[Critique] The luminously prodigious Violons du Roy

The concert of the year in Montreal may have taken place at the beginning of March. But not sure if it’s 5^e Symphony of Mahler at the Maison symphonique, because the performance of the Violons du Roy under the direction of Nicolas Ellis on Friday at the Bourgie hall was simply prodigious.

We will soon have to write the reports in capital letters; you know, the code in electronic communications when you want to speak loudly, even shout. So let’s shout: the concerts conducted by Nicolas Ellis at the Violons du Roy or at the Orchester Métropolitain are not yet completely sold out, but those who are absent are very much wrong. Here’s why, and since we have to underline things in broad strokes, let’s go.

The sacred cows

Anglo-Saxon critics have a very pedantic way of talking about them in their reviews, as if the prism of the history of music were shining through their person. For once we are going to follow their example, because it will allow us to set the record straight and to situate things in a meaningful way.

In 1977 or 1978, in my city of Strasbourg, a huge record store, Fnac, had just opened. One of the very first records I bought there, as a teenager, was that of a rising star in orchestral conducting, Riccardo Muti. It was his fifth recording and he led the famous Philharmonia in the Symphonies No. 25 And 29 of Mozart. Muti recorded this disc for EMI at the age of 35. Muti was the ultimate young chef in the world in the second half of the 70s.

Nicolas Ellis is 32 years old, and his 29^e Symphony of Mozart presented with the Violons du Roy Friday is, culturally, in sensitivity, richness, inventiveness, accuracy of colors and polyphonic balance, a hundred cubits above what Muti recorded in 1976. This result, Ellis does not he achieves not because he bends to a baroque orthodoxy, but because he bases his interpretation on a deep classical culture which manifests itself, for example, at the level of the phrasing.

Le Violons du Roy presented the same symphony 24 hours after Rysanov and I Musici. With I Musici, Rysanov provoked events, atmospheres. With the Violins, Ellis does not rush anything, as evidenced by the much more linked phrasing of the 1^er movement.

It should be noted that 32 years was the age of Yannick Nézet-Séguin in 2007, that is to say a year before his accession to the Rotterdam Philharmonic Orchestra. At the same age, Nicolas Ellis has nothing to say against his glorious elder. Quite the contrary.

Sobriety

There 29^e Symphony of Mozart which was to close the concert left room for that following the ballet Don Juan by Gluck. What a great idea, in this Don Juan, to project drawings and the summary linked to the extract that we hear. If this very eloquent sequel to Don Juan made a good impression, it ended on a whole new level. We were indeed at the height of the revolutions of the Heroic Symphony or Rite of Spring. Because this final scene of Don Juan is neither more nor less than the birth of the Sturm und Drang » music. Nicolas Ellis gave him a relief holding fury.

For this concert placed under the aegis of the Age of Enlightenment, Nicolas Ellis had decided to juxtapose the opposites in the first part, with a Rameau placed under the sign of exacerbated contrasts and magical orchestral colors (flutes in “Tender air in roundel” ) and one Cello Concerto in D by Haydn played by Cameron Crozman with great sobriety. We had very big reservations about Stéphane Tétreault expressively overplaying Haydn. No risk with Crozman, who remains of an imperial distinction that does not come from detachment, but from a real style. As an encore, the Canadian cellist played the Sarabande No. 4^e Suite for solo cello.

After one 5^e Symphony dazzling Shostakovich, Nicolas Ellis has just given us one of the finest Mozart symphonies heard in 20 years in Montreal, a Gluck and Rameau worthy of Bernard Labadie, and an impeccable Haydn. 32 years old ? Won’t you be next time?

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