Yannick Nézet-Séguin and the Orchester Métropolitain opened their season with a concert Echoes of the Earth of Élisapie Isaac and Daphnis and Chloe by Ravel. The best intentions sometimes raise the most serious questions.
Quite logically, Yannick Nézet-Séguin began the concert with a strong tribute to Lise Beauchamp, who recently passed away. Lise, OM oboist, was in a way the “mother” of the orchestra, watching over everyone and caring about everyone. The “funeral march” of the Heroic Symphony by Beethoven was performed in his memory, and a scholarship bearing his name will be awarded to support the musical journey of a young talent in the spring of 2023.
The great work on the program was the emblematic Daphnis and Chloe by Ravel. Yannick Nézet-Séguin delights in vigorous passages, and the end of the work, also known as the 2e After, is a beautiful moment of collective exaltation. What happens before is not always so complete. Right from the start. The timpani is dp, and the basses, dpi, but we don’t hear the timpani. This is then repeated in the passage “in front of Daphnis and Chloé embracing, the crowd withdraws”: the chorus enters dpbut these are the instruments (dpi) that we hear. It also lacks breadth in the dynamic contrasts and therefore the breadth of breathing, which gives rise to sensuality. Many passages are timorous, and the “Grotesque Dance of Dorcon” lacks caricature. As usual, as Yannick Nézet-Séguin takes up the work elsewhere, when he returns to direct it in five or ten years, his approach will be transformed. OM had the very good idea of projecting the argument of the ballet on the screen.
Symphonic Elisapie?
The highlight of the show was the first part. Elisapie Isaac had composed two Echoes of the Earth, songs that François Vallières orchestrated. All of this starts with the best intentions, not to mention that the project fits perfectly into the “Strategy of reconciliation 2020-2025” axis advocated by the City of Montreal and helps to attract the good graces of its city councilors who lined the stands. .
Élisapie’s inspiration is wise and superb. In two parts, she first introduces native expressive modes (modes of vocality, drums), then, in the irresistible “Una” section, her poetry comes to grip us. But why does what we hear behind this inspiration seem to bother us? Does the orchestra accompany or lead the flight of the 1er “Qanniuguma” section? And, above all, how does this puffiness, which sometimes takes on the trappings of John Williams, help the expression of the message? One then thinks of the orchestration of Wedding by Stravinsky (pianos and percussion). An innovative device should have relayed, through original colors, the singularity of the expression.
But no, and the reason is very simple: it was an order from OM, and all the OM musicians had to be kept busy.
One thinks then of a press release released this week by the Canadian Music Center arguing, among other things, that “the history of Canadian classical composition is a colonial history”. Doesn’t this point of view, which can be discussed, raise the question of this “symphonic consecration” that, under cover of good feelings, we promote?
At the end of this reflection, the question is formulated like a boomerang: to “symphonize” Elisapie in this way, according to the constraints dictated by the sound structures of an orchestral model historically inherited from the European 19th century, is this a recognition, a consecration or a new form of appropriation?
Élisapie’s “symphonization”, except in too brief moments when we had the impression of hearing the wind or feeling a bird fly, did not convince us. Worse, it generated this very singular malaise.