The audience assembled this past Friday, Nov. 8, for “Paris Impressions,” the second concert in the Illinois Symphony Orchestra’s new season, was treated to an audacious and vibrant time capsule of early 20th century Paris. Guest conductor Alastair Willis, who served as music director of ISO from 2012-2015, presented an engaging and thrilling evening of music that was far from the staid fare one might typically imagine when anticipating a night of orchestral music. Friday’s concert provided both whimsical and poignant theatricality. This was alongside fiery and lilting passionately performed music.
The concert began with Maestro Willis entering the UIS Performing Arts stage with a small, cafe-style table, complete with champagne glasses, set up stage left in front of the ISO musicians. When Willis began speaking with a French accent (something he does not normally have) and introduced himself as “Jean-Luc Baton,” it was clear this was to be no average evening. He quickly set the scene of late 1880s Paris from the point of view of fictional conductor Baton (get it?), achieved with the help of minimal but effective photos and title cards projected on an overhead screen.
The first time Willis moved seamlessly from his role as vaudeville-style narrator to conducting the orchestra, the power of the program was revealed. The irony of opening the musical program with a finale (from César Franck’s Symphony in D minor) was obscured by the sudden, palpable power and joy of the music. This was a reminder of how consistently engaged and energized the musicians of this orchestra had been during Willis’ four seasons as music director. This energy only increased as the evening progressed its historical narrative through the Parisian fin-de-siécle cultural scene.
The story was mostly advanced through Willis/Baton’s interactions with Bloomington-based actor Robert Mangialardi, performing with charm and humor in character as real-life Paris impresario Serge Diaghilev, who was artistic director of the Ballets Russes, the legendary ballet company that was on the cutting edge of music and choreography during the early 20th century. The company and Diaghilev are often remembered for controversial collaborations with composer Igor Stravinsky, particularly the 1913 premier of “The Rite of Spring” which caused such extreme reactions that the audience famously broke into a riot. Stravinsky’s often dissonant music of this period is considered innovative, but is often difficult to appreciate for modern audiences raised on the traditionally melodic charms of the classical canon. Willis’s program ingeniously placed this challenging music in the context of the involving story of Ballets Russes and its relation to Stravinsky’s development. This created a space where the ISO’s inspired performance of the “Infernal Dance” from 1910’s “The Firebird” (in ways more redolent of extreme jazz or even death metal than typical classical music) was able to be appreciated by Friday’s audience in ways that would have been unlikely otherwise.
The first act – which also included a memorable performance of the erotically charged prelude of Debussy’s 1894 ballet “Afternoon of a Faun” – concluded with the dramatically effective but somewhat disturbing piped-in sound effects of air raid sirens, symbolizing the onset of World War I. The musicians of the orchestra filed off the stage in a seeming daze, as if vacating the premises in an actual emergency.
The somber effect was sustained only briefly after intermission, as Willis returned to the stage as Baton in a long dark coat, looking like a refugee. Telling of how the Great War brought the Paris arts scene to a standstill, the maestro/narrator quickly transitioned into the post-war blooming of a nation ready to party after an extended period of difficulty. Whipping off his coat to reveal a snappy tuxedo, Willis surprised the audience once again by singing the chronologically incorrect but otherwise apropos “The Night They Invented Champagne” from the hit 1958 musical Gigi (set in post-WWI Paris), with bouncy accompaniment from the orchestra. Spirits continued to rise, with Mangialardi’s Diaghilev joining Willis to dance a humorously impromptu can-can.
The second act’s revue-style survey of music of the period continued with spirited renditions of works by Ibert (“Divertissement,” 1930), Milhaud (“Le Boeuf sur le Toit,” 1920) and Poulenc (“Les Biches,” 1924), showcasing the ways that Parisian art and music moved away from discordant, avant-garde work to more traditional qualities of beauty and enjoyment. The story and the concert ended with the orchestra’s ravishing, sumptuous version of Ravel’s “Les Valse” (1920), a ballet score commissioned for the Ballets Russes but never produced because Diaghilev reportedly found the music so beautiful as to threaten to overwhelm any choreography that might be paired with it.
Maestro Willis conceived of “Paris Impressions” and has performed it with several different orchestras over the past 20 years. The idiosyncratic piece brilliantly opens a window into the world of history and personalities behind the music. On Friday it provided a thoroughly satisfying and unexpected night of total entertainment for concertgoers and sets high expectations for the remainder of new music director Taichi Fukumura’s debut season, which will continue with “Holiday Pops in the Heartland” on Friday, Dec. 13, and “Spectacle of Light” on Friday, Jan 17.
Scott Faingold is a journalist, educator and musician. He has been an instructor at University of Illinois Springfield, founding editor of Activator magazine, a staff reporter for Illinois Times and co-host of Old School Bleep, a music-centered podcast. He can be reached at scottfaingold@gmail.com
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