The Orchester Métropolitain is hosting an Australian guest conductor this week, Nicholas Carter, who will conduct the same program at the Maison symphonique this Friday. The concert stands out with the welcome return to Montreal of Karen Gomyo, a Canadian violinist who has been somewhat forgotten lately.
We anticipated listening to this program in the borough, in a church on rue Masson, because of the plethora of concerts scheduled elsewhere this Friday: Arion with Julien Chauvin, the complete Berio of the Quatuor Molinari and the rest of the project Star Wars of the FILMharmonic Orchestra. If you opt for the Metropolitan, know that it will be mainly for the soloist.
Lack of “feeling”
Small disappointment from the outset, since Nicholas Carter debits his presentation of the program in English. Admittedly, we are not going to require of all natives of the Commonwealth that they master our language with as much tact and elegance as Alexander Shelley, but when the individual claims in his speech, like Carter, that he has learned French at school, the least courtesy here would be to begin the speech with “Bonsoir, mesdames et messieurs. Unfortunately, that’s all I learned from my French lessons at school, so I will continue in French…” Everyone would understand and agree.
Fortunately, as a Mozart conductor, Nicholas Carter has more tact. Unfortunately, the acoustics of the church do not make it possible to gauge how sharp the articulation of his Mozart is, but the transitions between episodes with contrasting tempos are made with alacrity and reactivity. Carter gives a lot of tenacity to his Mozart; the emaciated sounds, these are not really his style.
Then enters the scene Karen Gomyo for the Violin Concerto by Glazunov, a pleasant and colorful work which is heard relatively little compared to its ease of access. It nevertheless remains indelibly linked, in Montreal, to one of Kent Nagano’s most unlikely programmatic fantasies during his mandate: the coupling of the Violin Concerto of Glazunov and the Turangalîla-Symphony by Messiaen. This was the second concert in the history of the Maison symphonique. More impossible than that, it’s… impossible.
It was Joshua Bell who played this charming score at the time and Karen Gomyo has nothing to envy him in technical mastery, warmth of sound, richness of the string of floor (the bass of the violin, much sought after by this concerto). A zest of aggressiveness is lacking in the last part of the Final, but it is negligible, and at the Maison symphonique, it will no doubt pass very well. The orchestra will simply have to adjust its understanding of the pulse at the start of the second section, where various sections have been marching in disorganized order for a few bars.
Opera conductor
Having changed places in the church for Pétrouchka in order to have a more precise orchestral sound, even if it means accepting a certain imbalance, we understood that the orchestra probably had nothing to do with the small shift in the middle of the Glazunov. It is that Nicholas Carter, guest of the Metropolitan Orchestra and Yannick Nézet-Séguin, with whom he shares the same agency, is not necessarily an arrow.
The conductor who was assistant to his compatriot Simone Young, then worked at the Berlin Opera alongside Donald Runnicles, conducted the Klagenfurt Opera and is currently principal conductor of the Bern Opera in Switzerland. We have no doubt that with such experience accumulated over the years, he has become a relevant opera conductor, but his Petrushka did not convince us that he was an eminent symphonic conductor.
Nicholas Carter directs the expressive “general characters” of the ballet, rather than dismantling the mechanics to better dominate and propel the whole. Perhaps someone in the artistic department of OM could also have told the young man that it was a little reckless to present himself in Montreal in a favorite score of our musical life, including largely for export , which connects Charles Dutoit and Kent Nagano.
In any case, we anticipated the runaways with the strikes of the conductor’s left foot, but, as for us, there were a few instrumental input gestures that the orchestra often compensated for tremendously. As for what we heard, it was very honorable. But now that we have seen the standard proposal for OM’s guest male chef, we can finally come back to the militant surplus women.