South Florida Classical Review

Stéphane Denève returned to the podium of the New World Symphony on Saturday night for the first time since last fall and the orchestral academy’s artistic director’s presence was palpable. Denève achieves a cohesiveness of ensemble and incisive articulation from the players that even the ablest guest conductors cannot equal or surpass. 

He is also an innovative programmer who is willing to experiment with formats and melding of artistic disciplines.  “Music in (Techni) Color” was the evening’s theme, displaying a meeting of performance and technology that tested the hi-tech capacities of the New World Center. Both the music-making and the hall’s sound and projection resources proved up to the task.

The concert’s piece de resistance was the East Coast premiere of PALETTE – Concerto for Augmented Orchestra by British composer Anna Clyne, A co-commission of the New World Symphony (along with the BBC Philharmonic, Juilliard School, National Orchestral Institute and the San Diego and St. Louis symphonies), the work features electronic augmentation by sound designer Jody Elff. Through a specially created program, live instrumental sounds are altered an octave lower or higher or texturally redefined. (All of this takes place live and in real time without pre-recorded electronics.) 

Clyne’s score also utilizes seven of the composer’s paintings, each based on a different color. With projections of Clyne’s paintings on the hall’s walls, the audio-visual panorama of colors delighted the eye and ear alike. 

A lovely harp melody launches “Plum.” Brass pack a sonic wallop in “Amber” and a motif emerges that could have come out of a wide-screen epic. “Lava” brings a “Ride of the Valkyries” type of phantasmagoria, replete with percussive banging amid opulent orchestration. 

Sensuous strings and a haunting English horn solo portray “Ebony.” The opening fanfares of “Tangerine” are transformed into more macabre paths, which were accompanied by flashing, psychedelic inspired lighting designed by Luke Kritzeck.  The suite concludes with the lustrous, grandiose sonorities of “Emerald ” So effortlessly and unobtrusively were the augmented sonics integrated into the performance that one could not tell the difference between the pure live and altered sound.

More than a mere gimmick, the result is a stunning orchestral showpiece that could become a repertoire staple if concert halls have the technology to present it. Scored for a large ensemble, the seven-movement, 35-minute work abounds in surging, memorable themes and gleaming instrumentation. For sheer orchestral glamour, nothing has been written quite like Clyne’s stunner in a long time.

Abigail Kent’s harp solos stood out for beauty of articulation. and fine integration with the diverse surrounding timbres. Denève and the New World fellows gave a glowing reading of Clyne’s tonal portraits which, effectively, put old compositional ideas into newly innovative formats. Clyne, Denève and the players received a standing ovation from the enthusiastic audience that was unusually vociferous.

The remainder of the program belonged to Maurice Ravel. Denève is hard to surpass in French music and his reading of Ravel’s Mother Goose Suite benefited from his perfect sense of pacing. 

The suite’s five movements seemed to flow naturally, unadorned by interpretive excess. The gleam Denève achieves from the strings has become a trademark of his collaboration with the fellows. His wide variety of dynamics was so subtle that some soft moments verged on the edge of audibility. He vividly brought to life the Orientalism of “Empress of the Pagodas,” clearly delineating all the musical tools in Ravel’s paintbox. Rarely has the waltz in “Conversations of Beauty and the Beast” sounded so felicitous and enticing in Gallic elegance. Denève masterfully coordinated the enchanting melodies and final crescendo of “The Fairy Garden.”

The performance was accompanied by the illustrations of animator Grégorie Pont who provided similar visuals for last season’s Denève-New World performance of Albert Roussel’s The Spider’s Feast. Pont created much of the visuals in real time, working at his computer on stage as the performance progressed. His animation perfectly matched Ravel’s musical visualization of the fairy tales, creating a lovely and tasteful audio-visual presentation. Pont’s version for the tale of Beauty and the Beast suggested the classic Jean Cocteau film version.

Some less ingratiating visuals embellished the evening’s culminating performance of Ravel’s orchestration of Mussorgsky’s Pictures at an Exhibition. A revised version of selected animation that were created for the opening of the New World Center in 2011 by students, alumni and faculty of the University of Southern California School of Cinematic Arts, some of these animations were trite and distracting. 

The best was a vivid picturing of peasants hauling a large cart for “Bydlo” and a multi-colored, constantly changing portrait of “The Great Gate at Kiev.” Most of the time, it was better for a listener to ignore the video and concentrate on the music making.

Many composers and arrangers have made orchestral versions of Mussorgsky’s original piano suite, but none can even come close to Ravel’s panoply of colors and symphonic extravagance. Throughout the performance, Denève brought out details from the orchestral fabric that often go unheard, one of his unique talents. String registration resounded in razor-sharp fashion and the brass were consistently sturdy and accurate.

The winds stood out Saturday night. Flutes, oboes and clarinets consistently glowed and the bassoons could sound, by turns, spooky and warm. The saxophone solo in “The Old Castle” was vibrant, without excessive vibrato. Bridget Conley’s solo tuba emerged resonant and well placed in the treacherous “Bydlo” solo. Trumpets, in solo and mass, gave heft to the repeated “Promenade” theme. 

Denève took a fleet and lithe approach to “Ballet of the Unhatched Chicks” and whipped up a nightmarish frenzy for the witch Baba-Yaga of “The Hut on Foul’s Legs.” Kiev’s gate rang out in majestic proclamation, the full ensemble in top form with the contrasting chorale lovely and supple, the winds delicate and warm.

The program proved a successful demonstration of technicolor, both old fashioned and newfangled in musical as well as cinematic terms.

The New World Symphony repeats the program 2 p.m. Sunday at the New World Center in Miami Beach.   nws.edu

Posted in Performances

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One Response to “Denève, New World serve up a colorful canvas of music and visuals with Clyne’s “PALETTE””

1. Posted Mar 02, 2025 at 4:40 pm by Hubert Harriman

   I totally agree on the Pictures comment!. I watched on the website and after a few minutes I had to turn it off. I thought the “cartoon” feature was too distracting for me to enjoy the music I much preferred the version I have seen displaying the actual paintings.

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