Rafael Payare conducted his first Bruckner symphony in Montreal on Tuesday, a Seventh interesting to comment on. We can speak of a fascinating failure or a promising disaster. What matters are the ferments of what all this could become one day, in 15 or 20 years no doubt.
Let things be clear from the outset: it is not because Rafael Payare’s fast tempos deviate from our habits that there are serious doubts about his performance at the helm of the OSM on Tuesday evening.
This questioning of a certain Brucknerian tradition is moreover the aesthetic base on which the conductor will have to rest and build his striking interpretative singularity. Payare dares a Bruckner rid of a certain bombast which basically makes his approach much more interesting than those who serve us for the umpteenth time a imitation version Karajan or Böhm in less good or who take themselves for great and deep intellectuals.
The 7th of Bruckner in 60 minutes (rather than 67 or 68 minutes usually) it has a legitimacy. The chronological analysis of the recorded versions allows us to pinpoint a certain drift in Bruckner’s interpretation after the 1950s. Just as in architecture, over time, sound cathedrals have become increasingly vast. The archetype of this transformation is the breathing of the 1st movement. The average duration of this Allegro moderato in the monophonic versions is about 18 minutes 30 (cf. Karl Böhm, in his miraculous recording of 1943). Interpretations of the modern era have rather increased to 21 minutes, giving this work the singular allure through two “adagios” (1st and 2nd movements) after which one wonders what is the point of continuing.
Framework and content
Rafael Payare returns to a more sustained musical flow: 18 minutes for the first part and 20 for the second. These tempos, once adopted by Eugène Ormandy for example, are almost “revolutionary” today.
We could then speak of an instinctive leader who feels that the Brucknerian interpretation has been misguided. It formats a new frame. The big, the huge problem is what Payare puts in the frame! And if we talk about failure or disaster, that’s what we’re talking about. In terms of style, we are at the beginning of an embryonic beginning of a ” work in progress ” both in terms of sound culture, nuances, the interweaving of musical ideas and especially phrasing.
Payare’s Bruckner is raw and flat, from the first sentence. Suddenly the title of the concert becomes almost a gag: the “lyricism of Bruckner” is evaded, to absent subscribers. The first problem to settle is the agogic: how sentences breathe, where they come from, how high they rise (and with what intensity) and how they die. This goes hand in hand with respect for nuances. Bruckner sometimes switches to a bar of strong to pianissimo : the effect must be striking, not pruned. We feel such problems of expressive smoothing to who better better in the 1st movement, but also in the Trio of the 3rd shutter, with the flat phrasing. Added to this is a lack of warmth from the violins, as well as the often hard brass (tired horns, in addition, in the 4th movement)
There are as many musical construction sites as there are orange cones in the streets of Montreal. Synthesis and challenge are very simple and very complicated at the same time: do not renounce the more ardent and less pompous reinterpretation of Bruckner, but still play Bruckner, cultivated, in this context!
The concert was dedicated to Antonia Nantel, co-founder of the OSM. A home now also bears his name.