It is with a Ninth Symphony of Beethoven packed with a lot of energy by Rafael Payare that the Festival de Lanaudière 2023 launched Friday evening in a Fernand-Lindsay Amphitheater filled as in the good old days.
At first glance the program is boat. But Lanaudière had not presented the Ninth since the concerts of the complete Beethoven by Paavo Järvi in 2007. It was therefore fair game for the organizers to surf on the popularity of the composition to launch the 2023 edition and relaunch the Festival at the same time, while 2022 was by no means the page turned on the pandemic that everyone was hoping for. Now we are clearly back to a festival mood with the attendance to match.
If for the Festival, this Ninth was a first for 15 years, for those who follow Rafael Payare, it was a repeat compared to the closing concert of the OSM’s 2021-22 season. Prior to this concert a year ago, The duty spoke with the chef about this emblematic work. We had synthesized his vision by speaking of the “return of the guts and the soul” compared to the “intellectual abstraction” of Kent Nagano in this score.
This is exactly what we experienced again in Lanaudière with, above all, a frenzied Finale, truly explosive, and a 3rd movement in cantabile undoubtedly a little more free and upbeat this time.
Evolutions
The conductor’s vision remains very constant overall, but so does the level of achievement, unlike what happens when Yannick Nézet-Séguin revisits a score. This is where we can really still hope for a margin of qualitative gain. Because there is still a lot of expressiveness to be gleaned through careful attention to nuances, especially in the 1st movement. Rafael Payare established his tempo relationships, his intellectual conception, but when he resumes a work a year later, we expect him to refine things, not to “rush into the pile” in the same way.
The winnings came from the Festival choir, prepared by Simon Rivard. The choristers sang just as well, even the perilous passage for the men (“seid umschlungen…”), with many more consonants than that of the OSM in 2022 prepared by Mr. Megill. And what’s more, we bet they rehearsed in French…
As for the soloists, it was Byzantium! We know Gordon Bintner (back in great shape) and Julian Prégardien, the very great Evangelist, very happy to have, with Payare, someone who leads the march at a musical tempo and not “pseudo musicological” like powder of escape. Both the mezzo Fleur Barron and, above all, the astonishing soprano Vera-Lotte Boecker, simply perfect, both unknown here, are to be heard again as soon as possible in Quebec and in major jobs.
Before the Nintheveryone has complicated their life a little with the Lux Aeterna by Ligeti. Festival-goers because it’s not easy. The Festival because the hubbub of latecomers held back by the congestion of the parking lots was not conducive to this repertoire. The singers because it’s a headache and Payare taking a rather slow approach by making successive layers of entries that tried to aim for the right intonation. The whole thing walked on eggshells for lack of finding its natural pulsation and, therefore, the interweaving of the different vocal inputs and sound tiles.
But as far as the concert as a whole is concerned, this departure was exhilarating and we are impatiently awaiting the sequel.