This week’s concerts in Montreal were used by the OSM and Rafael Payare as a break-in for a European tour (Zagreb, Budapest, Vienna, Brussels, London). Thursday’s program replaced the Preludes by Liszt Elysium by Samy Moussa, a work premiered by the Vienna Philharmonic at the Sagrada Familia in Barcelona, featured the soloist Víkingur Ólafsson and culminated with the 10th Symphony by Shostakovich. The latter confirms the impressions of the 2nd Symphony of Mahler and the Dream of a summer night : Something very positive is happening at the OSM.
It was a small hidden dream when the profiles of Rafael Payare and Alain Altinoglu appeared in the race to succeed Kent Nagano. If the choice fell on one of these two conductors and if he succeeded in imprinting on the OSM his ardent approach to music, all of Montreal would emerge victorious.
We’re going straight there: Rafael and Yannick are in the same boat. We can therefore legitimately expect to see someone in the south analyzing our musical life by concluding: Montreal, the hottest symphonic city in North America “. It won’t be long.
Shostakovich in the sanatorium
So that’s what’s going to happen if the trend continues and the musical excitement heard in the 2nd Symphony of Mahler and the 10th of Shostakovich persists at this level. From this point of view, it’s a very sharp OSM going to Europe. It is also an orchestra that already bears the first signs of a promising “Payare signature”: the horn section, the first that the conductor has renewed, is finally glorious and worthy of a great orchestra (what a sound in the 3rd Shostakovich’s movement, what a solo from the 1st horn player in Ravel!) and the whole balance of the brass is fairer and smoother, while certain sections (bassoons, incredible in Shostakovich, Thursday) have never played so well. Even the tom-tom seems to sound deep while breathing (and God knows we heard some crooked tom-tom at the OSM, in My mother the goose or the Pathetic)!
The interpretation of the 10th Symphony by Shostakovich de Payare is based on two important things: an intensity and fullness of sound which give the whole a “harmonic saturation”. In other words, the shades piano and pianissimo are not “absences of sound”, they keep flesh, and, moreover, even in the fast tempos (2nd movement) the music does not “jump”. This is what fundamentally differentiates in our opinion Rafael Payare from his famous compatriot Dudamel and makes him, in our opinion, a much more interesting musician. When something accelerates in Dudamel, it very often spins around, the material becomes lighter and he loses contact with the musical base. On the contrary, the 2nd movement of the 10th by Shostakovich, Payare and the OSM is still a sound-saturated musical steamroller.
Throughout the symphony, the gradations, the climaxes are magnificently brought and the conductor constructs the 1st and 3rd movements admirably. It is a shame that this exciting dramatic construction took place in a real sanatorium. Because one of the facts of the evening, already sketched out during the Schiff recital, is the sad return of the pre-pandemic sloppiness in terms of coughing. The situation is in fact even worse, since spectators are asked to observe “respiratory etiquette” and when we know that there is an upsurge in the rate of penetration of the virus, it is coughing to who better than barely 5% of spectators wear a mask. And to think that with such a circus the institutions are supposed to fill up with spectators!
Programming for Excellence
Big, powerful and spectacular 10th of Shostakovich, yes, with a small flat: what is the pulsation of the end of the work, after the great climax? As in the 5th SymphonyPayare seems to be in a strange hurry to get it over with, as if the final breath of the score didn’t find its true breath and grandeur.
The concert started on Elysium by Samy Musa. What intense happiness to hear a great work of the 21st century, played because it is great and not because it fills a box that flatters a funder or conforms to quotas in an approach disguised as programmatic courage.
What makes Elysium major ? The science of orchestral deployment, thus concocted for a concert by the Vienna Philharmonic in the Sagrada Familia in Barcelona. There are therefore long, punctuated chords, a great fullness, even debauchery, orchestral. But there is much more: an incredible success of the work on the scintillation through several desks in the orchestra, but also an almost cosmic climax.
We had raised the question “What is a leader for?” » talking about the 5th Symphony by Beethoven by Osmo Vänkä. All those who have seen or who can get their hands on the creation of Moussa’s work by Christian Thielemann and the Vienna Philharmonic will understand the exceptional contribution of Rafael Payare and the OSM in terms of the dosage of timbres (trumpets too piercing in Vienna), the general fade and the way to lead the score like a magma of molten lava.
It was a priori surprising to see the Icelandic Víkingur Ólafsson in Ravel. The star launched by Deutsche Grammophon is positioned in the very refined and miniature. So we have rather come across it, in concerto, in Mozart.
His Concerto in G by Ravel got off to a very bad start. In a dubious style, kind of bluette or bad Rachmaninoff, completely missing the vigor of the jazzy projections and the frequent breaks. Then all of a sudden, after a third of the first part, everything fell into place. Surprisingly after this strange introduction, the 2nd part was refined, tasteful and very balanced. Having to conduct a more sensual Ravel than usual, Payare brought out relevant orchestral details, without exaggerating the rabble side that Kent Nagano underlined to the point of becoming scruffy. In bis Ólafsson played the 3 Csik county folk songs by Bartok.