The Montreal Symphony Orchestra reunited, Wednesday and Thursday, for the second week in a row, with soprano Barbara Hannigan, although this time in a “minor” mode. Because it was Bruckner who was the real star of this program directed by Rafael Payare with varying degrees of happiness.
The cheers were unanimous after last week’s Hannigan-OSM meeting, which saw the Canadian singer conduct the orchestra and sing (yes, at the same time!) in the short opera for solo soprano The human voice by Poulenc, a performance magnified by live cameras.
Mme Hannigan this time left the podium to the musical director of the OSM for the cycle of songs with orchestra In the half-light by Albertan Zosha Di Castri. The latter, at 39 years old, is already establishing herself strongly in the musical landscape, receiving ever more prestigious orders.
PHOTO DOMINICK GRAVEL, THE PRESS
Barbara Hannigan, Zosha Di Castri and Rafael Payare
The cycle heard this week, with an original text by Tash Aw, was created two years ago by the Toronto Symphony Orchestra, its conductor Gustavo Gimeno and Barbara Hannigan. Lasting around twenty minutes, it displays very dissonant writing where oases of tone emerge here and there. We have more the impression of a deep darkness than of “half-light”.
The orchestra, which makes good use of percussion (five musicians devote themselves to it), is very dense. The voice is no less solicited, with high notes, glissandos, vibrato plays, effects on the vowels… Like a fish in water in this style, Barbara Hannigan goes through the score in a single breath, like possessed.
We almost forget the parasitic noise (a tritone interval) coming from the back of the stall… It is very appropriate that the soprano sings, at one point in the cycle, in the middle of a hysterical orchestra: What’s that? A noise?
PHOTO DOMINICK GRAVEL, THE PRESS
Soprano Barbara Hannigan
The second part was devoted to the Symphony no 4 in E flatcalled “Romantic”, by Bruckner, two years after the conductor had directed the Seventh.
Payare’s main interpretive choices boil down to a sort of sostenuto lively, an interesting option in this music, when some opt more for heavy mysticism or for something more juvenile.
The only real singularity: a fairly fast second movement. That said, after the initial surprise, we get used to this speed which helps to nourish the interest in these Brucknerian lengths.
The fact remains that we were not treated to the orchestra of the best days. We think of the not very accurate high notes of the cellos in their solo of the second movement (the violas did better in a similar moment). But also to certain offbeat brass entries.
For the rest, if the overall direction was generally correct, the conductor managing to create evocative climates, it gets worse when we get into the details, in the little seam between the different motifs of the intermediate voices, particularly in the first and third movements, where everything is not always clear. Would Di Castri’s complexities have eaten up rehearsal time?
Rafael Payare is perhaps not – for the moment – as convincing as a Brucknerian as as a Mahlerian, but there is something just waiting to blossom.