Opening concert of the Orchestre Métropolitain | An outstanding Bruckner

This is the beginning of the 25^e Yannick Nézet-Séguin’s season at the Orchestre Métropolitain (OM). To do this, he turned to fundamentals for the back-to-school concert since, as he himself recalled, it is the Symphony n^o 9 in D minor which he had chosen in 2002 to take his first steps with Bruckner, a composer whose complete symphonies he and the orchestra were to record – at Atma.

As in 2002, the conductor concluded the symphony – unfinished – with the Te Deum by the same author, as in the creation in 1903, a path however little taken nowadays.

There Ninth is not the most accessible or the most popular compared to the Fifthof the Seventh and, above all, of the Fourth. While the cataclysmic Scherzo wins us over from the first go, it is nevertheless surrounded by two slow movements of about twenty minutes each which often give the impression of going round in circles, despite several passages of undeniable beauty. It is not for nothing that Brahms described the Austrian composer’s symphonies as “immense symphonic serpents” and that many conductors have not hesitated in the past to take out their pair of scissors to “arrange” them before the audition!

Nézet-Séguin thought of his program as a vast ceremony, and that is why he asked the audience not to applaud until the very end. Unlike in 2002, when he began with the motet Christus factus est by Bruckner, he this time started with a score by a native composer, as he has been doing for the last four years for the first concert of each season.

After Barbara Assiginaak’s vibrant orchestral kaleidoscope, Elisapie’s folk and Cris Derksen’s cello experiments, we were treated to a short work for choir and orchestra by Andrew Balfour, a Cree from the Fisher River Nation in Manitoba who grew up in a music-loving non-native family. He is best known as the director of the Dead of Winter Choir.

Her Mamachimowin (The Art of Praise Singing), created five years ago by the Toronto Mendelssohn Choir, sets Psalm 67 in Cree. In the form of an arch, the work begins and ends with whispers from the choir, before the arrival of an imperious motif in the cellos. The truly choral part, beautifully dissonant (one thinks of Whitacre) and skillfully written, blossoms with battering rams from the lower strings (Mother Earth according to the author).

Directly linked, the symphony showed what a great Brucknerian Yannick Nézet-Séguin can be. The first movement was indeed “solemn, mysterious”, full of grandeur and realized with a remarkable sense of architecture.

The second, the Scherzo, was for his part almost as “agitated, lively” as one could wish, even if some conductors of the past (Furtwängler, Abendroth…) have shown that one could go even further, unlike many more recent colleagues who strangely weigh down this piece. The tempo used does not prevent the OM conductor from bringing out the “marcato” side of the main theme. The trio was on the contrary ideal in its freshness and lightness.

One could imagine a slow movement a little more “slow and solemn” (indication of the score), but the musician conducts it with such a smooth legato and such a sense of orchestral alchemy that one still willingly buys it!

THE Te Deumagain chained, allowed us to hear, in addition to the Metropolitan Choir, an impressive series of American soloists, who agreed to spend more than an hour on stage before opening their mouths (therefore without being able to warm up before their performance). The most exposed is the tenor Limmie Pulliam, recent Radamès at the Metropolitan Opera in New York. The voice is perhaps a little too muscular, but one cannot accuse it of lacking solidity. The bass Ryan Speedo Green is excellent in his solo course.

While it is difficult to judge the work of mezzo-soprano Jennifer Johnson Cano (a part often used as “filler” in vocal quartets…), soprano Latonia Moore charms with her luminous timbre, despite small intonation problems in the passage (around E-F sharp) in the “Te ergo quaesumus”.

The choir distinguished itself by a round and warm sound, which is what one would expect in a score by a Catholic and Austrian composer, unlike some dry and stripped-down British versions.

Nézet-Séguin conducted all this with great accuracy, managing to combine speed and power (“mit Kraft”, “with force”, Bruckner asks!) in the fast movements. Bravo!