In association with the Old Music Studio of Montreal, Arion Baroque Orchestra presents until Sunday a program of Grands Motets from the time of Louis XIV. We note, above all, the beginning of a new era in the history of the orchestra.
Arion, which welcomes its founder Claire Guimond to its ranks this week, is in a phase of evolution. A turning point was initiated with the appointment of Mathieu Lussier. Less spectacular, but extremely significant, has been the appointment, in recent days, of Noémy Gagnon-Lafrenais as principal violin.
Speech limits
The musician’s assumption of duty was accompanied by a veritable cultural revolution: long and meticulous tuning sessions, especially before the concert. Certainly the seriousness accorded to intonation had improved with the arrival of Mathieu Lussier but the era of baroque folklore to the tune of “after all, it’s old, it looks like if it rubs a bit” seems in the process of being put away. As such, the small friction of the introduction of Delalande does not lend itself to consequence. This is part of the difficulty of art, and was not the result of carelessness.
Nice surprise also to hear the sonorous flesh of the tutti of the singers of the Early Music Studio (SMAM). We noted, for example in the Regina Caeli by Clérambault, that Mathieu Lussier seems to have inherited from his musical experiences with Bernard Labadie the art of bringing choral lines to life with intensity and sensuality, in a very sustained sound.
What differentiates the SMAM experience from contact with Arion is the exposure of individualities. And there, some singers are real potential soloists and others not at all. Special mention to Normand Richard and Philippe Martel, solid bass. Big drawbacks for Haitham Haidar, high-cons with ill-defined timbre and having little impact in the balance and Marie Magistry, whose vocal limits and dryness have already been described here. Unfortunately, the first launches the final fugue “Et lux perpetua” of De profundis by Delalande and the second sees the same role played in Lully’s equivalent work.
Aesthetic accuracy
The choice of scores was admirable with the remarkable idea of introducing the program with an orchestral work by Charpentier and of juxtaposing De profundis by Lully and Delalande, the second 25-year-old younger brother of the first and very close to the Sun King (the famous Symphonies for the King’s Suppers). It is interesting to see that Delalande’s De profundis begins according to the outline of the last section “Requiem” of Lully’s; low-rise solo then taken up by the other male soloists then the tutti.
In all these works, the configuration and aesthetics chosen by Mathieu Lussier for the Bourgie room were very adequate: a nourished and well-blended sound, sustained lines, correct tempos (astonishing experience of listening to Delalande by Michel Corboz, eloquent in its own way)
The director of Arion introduced us to his new favorite instrument, the snake, which supported song lines until the end of the 19th century in Quebec, he said. Listening to the duet presented in the preamble, the instrument seems difficult to master. But to follow Alex Belser in Henry Du Mont’s Nisi Dominus, we say to ourselves that the sound material brought by the snake in the polyphony is more interesting than that of the Octobass at the OSM.
On the other hand, the concert did not fail to end with a strange incongruity. After the succession De profundis by Lully, Symphonie en D by Du Mont and De profundis by Delalande, Mathieu Lussier thought it wise to add a (otherwise very beautiful) Regina caeli by Clérambault.
The De profundis ending with a “Requiem” and Regina caeli being a work of joy (laetare) and exultation, it was therefore the great premiere of a “Requiem-Alleluia”! Kent Nagano had also done edifying by playing Beethoven’s Emperor after Shostakovich’s 15th Symphony.