The highly anticipated concert by Vincent Dumestre and his Poème harmonique musicians, Saturday at Bourgie Hall, did not go quite as planned due to the relative indisposition of mezzo Eva Zaïcik. Reframing the program at the last moment, the musicians still delivered a coherent show, as if nothing had happened, on the theme of the music of Louis XIV at the time when the royal court was still in session at the Louvre.
It’s certain Javanese, placed on a cloud of string pizzicatos, the evening ended, just to prove that Serge Gainsbourg’s timeless tune had become a classic. Baroque tunes and modern songs come together in the latest disc of the Poème harmonique, My lover from Saint-Jean with mezzo Stéphanie d’Oustrac (Alpha). In this mixture of genres, eminently “jaw-breaking”, Stéphanie d’Oustrac, whom we usually appreciate a lot, really does a lot, in a “chanterière interpreter” style, to the point of becoming a bit caricatured.
For example, it would be very interesting to hear Rose Naggar-Tremblay in the same exercise, and, even if Javanesedoes not appear on the disc, Eva Zaïcik proved that we could find a clean and fair tone that we do not feel in the vocal and expressive productions of the aforementioned disc.
Attitudes
Writing about people who “do a lot” brings us point blank to the delicate subject of the day. Just as, when commenting on a record, the presentation and sound recording are part of the overall impression, in a concert, the musicians’ appearance on stage is an element of the appreciation of the evening. And here, we cannot ignore the exaggerated body language of violinist Fiona-Émilie Poupard.
We spoke 10 days ago in the D Magazine with OSM concertmaster Andrew Wan on the role and attitudes of the concertmaster of an orchestra. “I move in a more targeted, more surgical way. I don’t need to be as demonstrative as I once was,” he said. Saturday, not only Mme Poupard had no section to lead (she was alone with another violinist at her side), but, what’s more, it was Vincent Dumestre, the conductor! There are, outside of each person’s personality — more or less extroverted — questions of tact and moderation that must be mastered or framed.
Furthermore, while we were told that the mezzo was ill, it was rather the bow, particularly in the first third of the concert, which sometimes seemed hoarse and scraping on the strings. Less “scruitch” and less ecstatic bodily expression would have done the trick! Even if contortions, postures or throwing feet inspire some listeners, if they disrupt the concentration and distract the attention of even a substantial minority of others, this is a major fact of the concert and of a hindrance to his potential magic.
It was enough to see to what extent we could plunge back into the heart of the music when the harpsichordist Camille Delaforge or the violist Lucas Peres and Vincent Dumestre on theorbo took the floor alone, for example to close a piece or begin a transition to the next piece. It is these moments, often magical, that we will remember from the evening.
Erudition
The arrival of foreign performers is justified when they bring a “plus” compared to what we have here. Instrumentally, there were almost none, because with the personnel renewal at Arion, Noémy Gagnon-Lafrenais was easily on par with Poupard. She also moves, but to train her section and, to be polite, “differently”.
So, the plus of the Poème harmonique is obviously the tact and erudition of the great Vincent Dumestre, so often present in our end-of-year charts and a true living encyclopedia of the music of the second half of the 16th century.e and all the XVIIe century. It is therefore his program, on the young Louis XIV at the Louvre (therefore before Versailles), and his luminous explanations which convinced. Its way, too, of dealing with the limits of its singer tired by the successive flights of the North American tour.
Eva Zaïcik’s guts, leading her to sing even though she was diminished, saved the balance of the evening, since the succession of instrumental and vocal pieces was important, as was the juxtaposition of tunes and songs ( the two anonymous — The Married Hunchback And When I led the horses to drink) admirably chosen in opposing emotional registers.
Nothing appeared of the indispositions of Zaïcik, a superb mezzo with a rich and even timbre, who ended up on the Piangete occhi dolenti of The Egisto by Francesco Cavalli, Dumestre’s last recorded lyrical project, on the Château de Versailles label. Throughout the evening, we noticed the musician’s in-depth work, not only in the interpretation, the instrumental quality, the nuances, the historical knowledge, but also with the soloist on period pronunciation, ground on which he has been recognized since his collaboration with Benjamin Lazar on The bourgeois gentleman by Lully and Molière.