The OSM’s organist emeritus, Olivier Latry, returned on Thursday to the console of the Pierre-Béique organ associated with the remarkable pianist Éric Le Sage that readers of the To have to know well through the now legendary recordings of the music of Robert Schumann. The happiness of these musicians was contagious in a concert certainly experimental and uneven, but exciting.
They seemed to be having fun like grown-up children on the stage of the Maison symphonique, Olivier Latry and Éric Le Sage, despite the technical challenges of this unusual organ and piano program. The exhilaration culminated in the arrangement of the Rhapsody in Blue of Gershwin in which, towards the end, Eric Le Sage got carried away as if he wanted to play faster than his shadow.
The quest for the unheard of
The history of Rhapsody in Blue brings us back to Paul Whiteman, his orchestra and his dream of fusing jazz and classical genres in “experimental” concerts. This was exactly the spirit of the evening: a quest for the world of the unheard of and dazzling. These organ concerts at the Maison symphonique, whether they are improvisations on silent films or this kind of evening, should attract more people, because the sensory experience to be drawn from such moments can touch listeners from all walks of life. and of all ages.
First of all, it is an opportunity to hear the Maison symphonique “empty”, that is to say with the canopy up and all the curtains drawn, the back wall clear. The organ sounds admirably in this setting.
The main lesson of Thursday’s concert was above all to remind us that the Montreal instrument is a symphonic organ. As the organ simulated the orchestral accompaniment in the 2nd movement of the Concerto in G by Ravel and in the Rhapsody in Blue, and since it imitated many of the orchestral sound effects in The Sorcerer’s Apprentice, we were able to judge with what accuracy the Pierre-Béique organ fits into an orchestral sound universe. Certain sounds (saxophone!) Were to be mistaken.
It must be said that Olivier Latry is an ace in the genre. If we consider that the sound possibilities are so varied that the number of registers evokes the “mega handyman, special Santa Claus” toolbox of 576 units at Canadian Tire, a kind of patent which ordinary people do not use to the maximum. forty wrenches and screwdrivers, the panoply of sounds that came out of who knows where by Latry in The Sorcerer’s Apprentice is that of a character able to find a common use with more than 500 “bébelles”.
After a kind of appetizer on the concept of the organ-piano duo (the breath against the hammers, Jongen allowing to take its marks), Langlais included an arduous piano part, before a more fusional exercise in Franck’s Prelude.
In the following Fugue, the organ speaks, helped by its ability to bring sounds to life over a certain length. This Franck is very beautiful, despite a more fuzzy “Variation” part, before a rather experimental Dukas, with steep joints (compared to Gershwin, which flows perfectly). It was a Sorcerer’s apprentice funny in the spirit accompanied by its catalog of effects, but with a little circus side, preceding a nice Ravelian moment, where the entry of the organ-orchestra was nevertheless a little strong.
A final word on the mastery of Thierry Escaich’s composition where a haunting motif repeated on the piano suddenly becomes rhythmic and obsessive. It is a work carried out by the piano which prepares well for Gershwin and whose organic continuity of atmospheres is admirably managed in symbiosis by the piano and the organ.
Admirable experience, which was worth the detour.