A few weeks after the young cellist Victor Julien-Laferrière, we found at the Bourgie room the French cellist dear to the hearts of Montrealers, born here in 1967, Jean-Guihen Queyras.
Without taking anything away from Julien-Laferrière’s remarkable young talent, it is a princely artist who reminded us on Tuesday evening of what the greatest masters were made of, those who go beyond the contingencies of the instrument to move into another universe.
This other universe is using an instrument to cultivate a kind of philosophy through sound. This art has the immense merit of being universal and of being addressed to all. Everyone can come and drink at a Partita by Turk Ahmet Adnan Saygun (1907-1991) or at the 1st Suite of Britten for what suits him: varied atmospheres, sound moments, which sometimes border on the infinitesimal (the filigree melody of the Bourdon de la Following de Britten) or more intellectual constructions.
The listeners who watch for the “musical moments” are not disappointed, because they are innumerable, as jubilant as in the recent recording of the Sonatas for violin and piano of Beethoven by Zimmermann and Helmchen (BIS) Bach’s Sarabande which arises from the Courante, the pleasure that Queyras displays in concluding his movements as on small pirouettes (Saygun) or his supreme art of transitions, for example towards the coda in the 3rd movement of the Sonata de Barrière with Stéphane Tétreault.
Of his 2018 Bach, we said that Queyras “aspires to bounce back more than to bind. He thinks less of making the instrument resonate than of doing battle with matter. He amplifies contrasts and scrutinizes nooks and crannies of sentences. “He is a totally calm and relaxed artist, who has rediscovered the taste for pleasure and the sense of the game, which we have rediscovered this week.
Princely, also, in his attitude, Queyras thanked Stéphane Tétreault for being released to come and play with him. The duo were accomplices, efficient and eloquent in a rather rare and very charming repertoire.
A special mention for the inclusion of the work of Saygun which, much better than in his symphonic scores recorded by CPO, succeeds here in the musical reunion of East and West.