Finally associating Charles Richard-Hamelin and Marc-André Hamelin on stage was a fun idea on paper. In practice, Saturday evening at the Fernand-Lindsay amphitheater, this intuition of circumstance earned us some very beautiful music.
Saturday’s concert at the Fernand-Lindsay amphitheater in Lanaudière had attracted more people than those of the OSM the previous week. Favorable weather and a key day (Saturday) would tend to show that the public is perhaps as fond of a “musical outing” when the time suits them as of a symphonic debauchery. This would also perhaps lead to considering the return of prestigious piano recitals to the amphitheater: a type of concert that we have not seen in Lanaudière for a long time.
Les Violons du Roy playing Mozart therefore attracted more audiences than the spectacular 5e Symphony by Mahler from the OSM, unless it was the astonishing poster associating Charles Richard-Hamelin and Marc-André Hamelin for the first time. For those who don’t know, the two artists are not related, but share a mutual esteem, even if the type of technique and musicality would probably not make them meet normally. Charles the introvert digs into the works through his torments in search of a poetic sound, while Marc-André generally chisels them with vivacity with his prodigious technique.
Pre-Schubertian Mozart
The alliance can do a lot of good Sonata K.448where the song of 2e movement rises on a soft sound bed, but where, moreover, the sharpness and the articulation bring a lot. It is moreover this presence and this cutout which, while everyone naturally turns to the Lupu-Perahia version, make the clear added value of the recording by Christian Zacharias and Marie-Luise Hinrichs (EMI-Warner ), infinitely more lively artists.
After having made us fear, at the beginning, a lack of preparation, the duo recovered very well. Aesthetically, the Quebec pianists have opted for a vision rather close to Lupu-Perahia, with a pre-Schubertian tone in a dreamy Andante. It was also interesting to hear Charles Richard-Hamelin’s Bösendorfer piano, more “full”, especially in the lower register of the keyboard. That said, the work would benefit from being played in a hall like the Maison symphonique on two pianos that are as similar as possible.
The duo, assembled as a kind of challenge on paper, actually got along magnificently, as also proved by the Concerto K.365, a composition two years before the sonata and then played by Mozart and his sister. Les Violons du Roy and Jean-Marie Zeitouni, who replaced the ailing Bernard Labadie, played the original version, Mozart having revised the orchestration afterwards. Same aesthetic as in the sonata in a beautiful spirit of jubilation at 3e movement, but with an orchestral accompaniment with sometimes tense sonorities in the oboes (it was placed in the symphony). The two pianists offered as an encore a substantial tango composed by Marc-André Hamelin, with subtly audacious and spicy harmonies.
In the “Jupiter” SymphonyJean-Marie Zeitouni, whose return had been since 2017 (it should have been also for Bernard Labadie — these musicians, and this orchestra, being the archetype of those who had borne the brunt of Gregory Charles’ priorities, very ephemeral predecessor of the current artistic director Renaud Loranger), meticulously applied the precepts of the historically informed movement: very restrained vibrato, plentiful repeats, tonic advance, flexible phrasing.
Two flats in our eyes. It is useless, in the introduction, to “remove sound” to add a layer afterwards: it is an effect that sounds fake. Moreover, in Bernard Labadie’s vision, as we heard it at the OSM in 2017, the ultimate truth of the “Jupiter”, the bursting of the coda (after the entry of the horns) with a splash of light from the trumpets is infinitely more patent and spectacular than what we heard on Saturday.