with archaism than with fidelity to the Greece of my dreams » , wrote Maurice Ravel. And it is indeed an intoxicating score that this master of orchestration has in store for us. Behind the argument of the myth of Daphnis and Chloeand its symbolism, it must be admitted, is a little outdated, Maurice Ravel takes us into a succession of dazzling dances. Without the material vision of dancers on stage, the pure music of the ballet does not avoid some lengths, but as a great representative of descriptive music, Ravel also achieved a cinematic score before its time. We almost physically feel the light of the prodigious Daybreak (unfortunately without the chorus), we are splashed by the sea spray during the kidnapping of Chloé by the pirates (a passage where we perceive Ravel's admiration for the Scheherazade by Rimsky-Korsakov), we are overcome by the force of the final bacchanal.

Discreet but precise gesture, Ustina Dubitsky leads her troops with firmness. In the somewhat dry acoustics of the municipal theater of Tourcoing, this Daphnis and Chloe on period instrument takes us back to the creation of the work at the Théâtre du Chatelet in Paris in 1912. A beautiful journey through time.