Review: All These Lighted Things: Prokofiev, Ogonek & Ravel – Elim Chan

This is the first time I have heard Elim Chan’s conducting, and these performances suggest she is a conductor to watch. She clearly has the measure of this music and inspires performance of energy, finesse, color, and character. As is common these days, Chan creates her own suite (to more closely follow the ballet’s storyline) from Prokofiev’s Romeo and Juliet Suites 1 and 2. So we hear the first three movements of Suite 2, followed by movements 4-6 from Suite 1, returning to the fifth and seventh movements from Suite 1 to complete the story.

While the Antwerp orchestra does not have the weightier opulent sound heard in the Bergen (Litton/BIS), Berlin (Abbado/DG) or San Francisco (Tilson Thomas/RCA) recordings, their playing is terrifically refined and transparent. Occasionally the brass feels reigned in – for instance, in “The Montagues and Capulets” (track 1) the Bergen and San Francisco brass make the dissonant clashes in the opening chords more terrifying. Yet listen to how attentive Chan and her players are at 3’07” in the same movement, as they carefully balance the melodic layering and subtle shifts of color.

Again, the brass could be more brazen in the closing measures of “The Death of Tyblat” (track 6), but the build up to that moment has tremendous drama. The playing in “Young Juliet” (track 2) has a beguiling mix of chaste innocence and sensuality, followed by a charming and slightly bumbling picture of Friar Laurence. Distinguished playing makes “Romeo and Juliet” (track 5) a mini-tone poem – initial shyness shifting to an awareness of strong feelings that eventually blossoms into overwhelming passion. 

The Chicago Symphony Orchestra commissioned “All These Lighted Things” (subtitled “Three short dances for orchestra”) from American composer Elizabeth Ogonek while she was serving as its composer-in-residence. The writing is mildly dissonant but mostly tonal, each of its three movements evocative and beautifully orchestrated. The fast first and last movements feature changing meters and extensive use of percussion, but it was the slow section movement (Gently drifting, hazy – track 10) that I found most affecting. The last movement (Bouyant) is carefree until the final bars where the music unexpectedly becomes darker, more conflicted. Chan and her orchestra play this music with great sensitivity and energy. 

The second suite from Ravel’s Daphnis et Chloé also receives a thoughtful and engaging reading. “Lever de jour” has an engaging mix of clarity and atmosphere, Aldo Baerten’s flute solo particularly impressive. The build up to the climax is well managed without matching the ecstatic splendor of Boulez’s Berlin reading (DG). Once again, Chan and her players take great care over detail and balance, revealing the magical beauty of “Pantomime.” The final “Danse Générale” is also exceptionally fine, with wonderfully fruity woodwind playing. But it is too controlled, never reaching the state of Bacchanalian ecstasy that makes Abbado’s Boston reading so justly famous (DG). 

Alpha’s recording, made in August 2023 at Queen Elisabeth Hall in Antwerp is warm, the soundstage deep and wide, climaxes bloom without any congestion (and the bass drum thwacks have great presence). One senses a strong partnership and connection between conductor and orchestra; unfortunately, in June of last year Chan announced her decision to step down from her chief conductor position at the close of the 2023-2024 season. One hopes the partnership might continue through recordings. 

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