The concert associating Sergei Babayan and his pupil Daniil Trifonov in the Concerto for 2 pianos and percussion de Bartók had been awaited by music lovers and amateurs for more than a year. No doubt, alas, there were not enough to fill the room for a concert in front of cameras. The appointment which had enough to make the envy of the musical planet turned, in a part of the room in any case, into blood sausage.
Once again the fact of the concert is unfortunately extra-musical. Let everything be very clear here: what we would like most in the world is to dissect this 3e movement of Concerto for 2 pianos and percussion approached Tuesday with as many risks (frantic tempo) as the famous Evgueni Mravinski attacking the Final of the Music for strings, percussion and celesta.
Depression above the garden
But how to speak of that, when the feeling that the concert inspires in a large part of the paying public located at the back of the floor is total disgust. Certainly, we found before us a cohort of the type that, at the concert of Barbara Hannigan, had launched small planes. The boredom of these young people was just as obvious and we were able to admire and hear the subtle cracking of the program sheet transformed into an agitated fan to kill time. These specimens from École Secondaire Anjou apparently paid for their tickets according to their companion who seemed to find their behavior (or antics) the best company. Maybe we’ll ask the two poor old ladies at the end of the row who got tossed around by the back and forth of rare incivility as soon as the Bartók finished then during the encore, in the opposite direction (but who let in again during the music?).
All of this was nothing compared to the occupation of the bottom of the floor that we can suspect this time organized by the institution, because devolved to disadvantaged groups. The problem is that the instructions “turn off your phone” had not been assimilated by this world and that not only did it sound (for a long time) to who better, but in addition it responded. Three times during the first 20 minutes of the concert at least.
“Hello Emile? I can’t talk to you. I’m at the concert. There, the usher intervenes. We reconstruct the scene but it gives something like that. “But hang up!!! “I can’t, it’s a long distance!” Meanwhile, the winds of the OSM play the symphony for winds by Stravinsky under the direction of Hannu Lintu, an excellent rhythmician, but that becomes incidental. The work requires a concentration that has evaporated.
Apart from telephony, applause, pranks, comments and paper games, there was also the sterile cough (at least we hope so) of those we externalize to deceive boredom.
How do you want a listener to immerse themselves in attentive listening? How do you want us to write a concert review?
In the mood of time
We are here far beyond the stage of anecdote and for several reasons. These incidents are the “fact of the evening”. Because they are the ones who must be taken head on. On the question of telephones, Yannick Nézet-Séguin has just undertaken his most important crusade of the year by interrupting Bruckner concerts twice in a row in Philadelphia and addressing the public. On Tuesday, we saw spectators get pissed off at the intermission and speak directly to the troublemakers.
On the question of young fans of paper airplanes and of aeration of the epidermis by improvised fans that “scratch scratch”, it is certainly highly commendable to bring to the concert subjects whose cultural universe seems to be turning max around Drake so that they get bored at cents an hour. But, on the one hand, the 10:30 a.m. sessions are made exactly for that and, on the other hand, their ” coach of life” can choose something other than Stravinsky and Bartók to edify them by making their lives easier.
As for the even more crucial and serious subject, access to music for disadvantaged populations, this can easily be done in season during general rehearsals or on a large scale during summer concerts in the parks without risking screwing up the experience of surrounding customers who have paid $100 or more. You can’t complain about the reluctance or disaffection of your audience and take such an inconsiderate risk of ruining your life. This question must be considered seriously.
Obviously in these circumstances we left at the break. The concert having been filmed, we will watch it in decent conditions later. As for Babayan and Trifonov, they were up to it, especially Babayan, struggling like hell and bringing in the central passage of the 3e movement an extraordinary “mass of sound”. The percussionists Desgagnés and Malachenko were admirable for their incisiveness and truth in their color palettes (there too, a chair slipping on the floor in the basket made more noise at the start of the 2e movement than their subtle sound coating!), in this orchestral enlargement of the sonata which basically has little interest. Again, the square and precise Lintu was the man for the job.
The pianists offered as an encore what seemed to us to be the Barcarolle of the 1D Suite for 2 pianos by Rachmaninoff.