OBC Fleur Barron ★★★✩✩
Address: Ludovic Morlot. Place and date: L’Auditori ( 16/III/2024)
An important concert by the OBC that celebrates together with L'Auditori the 25 years of the house, directed by its owner and with the magnificent participation of the mezzo Fleur Barron, who gave a profound and subtle version of the three poems of Sherérézade by Ravel and he dazzled with his diction, sensitivity and understanding of character in Montsalvatge's Five Black Songs, a work of brilliant orchestration – Montsalvatge was an admirer of Ravel – intense, with delicacy of nuances and an expressive force that orchestra and director knew how to understand.
Mr. Morlot conscientiously worked on the interiority of language also in Ravel's works, which marked the profile of the program proposed by the high-level orientalism of Shehérezade's three poems, far from the superficial landscaping of some works of his time; The apparent simplicity and expressive intensity of the Pavane for a Deceased Infanta and Suite No. 2 by Daphnis i Chloé closed the concert with ovations from a small but enthusiastic audience. Musical ingredients that make up a sensitive profile, and he would say that an area that suits the Barcelona orchestra and also its current director very well.
I would not be able to define why the OBC tunes in to this repertoire that some are wrong to call impressionist, but there are communicating vessels between the cultural splendor of Ravel's Paris and modernist Barcelona, and a coincidence in the human and with the presence there of personalities such as Albéniz and Falla, or especially Ricard Viñes, friend of Ravel.
Morlot's orchestral work is detailed in the scores, excellent, subtle in his accompaniment in Shehérezade, brilliant following the main guideline of Daphnis, in which two orchestras are seen, the one committed to the soloists and good winds, and the not so much of the interior string rests, especially violas. Deficiencies in the direction in the integral conception of the Pavan – which requires notable differences in intensity (not volume) – and, despite the brightness, lack of depth in Daphnis.
Watch out for the premiere of The constellations that shine brightest by Raquel García-Tomás, a good exercise in composition, subtle in the formation of hollow sounds (not empty), but landscape and more for the cinema than for the concert.
