Montreal Symphony Orchestra | Payare ignites Beethoven’s Ninth

The Orchester symphonique de Montréal ends its season in style with the symphony of symphonies, the Ninth of Beethoven, under the direction of its conductor Rafael Payare.

The concert began with Brahms, Beethoven’s heir par excellence. The OSM Orchestra and Chorus performed Nanieopus 82, and the song of fateopus 54, two works with a rather comforting tone that skilfully set the stage for contrast Ninth.

Sticking to just one of the two plays without intermission, however, would have been wiser to avoid stretching the evening, which still lasted more than two hours.

Rafael Payare has a lucky hand in Brahms, whose style he instinctively understands. Instead of making us pseudo-Wagner, like Michael Tilson Thomas earlier last winter, the Venezuelan chef does not sacrifice the line to the legato, which nevertheless retains a delicious mellowness.

The choir, arranged in a semicircle in the backstage basket, takes a few minutes to regain its cohesion due to the distancing still in force. You have to wait for the first fortissimo to hear a real sound paste. If the men deploy a full and warm sound, the female voices are however sometimes too “vibrant” for this kind of repertoire.

Then comes the main course. We feel Rafael Payare inhabited from the first notes. Nothing is shaken up, everything breathes, but it moves forward with constant determination. Each piece of the lush puzzle that is the first movement takes its proper place to form a poignant fresco.

In the second movement, the conductor does not at first go too far into the molto perennial requested by Beethoven, preferring the vertical impact to the race towards the abyss. But with each reappearance of the main theme, it adds a hint of urgency. We would ask for more!

Ditto in the third movement, marked adagio molto e cantabile (“very slow and melodious”), of which he erases the molto but with a quite remarkable sense of singing.

Then comes the formidable fourth movement, where a very temporary but patent problem of balance immediately arises, the first trumpet burying the main wind theme.

The theme of the finale (the best known of the symphony) is also taken with a fairly fast tempo. Even if Beethoven asks allegro assai (“very quickly”), doing it immediately at this speed perhaps removes a certain degree of ambiguity from the discourse. Are we so certain, at this moment, that the final joy will inevitably break out? A bit of suspense would probably have been in order.

We nevertheless allow ourselves to be won over by the enthusiasm of the conductor, who brings with him the choir and soloists for a sparkling finale that sweeps away everything in its path.

Of the soloists, it is the American bass Ryan Speedo Green who stands out the most with his dazzling entry made a little too theatrically, unduly slowing down the conductor’s tempo. But the voice is eminently impressive.

The tenor Frédéric Antoun, who seems to spare his voice, seems weak in comparison in his subsequent solo. Even if they are hardly featured, the soprano Karina Gauvin and the mezzo-soprano Sophie Harmsen give substance to the quartet of soloists.

Orchestrally, the timpani is probably too bright in the first two movements. A more muffled sound would probably have been better. And the oboe often seemed precarious. But the rest of the orchestra shone brightly, especially the strings. An evening of anthology!

The concert is given again this Thursday, June 2 and Friday, June 3, still at 7:30 p.m.