I Musici continued the season of its 40e birthday, Thursday, by inviting Marie-Nicole Lemieux for a Bach program. This concert included the famous Cantata BWV 82 “Ich habe genug” (“I’ve had enough”), the title of which pretty much sums up our state of mind throughout the evening.
According to the rule in force for the 40e anniversary, a musician was invited to present the concert. On Thursday, it was double bassist Yannick Chênevert. He delivered a moving speech that I Musici was a big family and spoke with great joy about his next corn roast with his cellist friends. All this was perfectly touching, in no way presented the concert but already said a lot, in fact.
The first I Musici, that of Yuli Turovsky, almost died from being a “family affair” rather than the institution that this chamber orchestra had become. I Musici has never found the public sickened by the artistic inconstancy of the last Turovsky years.
Bach stiff
So, the family, at 40, can be mature. She can also be quite stiff. As Sanseverino says, in his song The Viagra tango, “with age stiffness shifts” and, precisely, speaking of stiffness, we had our share of it Thursday evening. Let’s say that Bach and I Musici, we weren’t really used to it. Obviously, neither do they! It’s true that in terms of comparing ensembles, Arion’s revival is impressive and the Violons du Roy are in great shape. There, we sometimes had the impression of a head of family saying to his children: “come, we are going to explore the hidden side of Neptune”. We can put the approximations of 1 down to nervousness.er movement of Concerto BWV 1042otherwise well played by Dominic Guilbault, but the stiffness of the movement of the 6e Brandenburg which seemed to be walking on eggshells by breaking two thirds is quite inexplicable at this point, as is the embarrassed pointillism of Air No. 3 of the Cantata BWV 170, where nothing connected or blended. The ensemble barely found a form of pulsation in simpler movements like the Final of the BWV 170.
Marie-Nicole Lemieux did her best in this crude and rigid setting, decked out with an oboe in her right ear for the Cantata BWV 82, while the eccentric position of the English horn (oboe d’amore) in the BWV 170 was much more judicious. The voice of our national contralto is in very good shape. There was no need to “overplay” the final tune of the BWV 170 which you simply have to let flow while pronouncing it correctly (which is what the singer does). But the fundamental, irritating questions raised by this concert are not there and we are very sad to see Marie-Nicole Lemieux involved in such a fiasco.
About elitism
“Ich habe genug” (I’ve had enough) says the Cantata BWV 82. There is a moment, a drop, or a sum of drops, that breaks the camel’s back. This concert brought everything together to bring us to exasperation. Because, basically, what did we have on Thursday evening at Pierre-Mercure? A pure turnkey plea for all those who serve us the refrain of classical music, an elitist discipline cultivating a sense of community. And the highlight is that not only was it shown and proven to us, but what’s more, the chef dared to say it to our faces.
Because the philistine, the uninitiated, someone who is not in musicology at the University of Montreal, where Mr. Rivest teaches, and who is not a clone of Gilles Cantagrel (the musicologist specializing in Bach) he has saw what, experienced what, Thursday evening? He saw a lady wiggling on stage, very comfortable singing things in a foreign language which he barely understood, on a subject about which he had not the slightest idea and about which the organizer had not told him. provided neither lyrics nor translation. The said organizer had also not deigned to plan for the projection of the sung text on a screen or the rear wall.
A program ? Nay: a double-sided sheet, without explanations and magnifying glass not provided. And you want the best? At the start of 2e part, Jean-François Rivest turns around and tells us roughly that this 2e part, it’s a whole super intelligent concept, about which it’s not going to tell us anything (on which we can’t read anything either, since there is, unless I’m mistaken, no PDF of program notes on the site from I Musici), but which he asks us to respect by only applauding at the end.
The “knowers” have decided this on their pedestal. It’s intellectually “crazy”, but the bosses have no right to know what it consists of. The people believed, held on tight and applauded frantically at the end.
Good luck with classical music in these conditions. And you, the family and those in the know, are definitely not going to whine afterwards when your rooms, lacking concerned elites or gogos who want to be made fun of themselves, will be half or two-thirds empty or that, 24 hours before a prestigious concert with the great Marie-Nicole Lemieux, you will be reduced to giving up tickets at the price of a cinema ticket to the Met. Oh sorry… that’s already the case!