Richard Bratby

The last radical

Richard Bratby reviews the City of Birmingham Orchestra’s Debussy Festival and finds the Frenchman sounding more than ever like the last true radical

A spectre haunted the first weekend of the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra’s Debussy Festival: the spectre of Richard Wagner. Debussy’s relationship with Wagner began with infatuation, and ended (as so often) in open rebellion. The young decadent who declared Parsifal ‘one of the loveliest monuments of sound ever raised to the serene glory of music’ later ranted that ‘30 million Boches cannot destroy French thought’ even while, tormented by cancer, he laboured to complete three late sonatas of near-infinite subtlety and grace. But there’s always the sense, as Debussy put it as early as 1890, that ‘I don’t see what can be done beyond Tristan’.

So there it was: Wagner’s Prelude and Liebestod, sprawled full-stretch across the end of Mirga Grazinyte-Tyla’s opening orchestral concert. Coming out of Debussy’s Nocturnes, Grazinyte-Tyla approached it coolly. When the cellos began their long unwinding song she held back, even beyond the moment when the violins sweep upwards and most conductors let fly. Only as she approached the huge, ominous full stop towards the end of the Prelude did she let the orchestra rear up to its full, awful height, and with excited gestures she propelled the Liebestod forward on the same wave of ecstasy. Debussy was right; there’s no answer to this music. Michael Tanner, who should know, has called Tristan und Isolde the defeat of criticism.

Still, who could argue that it was an intruder at Debussy’s feast? Crammed into just two weekends, with six orchestral concerts plus a city-wide flurry of chamber recitals, talks and YouTube-ready PR stunts (a piano duet on the Wednesbury to Birmingham tram; which, believe me, takes more than merely artistic courage), the Festival was concentrated enough to generate a sense of occasion (‘See you tomorrow morning!’ yelled Grazinyte-Tyla from the podium).

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