Ravel: Daphnis et Chloé

Seduction to the point of climax and beyond is woven into the brightly coloured fabric of Daphnis et Chloé. Ravel’s ballet score, commissioned by Serge Diaghilev for his pioneering Ballets Russes, contains some of the most ravishing orchestral music ever written and a depiction of daybreak in sound—the “Lever du jour”—to make the heart sing. Conductor Antonio Pappano and the London Symphony Orchestra, joined by the ace choristers of Tenebrae, draw out the work’s drama and detail in a compelling performance recorded live at the Barbican Centre and released to mark the 150th anniversary of its composer’s birth. Their interpretation celebrates the score’s symphonic power and the way Ravel uses it to illuminate the story of the goatherd Daphnis and his love for the shepherdess Chloé, her abduction by pirates and, with a little help from the god Pan, their ecstatic reunion. “Ravel calls it a symphonie chorégraphique, which is telling,” says Antonio Pappano to Apple Music Classical. “But the detail in the score of what's happening at every single moment is quite prodigious. As an opera conductor, if I’m given that kind of stimulation, I run with it! The piece has to flow, but it mustn’t rush either in the slow sections because, though it’s a pastoral piece, it’s extremely sensual. It’s about young, burgeoning love. It’s about jealousy, it’s about the desperation of loss and the reuniting of two lovers. I have dealt with all those emotions in the opera house. And so the piece speaks volumes to me. I don't need words in this case; it’s all there in the music.” Daphnis et Chloé was first performed in Paris by the Ballets Russes in June 1912, less than a year before the company’s legendary premiere of Stravinsky’s ballet The Rite of Spring. Although strikingly different in character, both works exceeded by far the conventional boundaries of orchestral sound. Pappano points to the influence of Stravinsky’s teacher, Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov, and his symphonic suite Scheherazade on the development of both Daphnis and The Rite. “Rimsky was the first to have this kind of cinematographic orchestration in the way that you hear it in Stravinsky and Ravel,” he comments. “Ravel to an even greater extent than Stravinsky invents effects, creates new colours really. The instrumental palette now becomes so varied and sophisticated.” Antonio Pappano pays tribute to Tenebrae for their part in bringing the broadest spectrum of sound colours and tonal shadings to Ravel’s music. The score’s vocal element, he observes, is of the utmost importance. “I was very fortunate to have Tenebrae. They give a very cinematographic, call it a South Pacific air to some of this music, because they sing mainly on vowels. I manipulated those vowel sounds with them. Their director Nigel Short and I came up with different sound possibilities, not just ‘ah’, but sometimes ‘mmm’, produced with an open mouth but with nasal effects. And there’s the ‘ooh’ sound, of course, which Ravel sometimes asks to be sung bouche fermée, with the mouth closed. These vocal sounds are used throughout the piece, and there’s a moment where it’s just voices a cappella. It’s frighteningly difficult for the tuning, but they sing it ravishingly.” Ravel’s ballet, the longest of his compositions, is deeply embedded in the collective consciousness of the London Symphony Orchestra. They recorded the complete score in 1959 with Pierre Monteux, who conducted the work’s Paris premiere, and did so again later under André Previn, Claudio Abbado, Kent Nagano and Valery Gergiev. Pappano’s band is on top form, alive to every nuance and to the work’s overarching dramatic scenario. Under his guidance, they give shape and colour to each of the four musical themes that recur throughout the piece and revel in the composition’s many solo lines. “The opportunities for individuals within the orchestra, the different flute solos, the horn solos, the oboe solos, the English horn (cor anglais) solos, are prized moments of the symphonic literature,” notes Pappano. “That’s not only because of the beauty of Ravel’s melodies for these instruments, but the characterisation, how they go so well with the dramatic demands of any given moment in the ballet. Of course, the beginning of the piece develops so slowly with the sound of the harps, muted horns, the basses, the muted strings, the entrances that dovetail one upon another, like a layer cake being formed. The music opens its arms in this incredible embrace of the world. You really feel that Ravel is playing with different shades of light as the painter Caravaggio did, for instance. It’s just so beautiful, so perfect.”