RPO Rehearsal of An Evening in Paris

One of the benefits of donating to the RPO at a nominal level is the invitation to attend select Open Rehearsals.  In the past, I’ve tried to attend rehearsals for concerts I did not have tickets to, but this season the timing didn’t work, so the two I chose were for An Evening in Paris, to which I took my friend Linda, and one coming up in May, for Holst’s The Planets.  (Although I won’t actually be able to sit in the audience for that concert, because my choral group, Concentus, is singing the “Neptune” movement!  Unfortunately, we will be like good children at the dinner table – seen but not heard – because of Holst’s very specific instructions:  the chorus is "to be placed in an adjoining room, the door of which is to be left open until the last bar of the piece, when it is to be slowly and silently closed.”)

This rehearsal, with guest conductor Fabien Gabel, was practically a private performance – we heard all of the pieces on the upcoming program.  There were no more than a handful of us in attendance, so we had our choice of seats, with no one blocking our view or fighting over the armrests.  A friend’s husband admitted that regular performances are wasted on him; the late hour, the dimmed lights and the lack of visual stimulation make them expensive naps.  At a rehearsal, however, with the lights up and no admonishment regarding smart phones (although they still ought to be in 'silent' mode and one should refrain from recording audio or video!), you can google the guest artist, for example, and learn that he plays “the 1708 ‘Ruby’ Antonio Stradivari violin, which is on loan to him through the Stradivari Society” (wikipedia).

Fabien Gabel is a very athletic and expressive conductor, and his rolled up sleeves gave us a view of his muscular arms.  He used his whole body to conduct, moving around the podium, sometimes almost kneeling to signal the orchestra to decrescendo, other times bending down and leaning forward as if he were lifting up the sound.  He only had to shush the musicians a couple of times during breaks, but it was reassuring to realize that chatting at rehearsals isn’t limited to amateur groups. Gabel let the orchestra play each movement in its entirety before selecting passages to review.  And mostly what he repeated and corrected was too subtle for me to comprehend (and because he had his back to the hall as he addressed the musicians, you could only catch a hint of his intent, in his lovely French accent).  I suspect most of the upcoming performance audience wouldn’t know the difference, either, but obviously both the conductor and orchestra are striving for their vision of perfection.

Chagall curtain for New York City Ballet's Firebird

Two pieces struck me in particular.  First, Stravinsky’s Firebird Suite.  I am familiar with this piece mostly from seeing the New York City Ballet production so many times.  But divorced from the dancing and Chagall's scenery and costumes, I was hearing it afresh, and focusing on the music, without visual distraction. I also suspect that the conductor is able to pay more attention to nuances in the score than the Ballet Orchestra, and has more latitude with tempos, since he isn’t conducting to choreography.  The second was Ravel’s Tzigane, which I wasn’t familiar with, but even without a program, it was clear that this was ‘gypsy’ music.  The guest violinist, Phillippe Quint, made this piece come alive, and I am glad to be able to hear him again this weekend (and to watch him; in addition to being extremely talented, he’s very easy on the eyes…).  I wish that he had a recording of this piece, since I can see it becoming a favorite of mine (I’ll have to content myself with my CD of Itzhak Perlman and the New York Philharmonic, which I just discovered I own).

I’m looking forward to sharing the actual performance with my husband and a darkened hall filled with people, and am excited to watch Gabel and Quint when they have the benefit of an audience to play to.  It’s chilling to sit in a concert hall, listening to live music as the sound diminishes and you have to strain to hear it.  There’s no way to duplicate this experience in the normal living room from a recording.