“I have always loved Marie-Nicole. It was she who told me that she dreamed of doing the three cantatas for solo viola by Bach with me,” confides Maestro Rivest, at the head of I Musici since last May after a period of interim work.
The singer’s love affair with Bach dates back to adolescence, when she remembers going to askAir on the G string (excerpt from the Suite for orchestra no 3BWV 1068) at a record store on Place du Realm in Chicoutimi, in his native region.
She remembers remaining stunned in her car a few years later listening to Jean-François Rivest conducting Les Violons du Roy in Bach on the now defunct Chaîne culturelle. The “Bachian” meeting between the two musicians was now engraved somewhere in the sky.
“I have no intention of doing my Marie-Nicole Lemieux, of putting on a smoke show,” warns the colorful contralto, who says she is touched to a supreme degree by the music and texts of the cantatas nbone 54, 82 and 170, on display Thursday. “It’s my dramatic nature,” she adds.
Because apart from the serene Cantata “Vergnügte Ruh”BWV 170, there is no laughing in these scores.
” In the Cantata no 82, it is a kind of fatigue from being in our world full of problems, and a desire to yearn for paradise. It is a theme dear to Bach. And the last movement brings us there with joy,” says Mr. Rivest about this work with the most telling title (“Ich habe genug”, literally “I’ve had enough”).
“It has a lot of meaning because we are in times where we need comfort, meaning,” adds the singer, who confesses to having been upset by a recent column by journalist Patrick Lagacé in The Press on the suicide of an elder who did not have access to medical assistance in dying.
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Immediately afterwards, music lovers will hear the Cantata “Widerstehe doch der Sünde”, BWV 54. “This cantata is ‘resists sin’”, continues the conductor. It’s not very popular in 2024, but it has to be translated into today’s terms like ‘resist the temptation to be unnice’ or ‘resist the temptation to just think about yourself’.
“For me, it’s just ‘don’t take the easy way, resist, follow your path, follow your heart’!” adds Marie-Nicole Lemieux. As my mother tells me all the time: ‘You listen to your heart, you do your best, everything is fine!” This cantata is a bit of a “go, go, go, try to do good to those around you!” »
To complete the program, Jean-François Rivest added the Violin Concertoo 1 in E majorBWV 1042 and the slow movement of the Brandenburg Concerto no 6BWV 1051, which will feature musicians from the orchestra, including violinist Dominic Guilbault.
At the Pierre-Mercure room of the Center Pierre-Péladeau, February 22 at 7:30 p.m.
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