Montreal usually cultivates a good musical neighborhood with the Canadian capital. Friday night’s Orchester Métropolitain (OM) concert was no exception, with an Ottawa conductor and soloist living up to their reputation.
Britain’s Alexander Shelley has been Music Director of the National Arts Center Orchestra (NAC) in Ottawa for almost ten years. One of the best Canadian violinists at the age of 26, Kerson Leong is from the Ontario city. Their reunion on the same stage could only bode well.
Leong has accustomed us to a sensitive playing, a velvet sonority and a disarming facility in the most virtuoso lines. Her Concerto in D majoropus 35, by Tchaikovsky, presented in the first part, once again showed us these great qualities.
We will look for a long time before finding such full highs, such a generous bow. We also feel a real passion throughout the concerto.
That said, the rather lyrical, rather slack approach that Leong adopts may not appeal to everyone. It is, say, more on the side of David Oistrakh than that of Jascha Heifetz, two of the historical interpreters of the work, the first playing it in some six minutes longer than the second (which is really not nothing for a work of about thirty minutes!).
PHOTO DOMINICK GRAVEL, THE PRESS
Soloist Kerson Leong
Without saying that the guest of OM extends, he nevertheless tends to really leave time for each sentence, not to say each note, to sound. With such a beautiful sound, hard to complain.
But the first movement is still an allegro, even if the composer adds the indication “moderato”. So we have a taste for something a little more cheerful, less detailed. Ditto in the finale, called “vivacissimo” (very lively). Shelley’s appropriate accompaniment therefore sometimes seemed clumsy.
The slow movement (not that slow, it’s still an andante) was nevertheless very satisfying. Perhaps not as much, however, as the encore offered by the violinist, the Sonata noh 3 in D minor, known as “Ballade”, by Eugène Ysaÿe, which Leong recently recorded with Alpha. A big moment.
A captivating interpretation
Alexander Shelley had explained at the start of the concert, only in French, the ins and outs of the second part, made up of My Name is Almond Todd of Jocelyn Morlock and the Rosenkavalier sequelby Richard Strauss.
Disturbing moment that this page composed following the suicide, 10 years ago, of this 15-year-old British Columbian victim of cyberbullying. Even more with the sudden death of the composer a month ago.
A magnificent elegy with areas of shadow and light. Follow it with the fairly carefree music of the rose knight however, creates a certain hiatus…
The conductor of the NAC Orchestra, who conducted the Strauss from memory, gave us an uplifting, passionate interpretation, with many contrasts between the different sections. Le Métropolitain, exceptionally led by the excellent solo violinist Oleg Larshin, was quite up to the task.