After Happy Ideas, Tuesday, and the Orchester symphonique de Montréal (OSM), Wednesday, I Musici took advantage, Thursday, of the reopening of theaters to offer an uneven Haydn-Schubert program posing profound questions of style.
After the tournedos maître d’hôtel (OSM concert, see our digital platforms), pancakes! How is it possible to spread out like this in a Haydn concerto? If Mozart invented A little night musicwhose title inspired the late George Crumb A little midnight musicStéphane Tétreault and Jean-François Rivest played us in the Concerto in D from Haydn, Thursday at 2 p.m., A great afternoon sleep.
The strangeness of the thing is all the more flagrant since Jean-François Rivest had conducted, at the start of the concert, a Symphony No. 59, “Fire” by the same Haydn, well framed, lively (splendid Final), with a well-crafted transition in the Minuet between the theme and the middle section. We could also salute a solid performance of the horn.
It all had the right energies and pulse, and the right weight. Even if the symphony is from 1769 and the concerto from 1783, these scores do not belong to two different worlds as we had the impression in this rehash of the cello concerto by Édouard Lalo. These are princely entertainments, the second also giving a soloist (originally Anton Kraft) the opportunity to shine, more than to listen to himself (quite passably) play.
Schubert saves the day
We have already wondered in Beethoven or Brahms why the so-called “historically informed” perspective of interpretation affected, in the classical period and early romanticism, primarily the symphonies and seemed to pass over the concertos like water over the feathers of a duck. We had an edifying example of this in this concert.
As the violinist Gil Shaham sometimes does, Stéphane Tétreault, after his solo, joined the ranks of the orchestra to play (with commitment and vigor) the “symphonic” work. Expand the sound universe of The girl and death by Schubert is a bet that even tried Gustav Mahler. Indeed, the impact of the work sometimes benefits from it, other times, such as the 2and section of 2and movement, becoming very perilous in terms of unity and intonation of violins I. We are then walking on eggshells.
To win back an audience – because, limitations or not, the room was very sparse in the afternoon – I Musici will benefit from exposing its own talents and abilities as much as possible. In Schubert, the orchestra did it with poignancy and mastery, from the magnificent whisper at the end of the 1er component to the finesse of the dynamic dosages and the efficiency of the final Presto, passing through the start without vibrato, chilling, of the 2and movement.