Jordan de Souza conducted the OSM on Wednesday night and Andrew Wan premiered a concerto by Tim Brady. Was it really so important that we completely concealed what had happened that day? A staggering experience for those who thought that musical institutions had become aware that they were an emanation and a reflection of society.
There was no need to travel from Laval Ste-Rose to Place des arts on Wednesday evening to know that February 8, 2023 was not an ordinary day, but a day of mourning, of deep trauma for the greater metropolitan area, the province, the entire country.
The drama haunted everyone’s mind, except those of the OSM apparently. We hadn’t imagined being welcomed on Wednesday evening by a ” enjoy the concert — good concert” in voiceover followed by the entrance of the conductor and the “taa-taa-taa”, the first three notes of the regular program, rather than by an announcement saying that out of solidarity and meditation we were going to hear theAdagio of Barber or the Air of the 3e Following of Bach in homage to the little victims.
The orchestra in society
What is more than a misstep deserves some perspective. Since the murder of George Floyd, on May 25, 2020 in Minneapolis, that is to say in another country and 2000 kilometers from here, there has been a panic in cultural institutions, and in particular musical institutions, to demonstrate a conscience. social. It is a question of demonstrating to what extent organizations take the pulse of the society they reflect. In search of equity and diversity, they suddenly redouble their zeal to hire women and program black composers.
In Montreal, for example, the OSM’s priority during one of the reopenings after confinement had not been to give the public some “hit” from the repertoire, but to play William Grant Still, an African-American composer who so far only interested historians.
In the metropolis, we add a ladle of it, since the city’s Arts Council has established an “equity coefficient” which makes it possible to gauge how organizations align themselves with respect to various priorities, including the “Strategy for reconciliation 2020-2025”.
In short, social and cultural awareness becomes duly calibrated and formatted. But when it is not on the program, when it must be a natural reflex and it must flow in the veins, where is it? This is where the icy indifference to the trauma experienced by Quebec on Wednesday becomes dizzying: we play William Grant Still for George Floyd, we comply with “strategic plans”, but when our own toddlers are massacred at our door by a ram bus, we are not capable of playing the same eveningAria from the Suite in D of Bach to meditate five minutes in music before the regular program!
We would have liked to demonstrate that all this “inclusion, equity and tutti quanti”, which henceforth governs and distorts our programs, is nothing but a splendid remote-controlled nonsense that we would not have taken more eloquently.
The concert
So there was a concert conducted by Jordan de Souza, so important, it seems, that the essential didn’t exist. An opening of The force of fate sharp, a 4e Symphony of Tchaikovsky never playing on the force of the tempos, but much more on the harmonic tension and the fullness of sound. Slow version (except 2e movement, which precisely should be sadder), dug in nuances, well phrased, rather boring and with incomprehensible upheavals (the end).
Between the two was the creation, with the exemplary Andrew Wan, of the 2e Violin Concerto by Tim Brady, a composer with a recognizable style: unbridled inspiration, lots of circular themes, syncopated rhythms, a construction that reminds a bit of a 2e Concerto of Prokofiev modernized before frankly copying the structure of the 1er Concerto by Shostakovich with a cadenza at the end of 2e movement leading to a Final backfiring and exuberant. It’s quite successful and much more pleasant to listen to than the terrible Unsuk Chin concerto promoted by Kent Nagano.