Paris, in bad weather
5 min read
A week of rain, three late-night rehearsals, and the strange clarity a soaked overcoat brings to the last page of the Ravel.
Paris in March refuses to pick a season. Which turns out to be exactly the right weather for Ravel.
Between rehearsals I kept ducking into the Orangerie to sit with the Nymphéas. By the third visit I realised something embarrassing: I had been playing the Ondine opening like a watercolour when it actually wants to be an oil. Thick, impasto, reluctant.
The old cliché about French music being about light is half-wrong. It is about the resistance light meets.
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