By choosing to open its festival on Thursday and Friday, registering an attendance of nearly 2,000 spectators on Thursday and around 1,500 on Friday, Lanaudière complied with the needs of the OSM schedule, which was leaving Saturday morning for a brief Korea. After Prokofiev and Mahler on Thursday, Friday’s concert featured Ravel, Dvořák, Bartók and Debussy, much to the delight of festival-goers. Was the level for all that, sharpened, of a start of an international tour?
The opening concerts of the Festival de Lanaudière were therefore, for the OSM, break-in evenings for a tour of four concerts in South Korea, from July 5 to 8. Three of them will resume the program heard on Thursday, that is 1er Violin Concerto of Prokofiev and the 5e Symphony by Mahler. The first concert in Seoul on Tuesday will feature Yekwon Sunwoo as soloist in the 3e Concerto of Prokofiev, surrounded by The waltz by Ravel, the sequel to wonderful mandarin by Bartok and The sea by Debussy presented on Friday.
In Lanaudière, Hilary Hahn played Friday the Violin Concerto by Dvorak. It was an amazing musical moment in various respects, and the Montreal orchestra can be reassured to begin three of its concerts with such an artist. Hilary Hahn remains one of those violinists to whom nothing seems to be able to happen: the assurance, the intonation, the mastery of the works are such that she seizes it and does what she wants. This is what she showed on Thursday in the 2e movement of the Prokofiev. In Dvořák it is again the 2e movement which was the most admirable, in the management of the musical flow and the subtlety of the nuances. In the soloist-orchestra interaction, it is in the rhythmic cut of the finale, chiselled in particular by an excellent choice of drumsticks on the part of the timpanist and beautiful timbres of the clarinets, that we had the most creativity. The small downside with Hilary Hahn is the slight lack of “flesh” in the sound with little “fat” on the G string (the lowest). It’s a little less awkward in the ethereal Prokofiev than in the bohemian accents of Dvořák.
A time of adaptation
We had oriented the commentary of the Thursday evening on the happiness felt by the listeners. After the 3e Symphony of Mahler by Nicolas Ellis and the Orchester de l’Agora at the Maison symphonique, the 5e Symphony by Mahler confirmed this need for the intoxication of rediscovered sound mass. Friday is the very spectacular and thunderous wonderful mandarin which was partially applauded standing up! The public is certainly slow to return, but it certainly wants a great show, the decibel and the big orchestra, of which it has been deprived because of the distancing of the musicians.
Should the enthusiasm for what we have been deprived of for two years hamper any critical listening? Certainly not. By writing that the 5e de Mahler was gaining momentum and stalled from the last third of the 2e movement, we were making it clear that the first 20 minutes were not yet at the level of a “performing” orchestra. This is surprising when you know that the OSM played this 5e Symphony in 2017 and then 2019, in Montreal and South America.
We will find in what is missing (the weight of the 1er movement of Mahler, and, on Friday, the shadows and lights of The waltzthe flexibility of The sea) a possible explanation in our fruitful exchange with the brilliant general manager of the San Diego Symphony Orchestra, Martha Gilmer, who told us in essence: “Rafael Payare is not a demanding conductor; he expects to be given to him”.
It is very clear that we have gone from a Cartesian and controlling leader (Nagano) to a leader who lets people breathe (Payare). Moreover, his aesthetic culture is radically opposed on certain repertoires (a more lively gesture, especially in French music). The critical exercise therefore becomes a puzzle: is the conductor not there, which was our fear on his first concerts of French music, or is he in the process of letting the orchestra come quietly to him, a path that will be all the longer as said orchestra starts from the opposite of its aesthetic spectrum? What element allows, basically, to know where we are without giving a certain time of adaptation to the prerogative?
In any case, the tour in Korea is the first of the tandem. You need one, and it really won’t hurt!