Review of Riopelle symphonique | Like a star game

Show event of the Montréal en lumière festival, Symphonic Riopelle looks like a specification in search of a raison d’être. A pleasant creation, but not very striking.

We speak, in English, of a elevator pitch. Or in French, if you prefer, a lightning pitch. In one way or another, the expression designates the maximum time that the speech that you will offer to someone you want to convince of the relevance of your idea should last: the time of an elevator ride. It is well known: what we conceive well is clearly stated, but also briefly.

Unless you have Place Ville Marie at your disposal, it would be difficult to encapsulate the ambitions of Symphonic Riopelle in a single elevator ride. Dreamed up by artistic director and producer Nicolas Lemieux (the buzzing brain behind the triumphs of symphonic baby And symphonic harmonium), the album, which has now become a concert, aspires to celebrate the legacy of the legendary Quebec painter in 5 musical acts, each corresponding to a pivotal period in his life.

Five acts that composer Blair Thomson, a regular at these experiences building bridges between different art forms (he was behind the Revamped Symphony and of The OSM to the rhythm of hip-hop), orchestrated and arranged from raw material consisting of seven songs by Serge Fiori.

For an instant ? Dixie ? like a sage ? No. These are rather songs recorded after the dissolution of Harmonium, inevitably less known pieces taken from his first solo album (1986), from Fiori-Séguin’s only album (1978) and from his comeback album from 2014 .

Also add to this repertoire a composition inspired by a millennial mantra (the Gayatri mantra), recorded in a rather confidential way in 1994 when the idol of a generation was still far from the spotlight. Are you still following?

Arts visuals first of all

What did we come to see and hear on Friday evening at Salle Wilfrid-Pelletier? It wasn’t clear at all. On stage, the Orchester symphonique de Montréal (conducted by Adam Johnson) was joined by the Petits Chanteurs de Laval and the choir of Temps Fort, for a total of nearly 140 musicians. But how to translate, in this context, the powerful movement that runs through the paintings of Jean-Paul Riopelle, whose centenary this event marks?

A simple and effective answer from the director and scenographer Marcella Grimaux: thanks to three screens, placed above the orchestra, on which more than a hundred paintings and sculptures appeared. Clever process to show the work as a whole, on the left, then to slide in close-up on its details, on the right.

It will quickly become very clear that the focal point of this show would be more visual art than music, always pleasant, sometimes grandiose, but rarely breathtaking.

Whilesymphonic harmonium magnifies melodies that any Quebec music lover can hum on command, Symphonic Riopelle is inspired by songs that only Fiori’s disciples know, which immediately diminishes the emotive-memory potential of such an enterprise. And why did you choose this repertoire anyway?

How was this the most appropriate music to highlight Riopelle’s work? These are all questions to which we could only answer by conjecture.

Like a game stars

Interspersed between the different acts, audio excerpts from interviews with the signatory of Refus global give flesh to the character who, otherwise, will remain evanescent. Full of humor (“When I paint better, I’ll do less thick”, he replies when questioned about the large quantity of paint he put on his canvases), the Riopelle that we can hardly hear to be embodied in this often ethereal music, which generally only does an honest job of soundtrack.

The fifth act titled Aeternitas (1980s-1990s) will undoubtedly be the most moving, with its white geese which came to life on the screen and which evoked the cycles of life. The Sanskrit of the text of the Gayatri mantra clashed nevertheless with the universe of Riopelle, a creator who was not, as far as we know, particularly versed in oriental wisdom.

It is therefore with the impression of having attended an NHL all-star game that we came out of Place des Arts. Friday night, the Wilfrid-Pelletier scene had only high-calibre players, but the stakes remained too elusive for emotion to set in.

Tribute to Rosa Luxemburgthe monumental fresco by Riopelle that can be seen at the Musée des beaux-arts du Québec, is a work whose vitality is renewed with each glance, while Symphonic Riopelle freezes its subject in the past. We gave birth to a painter, we should perhaps be satisfied with looking at him.

Symphonic Riopelle is presented on February 18 at Place des Arts and on September 8 and 9 at the Grand Théâtre de Québec