Soprano Angel Blue dazzles the Philharmonie de Paris

Opening of the season under the sign of excellence for the Philharmonie de Paris, Tuesday September 6, with the prestigious Philadelphia Orchestra, conducted since 2012 by Canadian conductor Yannick Nézet-Séguin. On the program, a first part exclusively devoted to American music, before the Symphony No. 3 “Eroica”, by Beethoven. However, it was a room two-thirds full that welcomed the American phalanx and its charismatic maestro, also musical director of the Metropolitan Opera Orchestra of New York as well as the Montreal Metropolitan Orchestra.

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Silhouette of an ancient goddess wrapped in a long flowing dress with floral motifs, the soprano Angel Blue entered the set followed by a Yannick Nézet-Séguin whose youthful look and small size contrast. The concert begins with Knoxville: Summer of 1915, by Samuel Barber, a work imbued with the irresistible melancholy tenderness distilled by the memory of a happy childhood lulled by woodwinds and muted strings. James Agee’s text describes those mild summer evenings in the family garden in an Edenic South on borrowed time, soon to be devoured by the din of the moving world. The oboe’s rocking theme (excellent Philippe Tondre) mimics the swaying of the rocking chair, the sweltering twilight, the slow passage of a magical tram, a whole fragile world, including the child, already sensitive to the passage of time, has kept the taste of happiness mixed with nostalgia.

The golden and fresh voice of the African-American moves with grace and emotion in this intimate landscape whose reverie and tranquility are suddenly interrupted by the noisy, almost demonic passage of a modern streetcar, which Barber endows with music unstable, melodic acceleration, rhythmic exclamations that force the voice to rise above the din. The last part, very moving, brings back the garden of yesteryear, its eternal rocking, while the evocation of loved ones – father, mother, uncle and aunt -, whom life inevitably delivers to illness and death, changes into an intense prayer to the stars delivered by Angel Blue with poignant fervor and infinite delicacy. In the orchestra, the music fades with the sleep of the child.

Intense emotion

Another musical poem, This Is Not a Small Voice, by Afro-American composer and flautist Valerie Coleman, given its French premiere in Paris. Written for Angel Blue, Yannick Nézet-Séguin and the Philadelphia Orchestra, the work premiered in February at the Kimmel Center for the Performing Arts in Philadelphia to a text by poet Sonia Sanchez. A beautiful piece of writing, full of strength and humanity, which carries the pains and hopes of the black community, from anger to celebration, a hymn to childhood and love, which changed Coleman’s life, raised in the Kentucky of the 1970s. Melodic simplicity, then gleaming brass, beating heart of percussion, the song summons the first names of children, whose voices (disappeared?) haunt the streets of the estates – LaTanya, Kadesha, Shaniqua, Antoine, Daryl, Shaquille.

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