By Caleb Easterly
(Photo: Carnegie Hall)
The American Symphony Orchestra, conducted by Leon Botstein, has become known for digging up obscure musical treasures and designing concerts around a theme. On Friday night at Carnegie, they focused on the cultural relationship between France and the Eastern world in a concert called “Orientalism in France," highlighting a unique period in musical history when French culture was stirred by eastern visions of wild harems, barbarism, and magic.
The long program started with Saint-Saëns' Orient et Occident, a march in a rigid 'ABA’ form. The opening section and the recapitulation were almost Elgarian – only the middle section shows Eastern influence. Next was Ravel’s Scheherazade, an overture for an opera that Ravel never wrote. Composed in 1898, it remained unpublished until 1975 which may have been for the best: it came off sounding dull, despite Botstein’s best efforts.
In front of a reduced orchestra, soprano Julia Bullock performed Four Hindu Poems by Maurice Delage with incredible virtuosity and conviction. Cesar Franck’s Les Djinns, for orchestra and piano, was a musing on the relation between humans and spirits (Djinns). Ominous lower notes in the bass mixed with beautiful, flowing melodies on piano, ending with a forbidding F-sharp in the lowest register. Pianist Julia Zilberquit juggled the virtuosic runs and deceptively simple melodies with ease.
The concert ended with Georges Bizet's Djamileh, a one-act opera that Botstein declared “one of his greatest completed works.” The plot is simple: love lost, love gained, love lost again, told with a near-perfect combination of humor, sensuality, and emotional gravity. Several of the recitatives were delivered in English, such as: “I haven’t had this much fun since the Super Bowl halftime show.”
Haroun (Colin Answorth) and Splendiano (Philip Cutlip) played two men who are both in love with a slave, Djamileh (Eve Gigliotti). Answorth was fine as Haroun, but sandwiched between the buffoonish Splendiano and the lovelorn Djamileh, he came across a bit bland. Nevertheless, this was a terrific performance of a fun, engaging opera that has been unfairly neglected since its composition. Once again, give Leon Botstein and the ASO credit for helping to right that wrong.