Montrealers had flocked to the Olympic Stadium in large numbers for the concert “In the colors of the Americas” concocted by Rafael Payare and the OSM, intended to “celebrate the richness of the musical repertoire present on American territory for centuries, from Canada to Venezuela “. In the end, the evening was disconcerting, fairly dull and without momentum or fervor, despite a few outbursts.
Unless I’m mistaken, it was the OSM’s ninth free concert on the Esplanade of the Olympic Stadium. It is necessary in the batch a less good vintage. Well, that was the one! Not necessarily in terms of assistance. It was full in 2014 and 2015 with 40,000 spectators. The years 2016 and 2017 had seen 30,000 come to the stadium, an attendance that fell to 25,400 in 2019 due to threatening weather. It was certainly better on Wednesday, possibly between 25,000 and 30,000, the OSM contenting itself with saying through the voice of Pascale Ouimet, head of media relations, to have “no figures other than that it was full”. A comparison with the “timelapse” of 2015 published on the Facebook site of the Stadium and which can still be found on the Internet, would make it possible to quantify this plenitude.
An evening with challenge
We owe it to the flagship musical institution to have initiated this great free mass meeting here. It is interesting to see him start the Virée. Except that this beginning remains very conceptual, the Spree starting 48 hours later. We were delighted to hope for a fervor, a spirit, a joy in this evening. But the concert did not lift. It has remained as a kind of “concept on paper”, flameless, unable to generate popular momentum, unsuited to simply and easily touch the heart, except when reciting a poem and presenting an indigenous song. by Natasha Kanapé Fontaine and Jeremy Dutcher. Given the ambition of the program, a work by a Quebec composer would not have been unwelcome.
The challenge of this evening is major: it is the only time of the year when the institution can have an audience of tens of thousands of people and try to convince them that it is worth taking an interest in music. classical in general and to her in particular. So, of course, we understood that our new chef is Venezuelan. He will however have to deploy a titanic amount of work and treasures of imagination to convince us of the merits of the programming of certain works.
The concerto for varied trumpets by the Cuban Paquito D’Rivera and the symphonic poem by Evencio Castellanos work on a model that has been proven elsewhere and which can be schematized as follows: the last 3 minutes are brilliant, colorful, catchy, even irresistible. The big problem is: you have to stuff yourself a more or less painful quarter of an hour before to be entitled to it. But all this is so minor, so laborious: why waste the annual chance to bring together tens of thousands of people to promote these musical anecdotes?
Nothing against the South American repertoire of course: there are little gems (shorter) in the CD Inca Trail Connections by Miguel Harth Bedoya on Naxos, this season we will hear the fabulous Cantata criolla by Estevez, there are wonders on Camargo Guarneri and maybe one day Payare will program the Piano Concerto by Brazilian Hekel Tavares.
Different register, same error. Having the miraculous soprano Jeanine de Bique in Montreal is certainly wonderful. If only for 5 minutes, because 5 minutes of Jeanine de Bique is worth Barbara Hendricks’ entire discography! But The town is lit from the cycle Honey and Rue by Previn, it is a program for hardened specialists in American music! In such a context, the essential tune was Summertime, and too bad if it’s boat.
So, Rafael Payare, who at the start of the concert conducted a rather sequential and lackluster New World Symphony Finale, tried and partially succeeded in raising the breath with West Side Story, which followed the joyful little number of the trumpeter Pacho Valdes and his friend Hector Molina, packing the end of the concerto of Paquito D’Rivera. But all this was quite insufficient.
Perhaps a survey of the public will refine the general feeling. In any case, first improvement project, it is clear that, for the music, the sound system of the Stadium is not worth that set up at Mount Royal last week: garish level, swollen bass, hard and summary string timbres. For this, Rafael Payare could be a perfect adviser, because the amplification of Rady Shell in San Diego, where he also works, is perfection itself.