As part of its cycle produced in collaboration with the Palazzetto Bru Zane and in the series of chamber concerts by OSM musicians, Bourgie Hall dedicated its Friday evening to Gabriel Fauré, who died 100 years ago. This perfect chamber program, of high musical quality, filled the room and filled expectations.
The evening bringing together the only Piano trio of Fauré, his only String Quartet, both very late, and the first of Piano quintets was dedicated by the management of the Bourgie Hall to Armando Quiroz, a great Montreal music lover, but also a discreet patron, who, in addition to having attended more than 500 concerts since the opening of the hall in 2011, had friendly and warm ties both with some of the protagonists of the evening, on stage, and several of their listeners, including ourselves.
We must therefore try to detach ourselves from the emotional framework of the circumstance so as not to “overinterpret” what we have been given to hear. But whatever the source of Olivier Thouin’s fervor and inner strength, from the first bars of the Triowe can simply note this and remember a lesson given in the same place by Philippe Cassard and his friends in the 1er Piano quartetor Éric Le Sage on the disc: to a certain extent, Fauré takes it head on, otherwise he overwhelms you.
Inner music
Taking Fauré head-on (and everything, Friday, had a sense of measure, but was, according to a time-honored expression, “proactive”), is also, and above all, being able to shape him without losing the flow of the music. And that is the lesson of Trio, as we heard it, and the lesson of the concert as a whole. Even if Andrew Wan is the “primus inter pares” of the OSM musicians, Olivier Thouin was obviously the linchpin of Friday’s concert: violinist of the Trio1er violin of the formidable Quartetand 2e violin of Quintet. What struck in the Trio was his precise understanding with the cellist Anna Burden, which allowed very precise elasticity in chiseled dynamics. This made the Andantino float in magnificent spheres. Behind the strings, at the piano, François Zeitouni framed the speech with confidence and solidity.
This pianistic framework was particularly suited to Quintet after the break and we thank the musicians for choosing the 1er Quinteta music that is even more lively than the Quartet but very significant in the program, because it opens up to the “inner music”, that of Fauré affected by deafness.
In chamber music, Fauré made a “specialty” of composing Piano quartets. It was when he wanted to compose a third that he chose the quintet formula. Here too, with an ensemble, this time led by Andrew Wan, we first tip our hat to the instrumental quality and accuracy. The warmth of Victor Fournelle-Blain’s presence on the viola was evident from the first notes of the Quartet and contributes a lot to the very pleasant texture of the whole. It is with a magnificent sense of cantabile what is discussedAdagio and with remarkable cohesion that the group structures and clarifies the Final and its thematic recurrences.
As to String Quartet and its meanders, which the group, led by Olivier Thouin, seemed to play out with impeccable lucidity, it is the composer’s final work. Fauré finally chooses “the” genre par excellence that frightened him, the one that Beethoven had brought to a sort of paroxysm, and brings it to an acme of his own language.
Fauré wanted and saw a differentiation between the “expressive and sustained style” of the first two parts and the “light and pleasant” character of the third. The pleasant lightness of the last part always has a certain difficulty in lifting or convincing. Some see the work as a testament, others reject this. Basically, wasn’t Charles Koechlin right when he simply put the Final below the first two movements and writing: “Not that inspiration weakens for an instant, but one would say, in the caravan of life, the overwhelmed traveler, at the end of his strength, infinitely weary, who abandons himself to the destiny. […] This serenity of perfect realization cannot be deceived and we do not forget the pain that it covers. » ?