The Orchester symphonique de Montréal had an excellent idea when it scheduled a series of concerts dedicated to John Williams this week: the room is full and the institution manages to reach a different audience.
The OSM had to do something to occupy this niche of orchestral entertainment music (what the Americans call ” Pops » symphonic) largely monopolized in recent years by the young and dynamic Francis Choinière and his Orchester FILMharmonique.
The music of John Williams is a logical choice in terms of public appeal and artistic filiation, which we exposed in The duty in 2020 in an article titled “Hollywood’s Viennese Connections”. John Williams is the musical son of Mahler and Korngold. It was therefore very wise to start this concert with the main theme of The sea eaglemusic by Korngold for the film by Michael Curtiz (1940) with Errol Flynn.
“Break the party »
As the concerts around the 90th birthday of John Williams (born February 8, 1932) showed us in 2022, in particular the “Concert in Berlin” edited by DG, it would seem that a self-respecting Williams program must have a “classical” concerto. We really wonder why.
The OSM’s choice fell on the one for tuba (1985), but the effect is the same as for the work for cello played in Berlin: that makes the soloist very happy (in this case Austin Howle, the OSM tuba), which is never at such a party, but it is a section of the concert that “breaks the party for everyone, inevitably come for something else.
So is it so hard to guess that people are there for a different repertoire? Aren’t there more obscure film scores by John Williams to rediscover?
A good leader
The chef of the week, Ben Palmer, is a kind of “seasoned English choinière”, notoriously specialized in the discipline of ” live to film », that is to say the accompaniment of the projection of feature films by symphony orchestras in real time. As such, he is familiar with the greatest productions whose soundtracks were written by John Williams. It is therefore an intimate knowledge of the composer, but also of the dramatic workings of his music, that he has forged over time.
Ben Palmer is not the only one to work on this niche and often this musical specialty drains its batch of “directors” of little stature, more or less hated by orchestras. They are quite far from being able to conduct a symphonic concert of a certain breath with the OSM.
Fortunately, Palmer is of a different stamp and this week’s concert is competent and very well done. We know the orchestra is in great shape these days and willingly generous with its sound. All this made for a remarkable evening, perfectly mastered by the guest conductor, even in the most rhythmically devious passages of Harry Potter.
Obviously the brass were very much in value, but a special tip of the hat is also to be addressed to the flautist whom we did not recognize. If he was in the test, he passed it with flying colors.