First conductor victim of the closings linked to COVID-19 in March 2020, with a major concert canceled at the OSM, French conductor Louis Langrée began, on Wednesday, during a resounding concert, a recovery that we hope will be definitive.
Think for a moment of those times when you felt like you had found the true taste of things. The subtle power of a raw milk cheese, a marrow bone nonchalantly accompanying a perfectly cooked rib of beef, a small pinch of Guérande fleur de sel on a large scallop gently browned on a drizzle of hazelnut oil.
Well, the 7th Symphony of Beethoven by Louis Langrée and the Orchester symphonique de Montréal this week, that’s it. It’s exactly that. The music in which we bite, because there is matter and taste.
Timeless
What is matter and taste in music: it is sound and harmonic tension. To simplify this last concept, we will say that it is the way in which a sound saturation (like a saturation of colors in photography) can fill a space of time (or a surface, in the case of a photo print). The 7th of Beethoven by Louis Langrée it is a photo with bright colors mixed and complementary in a frame large enough to allow them to be distinguished and enjoyed.
In this, the French conductor’s Beethoven is timeless and totally free from the effects of fashion which now make all interpretations, or almost, alike. What is fashion? It is the primacy of rhythm, of tempo. Breaking free from fashion means not being a slave to “rhythmic stress” to let the music unfold.
Louis Langrée, in the 2nd movement, sculpts with his hands circulations of musical themes between the desks. In the 3rd movement, he contrasts the sections sharply. The slowest is like an echo at the entrance gate of the symphony. In the Final, the generally heard tension gives way to an elasticity and a real growing and nourished collective jubilation. The music in full swing.
Admittedly, in the 1st part one sometimes wonders why a vision of such clarity, never agitated, does not benefit from an opposition of violins I and II on stage. But everything is so “healthy” that we forget the grievance to enjoy the moment.
Obviously it is not from such a conductor that we will learn the importance of managing silence, the pause and the influx between movements, something to which Kent Nagano was totally insensitive and impervious. The 2nd part is chained in suspension, the memory of the echoes of the 1st (no time for the public to cough) and Langrée preserves the tension between the other movements without rushing.
Excellent soloist
One can find this approach very “traditional”. Supported by a timpanist with the perfect choice of sticks and a flautist who seemed to constrain his usual vibrato, this vision is above all extremely musical. And we would gladly ask the spectators present since when they had not heard (apart from 3rd Symphony by Payare) the OSM sound like this.
The concert started with a Prelude to the Afternoon of a Faun very cultured, supple, Langrée seems to consider that the indications of the “a little animated” type are true and not due to an excess of modesty on the part of Debussy. Yet it works devilishly well when you dare to animate a little more and push the pianissimos into other entrenchments.
Simone Lamsma really deserved this invitation, because she has already saved the OSM by replacing Veronika Eberle at short notice in Dvorak in Lanaudière. She was even more convincing on Wednesday in Bartók, especially as she always proved to be just and pure in her intonation. Its sound asset of a radiant chanterelle (the high string) was confirmed again at the end of the 1st movement, magical. In this concerto, already, the density and cohesion of the orchestra was surprising for a group that had not played for a long time. Excellent harmony between soloist and conductor and remarkable restitution of a delicate score in an impressive concert performance.