The Montreal Symphony Orchestra ends its regular season this week by celebrating ten years of the Pierre-Béique organ with dignity. It is also the last series of concerts of Madeleine Careau’s 25-year mandate at the head of the institution.
Rafael Payare, the Venezuelan Lionel Messi of the baton, struck again on Tuesday evening at the Maison symphonique. Afterwards, in concert, the best Rite of Springthe best 2e Symphony by Mahler, the most incandescent Transfigured night by Schoenberg, the most luminous 4e Concerto of Beethoven (with Maria-João Pires) of our music-loving existence, it was time, Tuesday, for the most stunning 3e Symphony from Saint-Saëns… and from a long way away!
From the outset, in the 1er movement, “it really plays”: the orchestra biting into the music, magnificently articulated (the cellos!). Rafael Payare chooses a fairly flat, serene and pensive tempo for the slow movement on a carpet of sound magnificently rolled out by the organ. But it’s the 2e Part, what we could call movements III and IV, which are really out of the ordinary. The III evolves at the maximum limit of the tempo, both for the two pianists and for the woodwinds. It precedes a grandiose and exalted IV, which continues to grow in power, carried in triumph both by the ardent tempos of the conductor and the brilliant registration of Olivier Latry in a sound universe where we admire the stunning richness of the bass. of the instrument.
In this final movement we thought more than once of the “physical” experience of music that Rafael Payare and the OSM had offered us in The Rite of Spring. It was the same thing, the same form of happiness.
Successful creation
But the pleasure of this concert was not limited to this extremely famous work. Denis Gougeon has achieved the feat accomplished 10 years ago by Samy Moussa: creating a formidable organ-orchestra score inspired by this instrument. His fantasy Jubilate! starts off with a swirling start and, in fact, doesn’t let up. Our attention is monopolized by a continuum which does not seek artificial effects and, on the contrary, unearths a very good idea: the complementarity between the organ and the woody material (the struck sound of the xylophones). There are two major passages of this type and they immediately prick up the ears.
Jubilate! is a more blocky, denser work than the Toccata festival of Barber, also circumstantial but more sequential. The two have in common a great virtuoso cadence on the pedals. Jean-Willy Kunz brilliantly mastered the deluge of notes. The OSM organist in residence had no doubt, in a recent interview at the Dutyboasting a major presence of the organ in the programs, the arrival of the instrument has less substantially affected the programs of the symphony concerts than we had imagined in 2014.
We are not talking here about silent films accompanied by improvisations, but about taking advantage of such an instrument to play, precisely, the Toccata festival by Barber (heard once in 2016), the Concert Symphony de Jongen (we waited a bit), but also the Symphony for organ and orchestra of Widor, or to boost Respighi’s programming, renew the Zarathustra Or Enigma variations, whose last variation is so impressive with an organ of such magnitude and even, why not, from time to time play a Organ concerto by Handel.
And then it wouldn’t kill anyone to reprogram the Organ concerto by Jacques Hétu played once in ten years or to take an interest in the compositions of Thierry Escaich. The positive experience of Jubilate! by Denis Gougeon even leaves us thinking that we could ask Samy Moussa if he would like to revisit the genre that was so successful for him, or question someone like Maxime Goulet if the challenge would interest him.
In any case, the all-organ and orchestra concert was fascinating. Shin-Young Lee delighted us with poetic registrations when the space opened up to her and with a spectacular cadence in a Barber, a performance work which appears inventive and playful.
Isabelle Demers proved to be the ideal interpreter for the Concert Symphony de Jongen, approached with great seriousness by the OSM and its leader. This is definitely a score we should hear more often and the organist and orchestra were applauded after the slow, focused and touching movement. In his approach, Demers seeks both the integration of the organ into the orchestra and the enhancement of the “symphonic organ” as it is conceived in this tradition of the Widor, Vierne, Jongen and others type. . There is therefore a sort of alchemy between grandeur and blending which constitutes the whole art of the thing. In addition, the experience is interesting, because it is fascinating to see when the console is on stage.
As a prelude to the evening, Madeleine Careau came on stage alone to deliver her last speech as CEO and thank everyone. A page turns. We would have liked an eminent member of the board of directors or the Foundation to introduce him to the public with a heartfelt tribute and a small, or large, bouquet in thanks for his good and very loyal services. It is not difficult to imagine that this will be done for the last evening, Thursday, but it would not have eaten bread and cost a lot to do it symbolically in full view of the (different) audiences of the three evenings . Madame Careau, who fiercely defended “her” orchestra tooth and nail for a quarter of a century, fully deserved it.