On Saturday, the young 25-year-old conductor and entrepreneur Francis Choinière and the Orchester FILMHarmonique gave a concert shared between The planets by Holst and film scores by Hans Zimmer and John Williams. The evening, more than conclusive, raises deep questions about the direction of the priorities in force in the widening of access to music and what one could call the orchestral or symphonic experience.
A very respectable concert associating the fantastic symphony and the Bolero gave us the idea of doing a portrait of Francis Choinière on Saturday. The FILMHarmonique Orchestra was remarkable in a work (The planets) often perilous in terms of rhythmic transitions. The brass stood out (Jupiter !), the horns in particular, in better shape than in Berlioz, while Julien Bélanger “held the house” on the timpani.
Francis Choinière pulled himself out of the many pitfalls of the score with great clarity, conducting with panache (March), generosity (sonority of the strings) and subtlety (end of Saturndetails ofUranus). Jean Willy Kunz had fun giving the organ a lot of foundation in several passages. Only the dosage and cohesion of the choirs, posted on the balcony in Neptune, posed some problems.
Diversity and Inclusion
In the film music part, we noted the happiness and the voluntarism of the musicians who do not come to “hide” at the FILMHarmonique, but seem to have as much pleasure as an enthusiastic audience (applause after each piece), but very attentive.
So here we come to the real subject of the evening: the public. Very numerous, first, filling the Maison symphonique from the floor to the balcony like an egg, a rare thing these days. But, above all, what an audience! Jubilant observation: young and old; chic people, others in shorts; spectators of all colors, languages and ethnicities; hats of all shapes, two friends in hijabs in the front row, etc.
There is audacity and clairvoyance in Francis Choinière’s approach. There was just one thing missing on Saturday: city councilors from the three arts councils to see this. Because the famous dogma “diversity, inclusion, representativeness”, it was there, in the room, without condescension, without having on stage the slightest compromise on quality or the slightest denial of values (because even musical institutions are aware that concerts where a symphony orchestra accompanies a pop singer or a rap group, even if it is in favor of sanitary measures, does not then bring the slightest spectator to classical concerts).
Funders must certainly absolutely protect the diversity and representativeness of creation. But for the rest, it is legitimate to ask what percentage of this formidable and colorful public will be attracted by the sudden proliferation of works by Samuel Coleridge-Taylor in the programmes? Can we bet on “zero” and ask ourselves, after having lived the formidable experience of Saturday, if this proselytism, as zealous as it is sudden, that we observe everywhere is not in reality a quintessential form of snobbery perpetuating the worst clichés on the elitism of “classical” or “scholarly” music?
One thing is certain. The enthusiasts who stood up for both Holst and John Williams will return at the next opportunity, because this conductor and this orchestra will succeed in establishing a bond of trust with an audience invited to live mixed orchestral experiences. They will thus achieve by deeds what some will perhaps dream of, conceptually, for a long time.