The OSM’s first concert at the 2024 Festival de Lanaudière marked Mélanie Lacouture’s debut as the institution’s chief executive officer. Conductor and orchestra duly saluted her arrival in office, with a concert that was not only brilliantly composed, but performed with heart and commitment.
The first major event of Friday evening at the Fernand-Lindsay Amphitheatre was the wonderful form and disposition of the Montreal Symphony Orchestra, which delivered high-quality performances, marked by their ardor, overall cohesion and careful finishing.
This remark seems to be obvious (“well yes, it’s the OSM”…), but for those who have frequented these places for two decades, there was something different. Despite an undoubtedly high level, the OSM-Lanaudière concerts usually had a mostly end-of-holiday feel, not to mention the extras who replaced several regulars. On Friday, the atmosphere, on the other hand, seemed to be “chic-we’re-finally-playing-again!” This pleasure was communicated to the audience.
Distinguished guest
The second happiness was due to the intellectual, philosophical and musical content of the program. Opening with the initiatory Magic Flute (certainly not chosen for its entertaining and comical aspect), infinite variations of timbres and colors with Orion (symbol of gigantism, therefore of what is beyond us), strength of the themes and leitmotif of Wagner in the supreme renunciation of the god Wotan and other “Death of God” with Zarathustra.
The great German baritone Matthias Goerne came to embody Wotan. Less stentorian than many other incumbents in the history of the role, he gave a noble humanity to a scene that demands a lot of it, since Wotan here separates from his daughter Brünnhilde, whom he plunges into a deep sleep on a rock surrounded by flames.
We will remember the admirable emotion of the words of resignation and renunciation: ” Denn so kehrt der Gott sich dir ab, so küsst er die Gotttheit von dir » (Thus the god departs from you and, with a kiss, takes your divinity from you), words that precede Wotan’s call to the god of fire, Loge. Rafael Payare and the OSM relayed with clarity what the music says about the feelings and thoughts that collide in this brilliant scene.
Resonate
As soon as the opening of The Magic Flute, There were some interesting and relevant things happening in the orchestra, with fine string playing and woodwinds very much in evidence, despite the rather large number of personnel.
A more difficult jewel (3 minutes of a simple presentation would not have been useless) at the heart of this first part, Orion (2003) by Kaija Saariaho (1952-2023), one of the eminent orchestral compositions of the 21st centurye century, is like an infinite diffraction of sounds from a block. We can thank Rafael Payare for introducing Orion in its entirety in three movements: Memento Mori, Winter Sky and Hunter. He thus takes the opposite view of a galloping trend, advocated in concert by conductors such as Mäkelä, Vänskä, Lintu, Peltokoski or Saraste, and which aims to isolate the contemplative 2e movement, Winter skyfollowing a 2013 revision.
This segmentation makes this third of Orion the “perfect contemporary alibi piece, digestible in 10 minutes”, but Orion is much more than that, and its summit is the three tutti fortissimo from the end of Memento mori. Payare understood that they have the double advantage of making us think about the effect of resonance and sound path in Saariaho and of creating absolute magic by diving into a pianissimo impalpable, in Winter sky. By taking their time and scrutinizing timbres and dynamic gradations, Payare and OSM far surpassed the recording ofOrion by Eschenbach and the Orchestre de Paris.
We know our conductor’s affinity with the music of Richard Strauss. Zarathustra was no exception to the rule. Payare takes away the pomp and grandiloquence from Strauss, while preserving the magic of mystery (section combining double basses and cello). But what matters to him are the impulses and their outcomes. Throughout this process where he gives nothing away (wonderful musical tension), the conductor sculpts with full force an orchestra that gives him everything.
It was once again one of those electrifying experiences in a work that we thought we knew well. A splendid concert.