E-Mail This Article to a Friend
	Mediterranean Ravel at Tanglewood, Nacho Duato at the Pillow

The programs of French composer Ravel at Tanglewood and Spanish choreographer Nacho Duato at Jacob’s Pillow last weekend might not seem to have much in common. But the major Ravel piece, Daphnis et Chloé, started out life as a dance work; commissioned by Ballets Russes’ Serge Diaghilev and choreographed by Mikhail Fokine, it debuted in Paris on June 8, 1912, with Pierre Monteux conducting, Tamara Karsavina as Chloé, and Vaslav Nijinsky in the non-masturbatory role of Daphnis. And the Tanglewood performance was conducted by Spaniard Rafael Frühbeck de Burgos, who had led the BSO’s Symphony Hall performance in May. What’s more, like Ravel, Nacho Duato draws on a kind of myth, though whereas Daphnis seems all water, Duato pieces like Jardí tancat and Arenal rise up out of the earth.

I didn’t catch Daphnis in May; my previous encounter with it was Bernard Haitink’s sleepy Symphony Hall performance with the BSO in March 2001. That the piece didn’t succeed as a ballet is no mystery: parts suggest the soundtrack to a French Doris Day film, and even the pirates’ "orgiastic dance" pales next to the Witches’ Sabbath of Berlioz’s Symphonie fantastique or the Capulet Ball of his Roméo et Juliette. The high point (familiar from countless commercials) is the choral apotheosis at the beginning of the third scene, when the sun rises over a sleeping Daphnis in the grotto of the nymphs and Pan restores Chloé to him.

Starting the piece very slowly, Frühbeck de Burgos delivered a warm reading with full-blooded playing, full-bodied singing from the Tanglewood Festival Chorus, and firmer paragraphing than Ravel usually receives. The sound picture was both bright and deep, the climaxes weren’t harsh, and he brought out a number of echoes and anticipations: Vaughan Williams’s Third and Ninth Symphonies, Sacre, Rimsky-Korsakov’s Sheherazade. Even the Doris Day sections sounded more like Cary Grant. The sunrise, however, wasn’t very pointed, and in its absence of languor, the performance was more Spanish than French. It was a very good Daphnis, but something got lost in the translation.

The first half of the program was given over to Ravel’s 1930 Piano Concerto in D, which he wrote in for Paul Wittgenstein (brother of Ludwig), who had lost his right arm in World War I. Leon Fleisher, who for some 35 years suffered from dystonia in his right hand (Botox injections have now enabled him, at age 75, to play with both hands again), is familiar with this one-movement work, and the intelligence that’s always been evident in his playing (try the Beethoven piano-concerto set with George Szell) and his teaching (Alex Ross describes a Carnegie Hall master class in the April 19/26 New Yorker) was on ample display. I was surprised to see him flipping the pages of a score laid flat in front of him with his right hand. But his performance was both spontaneous and disciplined, with a Debussy-like elegance to its poetry that conjured Seine-side chestnut trees in smoky autumn and the jazzy Allegro section galloping wittily like the last movement of Ravel’s G-major concerto, reveling in its dance impulse rather than in overt virtuosity. The cogent accompaniment from Frühbeck de Burgos and the orchestra was never second fiddle. The only drawback for me was the piece itself, which like Daphnis doesn’t build to much. I wish they’d played the G-major instead.

AT THE PILLOW, Nacho Duato’s second company, Compañía Nacional de Danza 2, brought his 1988 Arenal and the first piece he’s done exclusively for CND2, the 2004 L’Amoroso, along with the 2000 Holberg Suite, by CND2 co–artistic director Tony Fabre (a Frenchman, so there’s another Tanglewood-Pillow connection). The music for Arenal (which CND performs on the Image Entertainment DVD Three by Duato, along with Duende and Por vos muero) is seven songs sung in Catalan by the Mallorcan-born Maria del Mar Bonet. The title means "sandy," as in an arena or a bull ring (it’s also the name of a place in Mallorca, which lies opposite Duato’s native Valencia), and just as the songs alternate between a cappella and orchestrated, the dancing alternates between sorrowful solos by a woman in black and joyful group dances by performers in warm, earth-toned costumes. The a cappella songs bespeak the labor of reaping, the dangers of olive picking; there’s a lullaby for a little girl who when she grows up will be courted by young men in frock coats. The group have a "Letter to the Exile" (duet), a "Dance of Spring" (quartet) and "Des de Mallorca a L’Alguer" (trio), which spans the Mediterranean from Mallorca to the Sardinian town of Alghero (the melody for this is a Sardinian folk song). Arenal extends its reach to Greece (the Daphnis connection!) with the exuberant Kazantzakis/Hadjidakis "Den itan nisi" ("It Was No Island") before the woman in black returns to the opening "Reaping Song"; this ends on the word "misericordi" ("mercy") before all 10 dancers unite in a gesture of supplication.

On the DVD, Emmanuelle Broncin is a ferocious woman in black, whirling, rolling, stomping, lamenting, swishing the long skirt of her dress as if it were a toreador’s cape, wringing it out after walking along the shore. CND2’s Annabelle Peintre looked a little studied and self-conscious by comparison, though she faced down the other nine dancers with equal intensity. Magdalena Ciechowicz and Rubén Ventoso danced the duet with a tenderness I didn’t remember from the DVD, and the two (three on the DVD) carved monoliths that frame the action and the dancers who with their backs to the stage "witness" the opening soliloquy both made more of an impact live. But the speed and amplitude of expression aren’t quite there — whereas CND speak Duato fluently, CND2 are still learning.

Tony Fabre says that Aus Holbergs Zeit is his father’s favorite piece of music. Grieg wrote this Bach-like dance suite — Prelude, Sarabande, Gavotte, Andante religioso, and Rigaudon — in 1884 as a bicentennial tribute to Ludwig Holberg, who was dubbed the "Norwegian Molière." It’s Holberg Suite’s four women in their sleeveless leotards — black-and-flesh zebra tops, black bottoms — over net tights who first catch the eye; the four men have simple sleeveless dark shirts and trousers. The women don hoop skirts that are open in the front and sashay about, giggling like the four eighth-graders of Sleepover; later, they do little shimmy hops and wiggle their fingers. The Andante religioso, however, is serious stuff, almost Baroque Balanchine, each couple taking a turn. The high-spirited Rigaudon finale is both giddy (the women running in place) and sobering (the couplings begin to break down), ending on one last bit of playfulness. Fabre gives his young dancers what they can handle, and they handle it with style and feeling.

Duato is similarly solicitous in L’Amoroso, which is set to viol music of the 16th and 17th centuries from Naples and Venice. Outer sections in 6/8 for the ensemble of three men and three women frame three slow duets in 4/4 for which the men shed their tunics and the women their long white skirts. The tunics suggest doublets, and when they’re on their own, the men could be Romeo, Mercutio, and Benvolio acting out; the duets would be the balcony/bedroom scene, the third couple having the most composed steps. The last piece finds the men shadowboxing and the women circling like the Graces, everyone trying on roles. At the end, as at the beginning, men and women line up facing each other; the ranks cross, turn, face each other again, and bow, having completed another chapter in the process of becoming amoroso/a. Even with a limited vocabulary, Duato has plenty to say.