Even if it sounds like a lie, it's been a month. That is, the time to bid off the 85th edition of the Quincena Musical. And because it couldn't be otherwise, the scheduled concert to end this festival has been a show full of incentives for melodies.

To begin with, the French Radio Philharmonic had not been active for some time in Donostia-San Sebastián. Although in the 1990s he was more than once in the program of the Quincena Musical, the truth is that he had not come to San Sebastian for too many years. It's a good team.

On the other hand, the Argentine cellist Sol Gabta is today considered one of the best soloists of his instrument. In addition, he played an unscheduled concert in recent times, the cello concert of Èdouard Lalo. And in short, the program of this last concert, in general, is a really delicious program for anyone who wants to savor the delicacies of the orchestrated works.

The concert started with Prélude à l’après-midi d’un faune de Debussy, where the director Mikko Franck was able to extend the entire palette of colours that this suggestive music offers to the public. The work was a great pleasure in its ten-minute duration, thanks to the excellent soloist flute and wonderful combinations of wood and harp.

Following French music, the first part of the programme was completed with the concert at re minor for the Txelo and the Lalo Orchestra. In the Prélude Gabta he displayed his beautiful sound in the initial touch, a melody of the cello in the triads, where the abrupt entrances of the orchestra force and help the soloist increase his energetic and passionate tone. It was beautiful the transition to the second topic, a lyrical piece, and the reinterpretation of the initial theme, which led us to the terrible end of the movement. In the curious Posterior Intermezzo, in a combination of slow and scherzo, Gabta sang the initial part, full of contrasts with its varied harmonies, and then enjoyed dancing the Spanish touch of the Scherzo, where the flutes and the rest of the woods were a perfect complement. The two watched endlessly, and the complicity of the orchestra and the soloist was evident. More significant was the slow introduction of the last song Allegro vivace, which led the rest of the movement.

In the second part, we were able to hear Ravel's first orchestral play: Shéhérezade, ouverture de Féérie. He composed it in 1898 and was not very successful at its premiere. It was published many years later, in 1975, and then it became known a lot. This work announces the delicacy of the composer, with great Russian influence. A beautiful piece that had a magical interpretation of the orchestra of Radio France.

And to finish the great concert of the Quincena, Radio France played for me the greatest orchestra play of the 20th century: Fire Bird Suite by Igor Stravinsky. Few works have an excellent orchestration of this suite. It's a fire, as the title says. Stravinsky poses an immense sound cosmos in which we can perceive the effects of Ravel, its characteristic orchestral color, Wagner, its post-Romanesque chromatism, the impressionist harmonies of Debussy or the mystical melodism of the Russian school.

Director Mikko Franck did not disappoint the public. From this great orchestra he was able to extract the thousand nuances he needs to convey that intense and magical impulse of the work Bird of Fire.

As a tip, a fragment of the Finnish composer Sibelius, cold and penetrating, that cut our breath.