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The Guardian
24-04-2025
- Entertainment
- The Guardian
Circa/LPO/Gardner review – Exhilarating, exquisite and extraordinary as Ravel melds with acrobatics
The Southbank Centre's cross-genre Multitudes festival opened with a double bill of Ravel's ballets Daphnis et Chloé and La Valse, played by the London Philharmonic Orchestra under Edward Gardner, and performed by the Australian company Circa with choreography by their artistic director Yaron Lifschitz. Circa's style amalgamates circus and acrobatics with contemporary dance, and the combination of athletic beauty, agility and strength suits Ravel uncommonly well. Rather than use the music as accompaniment to display, Lifschitz worked with the score rather than against it, though he dispensed with Daphnis et Chloé's narrative, replacing it with a sequence of contrasting abstract tableaux, now exhilarating,now erotic, always rooted in the pulse and throb of the music, played with exquisite finesse and detail by the LPO and Gardner throughout. Circa's acrobats, five women, five men, look like classical statues slowly coming to life in the Introduction, as their lifts and dives become ever more vertiginous. The Danse Guerrière became a spectacular contest of prowess between two men on a climbing frame, and in Chloé's Danse Suppliante, a woman hovered and swung with supreme grace in bolts of cloth high above the orchestra. The interlocking bodies of Lever du Jour, suggestive of ancient Greek friezes, were particularly beautiful, though the final Bacchanale, where the music turns orgiastic, eventually coalesces into an aggressive, unresolved standoff between two men. The sudden ambivalence, in fact, marked the transition to La Valse with its underlying sense of society careering towards its own destruction. The atmosphere was markedly different. Tracksuits and skirts replaced the clingy lacy outfits worn in Daphnis, and where the latter was danced in pools of light, all pastel shades and purple, the platform now glowed red. The choreography was again spectacular, if more closely woven: we're now aware of tautness and tension throughout. Routines began and ended in the formality of ballroom hold, which felt increasingly like a constraint, and Gardner ratcheted up the pressure as the waltz itself moved almost imperceptibly from suave elegance to something infinitely more troubling. Lifschitz's ending, meanwhile, with the 10 acrobats simultaneously performing a different spotlit dance was astonishing, but we were also suddenly and shockingly aware how isolated each had become. Powerful, beautiful stuff, and a most extraordinary evening.
The Guardian
20-03-2025
- Entertainment
- The Guardian
Ravel: Fragments album review – Chamayou's piano dances and dazzles in a luminous birthday celebration
The 150th anniversary of the birth of Maurice Ravel has so far been one of this year's less noted musical anniversaries. Bertrand Chamayou's tribute, a supplement to the survey of Ravel's piano music that he recorded almost a decade ago, is characteristically fresh and original. As well arrangements of orchestral music (parts of Daphnis et Chloé, La Valse) by Ravel himself that were omitted from that earlier survey, this also includes Chamayou's own arrangements of songs, and tributes to Ravel that were composed by both his near contemporaries such as Joaquín Nin, Ricardo Viñes, Xavier Montsalvatge and Arthur Honegger, and by composers in the decades since his death. The most ravishing of those later pieces is Salvatore Sciarrino's De la Nuit, an intoxicating mashup of themes from the Ondine and Scarbo movements of Ravel's Gaspard de la Nuit; Betsy Jolas's Signets also quotes from Gaspard, and so does Frédéric Durieux's Pour Tous Ceux Qui Tombent. Chamayou's performances of all these miniatures dance and dazzle, just as his accounts of the demanding, larger-scale arrangements, such as the Fragments Symphoniques de Daphnis et Chloé, manage to be both fabulously precise and luminously coloured. This is a must for Ravel lovers, hugely enjoyable for everyone else. Listen on Apple music (below) or Spotify This article includes content hosted on We ask for your permission before anything is loaded, as the provider may be using cookies and other technologies. To view this content, click 'Allow and continue'.
New York Times
12-03-2025
- Entertainment
- New York Times
After Nearly 125 Years, a Lost Jewel by Ravel Gets Its Premiere
The conductor Gustavo Dudamel has premiered dozens of pieces in his career. But the score that he was giddily studying on a recent afternoon at Lincoln Center was different: a nearly 125-year-old piece by the French composer Maurice Ravel that had only recently surfaced in a Paris library. 'Imagine more than 100 years later discovering a small, beautiful jewel,' Dudamel, the incoming music and artistic director of the New York Philharmonic, said in an interview at David Geffen Hall. 'It's precious.' On Thursday, Dudamel and the Philharmonic will give the world premiere of the five-minute piece as part of a program celebrating the 150th birthday of Ravel, one of the leading composers of the 20th century, whose works include 'Boléro,' 'Le Tombeau de Couperin' and 'La Valse.' The newly found piece, 'Sémiramis: Prélude et Danse,' was written sometime between 1900 and 1902, when Ravel was in his late 20s and sparring with administrators at the Paris Conservatory, where he studied piano and composition. The work, from an unfinished cantata about the Babylonian queen Semiramis, reveals a young musician still honing his voice and looking to others, like the Russian composer Rimsky-Korsakov, for inspiration. 'Sémiramis' lacks some of the lush textures and rich harmonies for which Ravel would become known — he was a master of blending French impressionism, Spanish melodies, baroque, jazz and other music — though there are hints of his unconventional style. The manuscript, more than 40 pages long, includes an aria for tenor and orchestra that the Philharmonic will not perform; the Orchestre de Paris will premiere that section, alongside the prelude and dance, in December under the baton of Alain Altinoglu. 'Sémiramis' is a coup for the New York Philharmonic, which is gearing up for the start of Dudamel's tenure in fall 2026. It is rare to uncover unpublished works by major composers, and Ravel, who died in 1937 at 62, wrote only about 80 pieces in his life, fewer than many of his peers. Dudamel said the Philharmonic would do its best to capture Ravel's intentions. The manuscript lacks a tempo marking at the start, and there appear to be some missing notes, including in the harp line. 'It's more pressure,' Dudamel said. 'The only thing I can hope for is that he will send a message to me secretly through my dreams.' The discovery has energized the Philharmonic's players, who with no recordings or scholarly notes to turn to, have consulted each other in recent days about dynamics and phrasing. 'It's a pretty vulnerable moment for Ravel,' said Julian Gonzalez, the associate principal bassoon. 'He's not going to be at the rehearsals. He can't change anything. It will be up to us to get it right.' 'Sémiramis' had been sitting in the archives of the Bibliothèque Nationale de France since 2000, when the library acquired it in an auction of Ravel memorabilia. But the manuscript was brought to light only recently, when researchers were looking for new works that could be performed to mark Ravel's 150th birthday. François Dru, the editorial director of the Ravel Edition publishing house, came across an image of the score while searching the library's digital archives several years ago. He knew the name of the piece because it appeared in a catalog of Ravel's works; the manuscript had been marked as 'not traced.' 'It was very easy to find,' Dru said. 'It wasn't some of kind of adventure or mystery like Indiana Jones excavating something from the ground. I'm a bit amazed that nobody spotted it.' Dru mentioned the score to Gabryel Smith, the director of the New York Philharmonic's archives, when the two ran into each other at an exhibition about the Ballets Russes at the Morgan Library & Museum last year. But before bringing it to Dudamel, the Philharmonic wanted to be sure 'Sémiramis' was authentic — the manuscript was unsigned and there were no references to public performances. It was possible, although unlikely, that Ravel had copied somebody else's work as an academic exercise. Verification came in the form of a diary from the Spanish pianist Ricardo Viñes, a close friend and collaborator of Ravel's. In the diary, Viñes meticulously documented events at the Paris Conservatory and interactions with revered figures like the French flutist Paul Taffanel and the composer Gabriel Fauré, Ravel's composition teacher and mentor. Viñes wrote about the first read-through of the piece, which took place on April 7, 1902, during an orchestra class at the conservatory: The 'Sémiramis' manuscript has certain Ravel hallmarks. The neat musical notation matches his penmanship, as does the handwriting, down to the 'a' in 'Danse,' which he wrote like the first letter of the Greek alphabet. And the musical style, heavily influenced by Russian masters, is consistent with some of the composer's other early works, including his 'Shéhérazade' pieces inspired by 'The Arabian Nights.' By the early 1900s, Ravel was already making his name as a composer, producing the beloved piano work 'Pavane Pour une Infante Défunte' (1899) and other classics. Just two days before the 'Sémiramis' reading at the conservatory, Viñes had given the premiere of 'Jeux d'eau,' another cherished piano piece. But despite his success, Ravel was an outsider at the conservatory, frequently clashing with its more traditionally minded professors. He repeatedly lost out on prizes, which were essential for survival at the conservatory. He was dismissed from the school several times for his lack of awards, only to return as an auditor in Fauré's class. Around this time, he and his friends, including Viñes, formed Les Apaches, a society of writers, artists and musicians. They met weekly, sharing art and ideas, and greeting each other by whistling the opening melody from Alexander Borodin's Symphony No. 2. Ravel, who was born in France in 1875 to a Spanish mother and a Swiss father, might have written 'Sémiramis' with the hope that it would be his prizewinning piece: The orchestration and style is notably conservative. But he appears to have abandoned the idea of a sweeping work; he left behind only the prelude, dance and aria. Arbie Orenstein, a leading Ravel scholar, first came across a mention of 'Sémiramis' in the 1970s, when he conducted research and interviews for his seminal biography, 'Ravel: Man and Musician' (1975), He had found manuscripts of other unpublished Ravel works — including six that premiered for the composer's centenary in 1975 — but had been unable to locate 'Sémiramis.' Orenstein said the work showed the composer's early mastery of orchestration. 'He had already composed masterpieces, but he is still finding his way as a student,' he said. 'On his way, he's already there, in a sense.' In the days before the premiere of 'Sémiramis,' Dudamel and the Philharmonic's players have been poring over the score, looking for connections to other Ravel works and for hints on questions of tone and timbre. Dudamel said he could hear early evidence of Ravel's genius and echoes of later works like the 'Ma Mère l'Oye' ('Mother Goose') suite. 'Ravel creates perfumes of colors,' he said. 'He is a colorist. He was creating such a beautiful and deep sensuality in music. I don't think other composers have that touch.' Dudamel said that while premiering 'Sémiramis' was daunting, it was also an opportunity to shape Ravel's music in an unexpectedly intimate way. 'The piece is still a mystery,' he said. 'It is like an empty book for the imagination.'
Telegraph
17-02-2025
- Entertainment
- Telegraph
Bronze sculpture by Rodin's lover found in abandoned Paris flat sells for €3.1 million
A bronze sculpture by a French artist discovered by chance in an abandoned Paris flat sold for €3.1 million at auction on Sunday. Forgotten for more than a century, the artwork by Camille Claudel was found during a routine estate inventory of a flat near the Eiffel Tower following the death of its owner. The apartment had been abandoned for 15 years, was 'plunged into darkness' and full of dust, Matthieu Semont, the auctioneer who made the discovery last September, said. But when he lifted a sheet and found the bronze sculpture, Mr Semont said he recognised it immediately as Claudel's 'L'ge Mûr' (The Mature Age) and was overcome with emotion. The sculpture, which exists in several copies, is thought to evoke the artist's separation with her mentor and lover Auguste Rodin, who was more than 20 years her senior. Mr Semont told Agence France-Presse: 'It's more of an encounter than a discovery, it's magical, it brought tears to my eyes. This bronze, which had been lost for over a century, is of astonishing quality.' Measuring 33in tall, the sculpture depicts a young woman on her knees, arms outstretched towards an ageing man who is being led away by a second older female figure. It dates between 1892 and 1898 and depicts Claudel's 'descent into hell' with Rodin 'who never stopped loving her and wept' when he discovered the sculpture, Mr Semont added. Claudel destroyed much of her work before her brother sent her to a psychiatric hospital in 1913 where she remained for 30 years until her death in 1943. Originally estimated to be worth between €1.5 million and €2 million (£1.2 million and £1.7 million), the sculpture sold for €3.1 million after a tense bidding war between six buyers. The sale, which was held at an auction house in the city of Orleans, started at a bid of €1 million in front of an audience of 350 people. After 20 minutes, the winning bid was announced to applause and a standing ovation for the auctioneer. 'It was a joyful sale, people came out of passion,' Mr Semont told Le Parisien. 'I had never bid at this level and my heart was pounding; I was very emotional.' The identity of the buyer was not revealed. Sunday's auction marked the second highest price for a work by Claudel, after the 2013 sale of 'La Valse' at a Sotheby's auction in London, where it fetched €5.2 million. The artist's life has been told several times on the big screen, including in a critically acclaimed 1988 biopic featuring Isabelle Adjani and a 2013 film in which Juliette Binoche depicted Claudel's abandonment in an asylum.
Miami Herald
11-02-2025
- Entertainment
- Miami Herald
A nonconforming ballet heats up Miami City Ballet's ‘Winter Mix'
Speaking from her New York home base in January, choreographer Pam Tanowitz—currently held in the warmest of embraces by critics and knowing audiences—lamented the weather, confessing, 'I can't wait to come to Miami.' As the Northeast shivered through an arctic blast, she looked forward to returning to put the finishing touches on 'Coincident Dances,' the world premiere commissioned by Miami City Ballet as a red-hot component for its 'Winter Mix,' also including re-stagings of George Balanchine's 'La Valse,' a glamorous and mysterious whirl to Maurice Ravel, and 'Walpurgisnacht,' devilishly dynamic to passages from Charles Gounod's opera 'Faust.' The program opens at the Arsht Center in Miami, Friday, Feb. 14 through Sunday, Feb. 16. 'Winter Mix' continues at the Broward Center in Fort Lauderdale on Saturday, Feb. 22 and Sunday, Feb. 23 and then at the Kravis Center in West Palm Beach, Saturday, March 8 and Sunday, March 9. It's not that our subtropical climate sets the temperature for 'Coincident Dances.' But that concept amuses Tanowitz. She notes, 'Weather is like dance—ephemeral.' The choreographer further recognizes how surrounding elements seep into creation, saying, 'Life is messy, and everything can be in there.' In her case that includes motherhood and a divorce, her Jewish heritage, museum haunts and French cinema—and, yes, the environment. She references her choreography for 'The Seasons,' an opera to premiere at Boston Lyric Opera on Wednesday, March 12, the libretto by Sarah Ruhl springing from Vivaldi's concertos to tell of artists in a retreat disrupted by the weather. The collaboration, along with her concurrent MCB commission, is among the many high points on the choreographer's creative landscape. Sought-after by prominent dance companies in the United States and abroad, Tanowitz continues to head her twenty-five-year-old troupe, Pam Tanowitz Dance. Film work and a professorship of professional practice at Rutgers University extend her resume, which certifies Tanowitz as one of the busiest dance makers on the scene today. 'Though I don't need any more work, I'd feel stressed out if people stopped calling,' she admits. 'With every opportunity for me to make a dance, whether it's modern or ballet, I feel so, so lucky.' Small wonder she's mindful of self-care, faithfully putting in time at the treadmill. 'I have to do it every morning,' she says. 'It helps me focus for rehearsals.' She's been steadily holding that focus, wide and deep, to great results—two Bessie Awards, a Jacob's Pillow Dance Award, a Doris Duke Artist Award, and a Guggenheim Fellowship among her honors, all especially meaningful to a self-confessed late-bloomer. 'I'm now 55. In New York since I was 23, I'd been choreographing for a really long time before people noticed me,' points out this Westchester, New York, native and MFA holder from Sarah Lawrence College. 'I had a totally different path. I wasn't a dancer in a company who then decided to be on my own. And my company is project-based, the dancers freelance.' Various modern dance figures have informed her work, with mid-twentieth century luminary Merce Cunningham looming tall. 'I love his technique, the clean lines,' says Tanowitz. This connection comes by way of the late Viola Farber, a founding member of the Cunningham company and a force of her own, 'She was my mentor at Sarah Lawrence,' says Tanowitz about the director of dance at her college. 'She challenged me and retaught me how to dance. She changed my life.' Considering Tanowitz's trajectory, many observers single out 2019 as a wonder year. A career upswing then raised the choreographer's visibility to a starry firmament, with commissions from Martha Graham Dance Company, Paul Taylor Dance Company, New York City Ballet, and Britain's Royal Ballet. Contacted for the current premiere by MCB artistic director Lourdes Lopez over two years ago, Tanowitz came by degrees into the company fold. At the end of 2016, to inaugurate the Faena Forum on Miami Beach, Tanowitz made 'Once With Me, Once Without Me,' a site-specific work joining her company with advanced students from MCB School. In May 2019, the same month that New York City Ballet staged 'Bartók Ballet'—its first Tanowitz piece— 'Gustave Le Gray No. 1,' a quartet created for Dance Theatre of Harlem and Miami City Ballet, featuring a man and a woman from each company, premiered as part of Ballet Across America at the Kennedy Center. Tanowitz explains that 'No. 1' uses ballet slippers while a 'No. 2,' for her own troupe, has the same movement base adjusted for bare feet. Tanowitz's exploration of pointe work, to be on view in 'Coincident Dances,' takes this balletic hallmark into her own territory. 'A lot of younger choreographers,' she considers, 'come into ballet to make a dance they think audiences want to see. I don't do that. I make what's interesting to me, and I always question things—an arm position or a head tilt. And I believe that's also interesting for the dancers.' MCB soloist Satoki Habuchi agrees, empowered by the choreographer's openness to contributions from the interpreters. One of seven men who, alongside eight women, make up the cast of 'Coincident Dances,' he participated as an MCB School student in the Faena project. Now more experienced in contemporary work, he's extended his talent adhering to Tanowitz's dictum 'to be a neutral version of myself. We don't have to make things bigger.' Still, even at their most natural, MCB dancers can be quite an eyeful. Habuchi tells how after Tanowitz saw him do an impactful jump in a studio class, she decided to incorporate it into her dance, labeling it the 'Satoki Special.' Principal Hannah Fischer, whose wide range in contemporary dance dates back to her days at National Ballet of Canada, appreciates how Tanowitz encourages 'honest intention.' This jives with the ballerina's belief that her art form is about mindset as much as physical exertion. 'Pam has a plan when she walks into the room, but she also lets us feel comfortable in the unknown. It's fine if we make a mistake because she might end up liking it,' she notes. Defying gender expectations, Tanowitz at one point asked if Fischer felt okay with circling the stage in a type of manège with traveling jumps usually reserved for men. Glad to take this on, the ballerina turned the opportunity into an off-the-playbook burst of excitement. Tellingly, both she and Habuchi point to a male duet—its soulfulness 'truly awesome,' says Fischer—as a standout in the dance. The choreographer is also unorthodox in not using counts in constructing phrases. Dancers take cues from the music, each other, and their internal responses. Whether in unison or in counterpoint, Fischer says she rides these currents in constant reference to the ensemble. Habuchi adds, 'We have to look at each other, and I let the music guide me emotionally.' Tanowitz is using two compositions, the scintillating 'Starburst' and 'Coincident Dances,' by Jessie Montgomery, among long-trusted collaborators—here including designers Reid Bartelme and Harriet Jung for costumes and Brandon Stirling Baker for lighting—who bolster her conceptions. Montgomery's music, says the choreographer, 'feels very cosmopolitan—entertaining in the smartest way possible. It's very inspiring.' If you go: WHAT: Miami City Ballet's Winter Mix WHEN: 7:30 p.m. Friday and Saturday, Feb. 14 and 15; 2 p.m. Sunday, Feb. 16 WHERE: Adrienne Arsht Center for the Performing Arts, 1300 Biscayne Blvd., Miami ADDITIONAL PERFORMANCES: Broward Center for the Performing Arts, 201 SW Fifth Ave., Fort Lauderdale, 7:30 p.m. Saturday, Feb. 22; 2 p.m. Sunday, Feb. 23; Kravis Center for the Performing Arts, 701 Okeechobee Blvd., West Palm Beach; 2 p.m. and 7:30 p.m. Saturday, March 8; 1 p.m. Sunday, March 9 COST: $25-$225, depending on show time and venue. INFORMATION: 305-929-7010 or is a nonprofit media source for the arts featuring fresh and original stories by writers dedicated to theater, dance, visual arts, film, music and more. Don't miss a story at
