In the heat of the upheaval linked to the accidental disappearance of Boris Brott, last April, his orchestra had paid tribute to him during a concert with a sometimes surprising tone conducted by Matthias Maute. Several months later, the formula presented on Tuesday was calmer and more sober.
At the time of his death, in early April, Boris Brott had already largely drawn the outlines of the 2022-2023 season of his Orchester Classique de Montréal. It is in this capacity that we heard, for example, this Tuesday, the guitarist of Palestinian origin Tariq Harb in the Concierto del Sur by Mexican Manuel Ponce. If he hadn’t planned to program a work by his father Alexander, he probably would have; it was commonplace. It remains to be seen whether the pensum of the Astral vision heard last night was a kind of last stand before the inevitable artistic handover.
But the important thing was not whether or not there were 10 minutes of Alexander Brott on the programme. It was quite logical for a concert entitled “Boris: his life in music”. The important thing on Tuesday was form and arch.
Palpable emotion
The form was the presentation of both the works and the life of Boris Brott by Sylvia L’Écuyer in a way that could not be more perfect: with tact and sobriety, where often everything related to Boris was necessarily bombastic and larger than life. By doing things simply, with the right words instead of accumulating pretensions and inappropriate superlatives, Sylvia L’Écuyer has understood that we touch much more on the heart and the goal.
The ark was very simple. To begin, a musical prayer: the Kol Nidrei de Bruch — or, at least, an adaptation — interpreted with an intense sound fullness and contemplation by Stéphane Tétreault, very accurate in sound and spirit. To finish, West Side Story with the last tune Somewhere by Elizabeth Polese and Antonio Figueroa: “Somewhere a place for us. Peace, quiet and open air await us. […] We will find a new way to live, we will find a way to forgive. “(we will recall for the context of Boris Brott was knocked down by a driver who committed a hit and run). At the end of these two pieces, the legitimate emotion of certain musicians was palpable.
The pretty melodies of Tomson Highway, the Ponce concerto with an over-amplified guitar, the work of Brott Senior, the fact that Antonio Figueroa was not on his brightest day, that West Side Story is not orchestrated for strings and percussion, and that the Kol Nidrei heard was an arrangement are not the major facts of the evening, directed with abnegation by Geneviève Leclair emulator of Boris Brott. We will see again with pleasure Tariq Harb, an excellent guitarist.