Bernard Labadie directed Creation by Haydn on Friday evening at the OSM, a concert repeated on Saturday afternoon. The program is a little strange but the appointment is not to be missed, sacred works becoming rare in symphony concerts.
To have Creation of Haydn programmed on a day of Good Friday, we were about to be ironic in the face of the episode of the creation of the earthworm, in a way the ” loser history of the weekend, when local news served us even better. The great shock of Creation this is the first big fortissimo on the irruption of light: Und es war Licht “. We could have hoped that the choir would put their heart into their work to exult at that moment, even if for once the concert was not sponsored by Hydro Quebec! We had a “normal” effect, even a little flattened, by a certain impatience on the previous sentence, ” Es werde Licht » which can stay even longer pianissimo.
The antipodes
But this is a minor detail compared to the eloquence of Bernard Labadie’s vision at the head of the OSM and of a choir that has little to envy to the Chapelle de Québec. The difference was striking with the presentation of the same work in 2010 at the Festival de Lanaudière under the direction of Kent Nagano, not only on the eloquence of the choral singing but also on the conception. “Nagano defended a Creation quite chamber music and very little theatrical. The service was professional, but not very chiseled and without bias. Since I have been passionate about this work, I have never heard such an insignificant intervention from the timpani to announce “terrifying thunder was rolling from all sides”. The rest was of the same water: competent, presentable and insignificant”, we wrote about the 2010 concert.
This weekend’s concert is poles apart, since insignificance (the word comes up several times in our 2010 notes that have remained in the score) is followed by a real race for eloquence, both through the pronunciation of the soloists (despite two blunders from the baritone on “ fruit bar ” And ” hervor ”) and the choir than by the sound illustrations of the orchestra. Indeed, the orchestra relays the narration at all times, sometimes to the point of caricature (creation of animals, such as the lion, the horse, or the worm).
Bernard Labadie underlines these effects (the ground which “bends” under the cumulative weight of the animals), the OSM taking great pleasure in following him on this terrain, as shown by the easy-drinking passage of the allegro in Adam’s duet and Eve, with exceptional orchestral fruitiness. This Creation alert is served by an exemplary continuo around a superb old piano. In the orchestra we also note perfect old timpani and disciplined strings. The woods had some consistency problems at the start, which will certainly take place on Saturday.
Great satisfaction for the soloists: Miah Persson really has the voice and the charm of the job and Andrew Haji sounds very true, with brilliance. He is a little too reserved in the more intense part of his first tune with chorus (“ Erstarrt…”). The young bass-baritone James Atkinson is one of those who allow a conductor to do without two distinct singers. It is capable of elegant highs and firm lows. However, he gave us a few scares at the very beginning by taking a few notes above.
Great concert. If there are places left this Saturday, don’t hesitate.