Love, death, and the ocean: Ernest Chausson’s Poème de l’Amour et de la Mer began its 10-year gestation in the wake of the composer’s visit to Bayreuth for the premiere of Wagner’s Parsifal, but it wears its debt to Tristan und Isolde shimmeringly on its sleeve; a French impressionist spin on that dark and stormy cocktail. Programming the two side by side might have run the risk of anticlimax in every sense, but this concert by the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic had the opposite effect, a vivid, focused performance – not to mention a starry soloist – ensuring Chausson’s bittersweet song cycle held its own as a centrepiece.
The Wagner came first, the undulating Prelude and ecstatic Liebestod embodying all of Tristan’s heady romance and revolutionary chromaticism despite omitting the three-and-a-half hours of opera usually heard in between. Perhaps keeping his – and the orchestra’s – powder dry for what was to follow, chief conductor Domingo Hindoyan’s reading was admirably clear, even translucent in parts, but occasionally stilted as well: bliss was approached, it seemed, but never quite attained, and at fortissimo moments risked slipping into bombast.
No such concerns in Chausson’s Poème. Eloquent and cohesive from the outset, the Philharmonic’s burnished string tone and soft-grained woodwinds proved the ideal match for soloist Sonya Yoncheva’s generous, opulent soprano. Though she clearly revelled in the work’s quasi-operatic crescendi, it was her luminous lower register and exquisitely managed soft singing that brought true magic to the piece, and to Maurice Bouchor’s florid, melancholy texts.
Rusalka’s Song to the Moon was a welcome and canny encore, sending an audible ripple of delight through the audience and neatly bridging the gap to the programme’s much cheerier second half: Dvořák’s folk-inflected Eighth Symphony. Taking the work’s opening Allegro con brio at a gallop, Hindoyan set the pace for a lucid, often playful take on this endlessly tuneful symphony, zeroing in on its most appealing flourishes – birdsong, trumpet fanfares, wistful waltzes – without losing sight of its overall sweep. Troubled waters forgotten, this was an interpretation all about sunshine: and in the dead of winter, who could object to that?
• The concert will be available to watch on Medici TV from 5 December.
