It is on Wednesday January 12 that the musical year 2022 was to resume with, at the OSM, the 7e Symphony by Bruckner directed by Rafael Payare. Among the elements that connect the current wave and the outbreak of COVID-19 in our lives in the spring of 2020 is the readiness of symphony ensembles to offer music to console souls. Brahms takes the lion’s share there.
Quebec musical institutions, which worked against all odds in 2021 to impose paid webcasting as a complement to their business model, are making up for the lack of indoor concerts by returning to free access on the Internet.
One year later
The Montreal Symphony Orchestra was the first to make this decision. Since January 6 and until the 31st of this month, the OSM is rebroadcasting the very first concert recorded by Rafael Payare after his appointment, broadcast on January 10, 2021. “The conductor was in no way intoxicated by the exaltation of the moment.
If Rafael Payare is likely to surprise us, it is more by the behavior and the maturity of his interpretations ”, we wrote while commenting on this concert. At the time, it was possible to compare the interpretation of the 1D Symphony of Brahms by the Venezuelan chef with that of Kent Nagano, filmed in Sweden. This is no longer the case, the second video having been withdrawn. On the other hand, for those who are interested in the comparisons, the former musical director of the OSM is now present on YouTube with a 3e Symphony de Brahms performed by his Hamburg orchestra and filmed in May 2021. The interpretation follows an extremely particular approach, of which we leave you the surprise.
If the 3e Symphony of Brahms by Nagano is of interest, is that this work is the main course of the concert which will be offered from January 14 and until January 23 in the evening by the Orchester Métropolitain.
This is one of the components of the Brahms complete by Yannick Nézet-Séguin given in 2021.
This show saw in the first part the debut of the conductor as a concert pianist in the 12e Piano Concerto by Mozart. By making its concert available for 10 days, OM is preparing to vary the offerings even more.
Since webcasts open us to the world, we must point out as an exciting point of comparison, for the 3e Symphony de Brahms, the concert given by 60-year-old veteran Herbert Blomstedt, broadcast in May 2020 and performed by the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra in Amsterdam.
Draw me Vivaldi
This week, Arion Baroque Orchestra was to welcome violinist and conductor Boris Begelman. The concert had to be reconfigured. Still devoted to Vivaldi, composed of several works for recorder performed by Vincent Lauzer, it will be conducted by Hank Knox and captured without an audience on January 15. The originality, here, is a call to all to put into images the emotions aroused by the music of Vivaldi. Arion has created a Spotify playlist and invites the public to email or post their visual creations to them indicating the artwork the design was made on. The images will be incorporated into the film’s montage, which will be webcast (paid) from January 29 to February 12, 2022.
An update on the great comeback of heartwarming webcasts would not be complete without the following: five years after their unforgettable Montreal concert, Mika and Simon Leclerc were together again on October 23, 2021 at the Philharmonie de Paris, this times with the Orchester national d’Île-de-France. The concert Symphonic mika is available free of charge on the Philharmonie de Paris website. It will bring back great memories to many Montreal music lovers.