Total Immersion: Henri Dutilleux, Barbican Centre

For those who depict the French avant-garde as a place of unceasing theorizing and the refutation of pleasure, Henri Dutilleux (Métaboles) is the antidote. Throughout this career, he stood outside the overtly intellectualized world of Pierre Boulez’ compositions. Though sometimes challenging, his compositions are almost unfailingly beauteous, with rich, refined orchestration that beguiles the senses even as it regales the mind. In tribute to this uniquely talented artist, the BBC Symphony Orchestra’s Total Immersion will devote a day to his work. It looks to be one of the contemporary highlights of the Barbican Centre’s 2015/16 season.
Proceedings begin at 1:30pm in Cinema 2, with a screening of L’amour d’une femme.Directed by Jean Grémillon (During the Occupation trilogy), a sensitive fixture of the French Golden Age, its soundtrack boasts some of Dutilleux’ earliest pieces. It will be followed at 5pm by a chamber concert at Milton Court from the Guildhall School of Music & Drama, with four pieces that span his career. Look out for the string quartet Ainsi la nuit, a remarkably graceful string quartet, and the flute-and-piano Sonatine.
After a free 6.30pm talk with Dr Caroline Potter in the Fountain Room, the day draws to a close with the BBC SO under conductor Pascal Rophé, ONPL music director and a world-class expert in modern French music. Dutilleux’s vibrant musical imagination was well-suited to the orchestra’s variety. The Symphony No. 1 was one of  his earliest breakthroughs. Over the classical four movements, it plays fast and loose with a dazzling array of forms and musical ideas, never becoming obtuse even as it remains a modernist work. Then there is the dreamlike Tout un monde lontain, performed with cellist Alban Gerhardt, a Wigmore Hall perennial. After the heart-wrenching The Shadows of Time, based on Anne Frank’s fate, the day ends with the groundbreaking Métaboles itself, which explores the fluid transformation of musical ideas. As evenings go, this may well be transcendent.