Page 197 - Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Coverage Book 2023-24

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.

Luminous … Sonya Yoncheva at the Philharmonic Hall. Photograph: Gareth Jones

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