March was Payare month for the Orchester symphonique de Montréal, which toured North America with its musical director three weeks ago and returned Tuesday night with a German post-romantic program at the Maison symphonique. A concert that was worth especially for a Heldenleben of anthology.
The soloist of the evening was the great Bulgarian soprano Sonya Yoncheva, who sang the title role of norma at the Metropolitan Opera in New York just last Saturday. It was therefore impatiently awaited in the Rückert-Lieder of Mahler, which replaced the Four last lieder of Strauss initially announced.
There is obviously nothing to say on the vocal level. The soprano, who appeared on stage with a splendid aquamarine dress, has one of the most beautiful instruments we have ever heard, round, brilliant, warm and supple. Diligently cultivating bel canto between more realistic roles (she also sang Fedora at the Met in January) is no stranger to the singer’s vocal health.
PHOTO MARTIN CHAMBERLAND, THE PRESS
Bulgarian soprano Sonya Yoncheva
We are surprised – and saddened – however that the soprano did not find the time, between two “Casta diva”, to learn her text by heart. After all, we are talking about five relatively short pieces. We can well accept that a singer keeps a score at hand to secure himself, especially when he gives a work for the first time (this was the case on Tuesday evening).
But almost never once did the diva, who came to give great emotional bows at the end, look up from her lectern for us. say the magnificent words of the German poet. Given the surely stratospheric amount of his cachet, it’s downright revolting.
Definitely more professional, Rafael Payare has nonetheless disappointed in the accompaniment of these jewels of the lieder repertoire. Everything is too fast, too voluntary. We can understand with “Blicke mir nicht in die Lieder”, marked “very lively”.
But the rest ranges from “quiet, even” (“Um Mitternacht”, whose initial motif was not breathing) to “very slow and restrained” (“Ich bin der Welt abhanden gekommen”). You just have to let the music flow, taste each of the wonders it offers us. Like this delightful ninth chord preceding the penultimate intervention of the soloist in the twilight “Ich bin der Welt”, which Payare lets slip in an unforgivable way.
We are all the more surprised by this carelessness that the chef knows how to manage these passages, which is not the case for all his colleagues. The proof is given no later than after the break with Ein Heldenleben (A Hero’s Life) by Richard Strauss.
We have a very high-flying achievement here. And this, from the initial theme (that of the hero), which he energizes at will, unlike several interpreters who mysteriously forget the indication “strongly” at the beginning.
One could have wanted something more grotesque, more cackling for the second theme, representing the representatives of this brotherhood hated by Strauss to which the author of these lines belongs. But the rest is candy, with divine solos from concertmaster Andrew Wan and wisely carried away development. The whole orchestra is doing its part, the winds in the first place, with treble to melt from clarinetist Todd Cope.
At the start of the evening, the orchestra offered the very rare heroic opening by composer Johanna Müller-Hermann, a contemporary of Strauss who studied with Bruckner, Zemlinsky and Schmidt and long-time teacher at the New Vienna Conservatory, closed by the Nazis in 1938.
One could very well think of a work by the young Strauss. The melodic and harmonic imagination is profuse, with the use of exotic percussion reminiscent of Salome.
The concert resumes Thursday at 7:30 p.m. and will be webcast later.