Dutilleux, with extra wildness and dazzle
By Damian Thompson
11 April 2008

Dutilleux Celebration
Nash Ensemble, Wigmore Hall, London

Henri Dutilleux may very well be the greatest composer alive today; he certainly wears the most interesting neckwear. At last Wednesday's concert of his music by the Nash Ensemble at the Wigmore Hall he shuffled on stage, amazingly bushy-haired at 92, wearing a spotted orange cravat. He looked like he had draped a python around his neck. What is it about French composers and cravats? Olivier Messiaen adored them, too.

Perhaps it's a generational thing. Dutilleux is only a few years younger than Messiaen: he won the Prix de Rome (previous winners: Berlioz, Bizet, Massenet, Debussy) in 1938. And he's still composing. The Wigmore's Dutilleux Celebration saw the world premiere of a pared-down arrangement of Mystère de l'instant, a sequence of aural "snapshots" scored for 18 strings, percussion and - a characteristic touch - the Hungarian cimbalom.

Dutilleux is the most meticulous of composers. The constantly shifting colours of his orchestral works are achieved through precise manipulation of texture. He does not stop thinking about a work after he has composed it: following the premiere and first recording of his Second Symphony, he scrapped the decisive final chord, substituting one that was tentative and mysterious, thereby unsettling the whole piece.

My advice to anyone completely new to the music of Dutilleux is to buy a recording of L'Arbre des songes, possibly the finest violin concerto of the late 20th century. (Olivier Charlier on budget-price Arte Nova is unbeatable.)

But, really, this is music that cries out to be heard live, so that the listener can fully appreciate its spatial effects - achieved not through moving instruments around but (as the composer explains) "breaking down orchestral textures or juxtaposing the strings at the extreme ranges of their register".

What does it sound like? Fairly obviously French: there's that special fluidity pioneered by Debussy and developed by composers as different as Poulenc and Boulez. There's a touch of the Second Viennese School, too, in soaring but complex melodies that are closer to tone-rows than to anything resembling a tune.

Dutilleux's secret lies in his tricks of the light: he throws shadows over his fabric when you are least expecting it. And there is also a fine grasp of counterpoint: one suspects that Dutilleux, like Bach, could improvise a five-part fugue if he were called upon to.

After a marvellous performance of his string quartet Ainsi la nuit, in which modal chant is interrupted by spasms of trembling and plucking, we heard Ravel's Sonata for Violin and Cello, in which the two instruments mirror and straddle each other without merging - quite an achievement, and one reflected in the mastery of line displayed by Dutilleux (who was present at the first performance of Ravel's Piano Concerto for the Left Hand).

This isn't to claim that Dutilleux is in the same league as Ravel; maybe not Messiaen, either, though his output is more consistent.

But on Wednesday it was his pieces that produced the buzz of excitement - certainly more so than the opening item, Stravinsky's neoclassical Concerto in D for String Orchestra, which even under the razor-sharp direction of Yan Pascal Tortelier sounded like a piece of metronomic hackwork. Why does Stravinsky so often sound as if he is trying on someone else's clothes? In contrast, Mystère de l'instant, which ended the evening, was simply thrilling. In this work, Dutilleux deliberately relaxes his usual careful planification, and allows the melodies to twist themselves into apparently spontaneous and random shapes.

Maybe it had something to do with the new arrangement, or (more likely) it was the result of Tortelier and the Nash Ensemble's virtuosity, but there was a wildness and a dazzle to the music-making that is missing from recorded versions I have heard.

The work began with delicate wisps and spirals of strings; then the cimbalom entered with a rude twang. The retired couple of Wigmore regulars sitting behind me seemed quite shocked by the experience - a pleasing thought, given that they were not even born when Dutilleux started composing.

And then it was time to present Henri Dutilleux with the Gold Medal of the Royal Philharmonic Society, whose previous holders include Gounod but not, shamingly, Debussy or Ravel. He spoke for a couple of minutes, in halting but correct English, reminiscing about his close friendship with the conductor's cellist father, Paul Tortelier, and thanking the Nash players for giving the best performance of Mystère he had ever heard.

Finally he shuffled off again, waving his stick amiably like Young Mr Grace in Are You Being Served?, as if to say: "You've all done jolly well!" Which, indeed, they had.