A WONDERFULLY CONTROVERSIAL VSO CONCERT WITH HÉLÈNE GRIMAUD AND ALEXANDER SHELLEY
Hélène Grimaud (piano), Vancouver Symphony Orchestra and Vancouver Chamber Choir/ Alexander Shelley (conductor): Music of López, Gershwin and Ravel, May 23, 2026.
It has been a while since I have seen a concert that features such an interesting combination of works and gives a critic so much to think about. Conductor Alexander Shelley paired two works with enticing mythological narratives – Jimmy López’s Aino and Ravel’s wondrous ballet Daphnis et Chloé – while French pianist Hélène Grimaud, who has not performed here for 15 years, returned with a rather different reading of Gershwin’s Concerto in F major. All three performances posed particular interpretative questions and puzzles.
Jimmy López is a Peruvian composer who has spent considerable time in Finland. His 14-minute tone poem Aino (2022) was inspired by conductor Klaus Mäkelä and tracks a tragic maiden’s flight into the waves, as drawn from Finland’s national epic, Kalevala. From its haunting opening stabs on the strings, the piece very effectively conjures a hyper-sensual, shimmering atmosphere, full of aquatic illusions and anticipation, later to be punctuated by massive orchestral upheavals as the tragedy unfolds.
While the piece has a seductive dramatic line, the puzzle here is that the work seemingly aims toward the economy and severity of Sibelius but actually starts closer to a late-Romantic canvas such as the Zemlinsky’s ‘The Mermaid’. One could tell this from the first entry of the full orchestra, and particularly the rounded horns, which even affirmed roots in Wagner. The later brass climaxes, however, derive from the stark, lean block structure of Nordic writing, and arrive with the force of Sibelius’s Tapiola. Without some stylistic bridge, these climaxes naturally seemed more imposed on the music than built from it, a problem that one identifies in many types of film music. Some of the final climaxes were awkward too, one in particular where the brass merely proceed up the scale note by note as volumes increase. Overall, this was an entertaining piece but a confounding one: I may have found Lopez’s textural explorations more interesting than his climaxes. Nonetheless, I must say that Maestro Shelley led the orchestra through the score with admirable conviction.
The puzzle with Hélène Grimaud’s Gershwin performance is that it seemed so aloof: her approach felt almost dismissive, refusing to engage with the work’s Charleston bounce, caprice, or tenderness that makes it so charming and loveable. In the opening movement, her lyrical phrases tended to be expanded out with the seriousness of Brahms yet anything virtuosic was pushed linearly at a ferocious clip, perhaps strangely reminiscent of the motoric energy of a Kapustin or Kabalevsky. As Maestro Shelley and the orchestra were following the standard script, I’m not sure they were prepared for this test: after about 5 minutes, the movement seemed to lose direction and become fragmented. The orchestra was slightly too eager and jazzy to accommodate the pianist’s expansions, and slightly too slow to accommodate the rapid-fire outbursts. I think a smaller, more flexible ensemble might have worked better. Besides the absence of delight and charm, Grimaud’s need for excessive speed was the big mystery, and it was the performance's most damaging aspect.
The lovely slow movement, with its tender melancholy and hints of off-centeredness, aims for a greater lyrical profundity. In Grimaud's hands, it emerged as relatively ‘pretty’ but still under-expressed, searching for a communicative pulse but not quite achieving one, and missing its core concentration and soul. Moreover, the staging seemed questionable; the wind band and muted trumpet were simply too remote to reinforce the smoky, nocturnal atmosphere the score requires. The finale offered little relief, dissolving into more relentless drive and speed. Ultimately, Grimaud did not inhabit the work; she merely intervened upon it rather arbitrarily. Her encore – for which she surprisingly made the audience wait – was a light and sentimental bagatelle by Ukrainian legend Valentin Silvestrov.
A pianist must tread carefully with this concerto. Written in the wake of Rhapsody in Blue, it was Gershwin’s deliberate attempt to marry popular Charleston rhythms with classical concerto form. Even the composer viewed it as a delicate, ‘niche’ experiment. Distinguished proponents such as Earl Wild, Eugene List, André Previn, and Garrick Ohlsson have respected this fragility, proving that immense charm and stylistic awareness can make a structurally precarious piece succeed. By stripping the work of its caprice to make it more dramatic and serious, Grimaud essentially caused its architecture to collapse.
I do recall the pianist’s recordings from around twenty-five years ago, where she gave performances of great tonal beauty that elevated her into the higher second-tier of active pianists while still in her twenties. She recorded the Gershwin concerto back in 1997, but it was unfortunately not very distinctive; then, as now, her artistic DNA simply failed to line up with the work’s style. In the years since, she has become heavily occupied with environmental causes like wolf conservation, alongside a self-absorbed scrutiny of her synesthesia – a psychological phenomenon where music evokes explicit internal colors – and her carefully cultivated persona as a wild, rebellious artist. Whether these lifestyle attributes contribute to her current performance style is a matter for debate, but it was certainly remiss of her to prioritize her own internal fixations over the musical ‘colour’ of New York City in the 1920s.
It is always an event when Ravel’s complete Daphnis et Chloé is performed and we should be grateful for it. Alexander Shelley generally gave a refined and intelligent performance, and it started well with the choir nicely modulated and the first climaxes having the appropriate power and reach. The puzzle came after that, as the subsequent dances were set at a strangely low level of characterization and intensity. Even from the early numbers, upward ascending string lines were not pushed out with a yearning expansion, and successive dances were not differentiated enough in mood or emphasis. We therefore had long stretches of refined, flowing playing that were tightly controlled and rather beautiful but which did not have enough meaning or colour. As originally gleaned from Charles Munch and Pierre Monteux, one cannot illuminate these pieces only through textural gradations as, for example, in the softer sections of Ma mère l’Oye or Stravinsky’s The Firebird: the dances must ebb and flow with a rhythmic bend and almost an excess of sensuality and caprice. They must assert, retreat, and then build again. This approach to Part I was not bold enough.
Fortunately, the reading gained greater concentration and in the solo choral passages in the middle, and I think this was a much finer performance thereafter. From ‘Lever du jour’ (Daybreak) – the beginning of the familiar Suite No. 2 – the expression had cunning dramatic shape and communication, and the urgency of the closing ‘Danse générale’ lived up to its exalted standard, setting the seal on the occasion. This was the ‘real’ Ravel, and the Vancouver Chamber Choir did a fine job indeed!
© Geoffrey Newman 2026