The 2024 edition of the Montreal Chamber Music Festival will begin on Thursday, June 13 with the well-attended arrival of Kerson Leong at Bourgie Hall and will be distinguished by two concerts by the Ehnes Quartet on June 21 and 22, where the group will perform by the great Canadian violinist James Ehnes will perform in concert the “Razumovsky” quartets by Beethoven then intended to be immortalized on disc.
If Nicolas Ellis and his Orchester de l’Agora do well, with their “Gala de la Terre” without competition on Wednesday, the rest of the musical week in Montreal will be absolutely crazy. Two festivals, Montreal Baroque and the Chamber Music Festival, both open Thursday evening. Baroque Montreal, to which we will return, will be held until Sunday, while the festival designed and directed by Denis Brott will continue until Sunday, June 23. Added to this is the end of the Classica Festival and, on Sunday, the conclusion of the Orchester Métropolitain season, with the 6e Symphony by Gustav Mahler.
Dictated by location
Organizing a musical event is not easy. Before the pandemic, almost nothing happened between the 1er and June 15. The Chamber Music Festival was held at the end of May. All festival-goers remember epic evenings at Saint-George Anglican Church opposite the Bell Center if by chance the Canadian qualified for the series! “We tried to find a niche for the festival. It’s very difficult,” Denis Brott tells us. Ultimately, the determining element was that of the room: “In Montreal, we don’t have a chamber music room like an orchestra room, with a place to park and a place to have a drink. That’s the Place des Arts, but there’s nothing for chamber music there. »
Denis Brott remembers that initially the idea of the complex which was to accommodate the new hall of the Montreal Symphony Orchestra (OSM) was also to house the conservatory and a 500-seat chamber music hall. The Maison symphonique project which later replaced it has nothing to do with that. “Since, in my opinion, the Oscar-Peterson room is too far out west, there are still the Bourgie room and the Pollack room. » It is therefore a question of availability of the Bourgie room which dictates this calendar.
James Ehnes came to the Festival for the first time at the age of 17. He now comes back every two years. “When I do programming, I call on my colleagues and ask them what they would like to do or who they would like to play with. » This is how the programs for June 21 and 22 were designed, the “Razumovsky” quartets by Beethoven, and on June 23, the Brandenburg concertos of Bach at the Maison symphonique. The latter will be presented by a group of friends of James Ehnes and Denis Brott in a very original configuration: the public will be seated on stage around the musicians facing the closed room.
Find your audience
Even the presence of such prestigious musicians does not lead to miracles: “I can tell you about the pre-sales and we see, as usual, that the most “popular” concerts, Gershwin and Klezmer, attract the world, while the so-called “serious” concerts with Quartets by Beethoven sell less well. » Even if “we don’t need to be a soothsayer to imagine the quality we’re going to have with the Ehnes Quartet”, Denis Brott is more fatalistic than distraught. Pre-sales are at the usual level, he knows that the public now buys at the last minute and that “passes for the Festival are no longer sold”. Its internal rule is to cover its artistic costs through ticketing. As for webcasts, which were fashionable three years ago, he doesn’t do anything that “isn’t 100% covered by sponsorship, because there is no revenue.”
The Festival attracts people with free concerts at midday. But there too, no illusions. “We find an audience that doesn’t come in the evening. What I thought with this formula was to introduce chamber music and encourage attendance for the evening concerts. But this is not the case. Those who go to free concerts do not let themselves be tempted by a paid experience in the evening. »
Deep down, Denis Brott says to himself that he should have known: “I was born in Montreal, I knew Mayor Drapeau, the Maisons de la culture, etc. Mayor Drapeau’s idea is very good. Unfortunately there was another effect: people expected to attend a concert for 5 dollars or nothing. It was the same thing with the “Dollar concerts” of the OSM at the Forum, in the past, 20,000 seats at 1 dollar: this aspect of making things either free or symbolically affordable does not make you want to go to a concert by paying its true price. Except for a megastar. If we pay $125,000 for Yo-Yo Ma, then we’ll fill the Maison symphonique. But for the rest, nothing is guaranteed anymore. »
The 2024 edition will begin Thursday June 13 with the well-supported arrival of Kerson Leong