The Orchester symphonique de Laval celebrated Monday evening at the Maison symphonique de Montréal the 15 years in office of Alain Trudel at its head: an original concert and excellent performance reflecting the musical integrity of the conductor and the success of its achievements.
” The Galánta dances, the oldest piece in the program is from 1933! Alain Trudel hadn’t done it on purpose, but a little bit, by concocting a menu intended to highlight the various instrumentalists for this first concert of the Orchester symphonique de Laval (OSL) at the Maison symphonique.
Alain Trudel also pointed out that out of six shows this season, four offered a creation. Monday’s was substantial: a Flute Concerto by Airat Ichmouratov, played as a world premiere by Quebecer Robert Langevin, principal flute of the New York Philharmonic.
Destination Hollywood?
The concert started around 7:55 p.m. instead of 7:30 p.m. after an enthusiastic, but rather lengthy preamble from the conductor, who also invited the composer to present his work. Even if Airat Ichmouratov made commendable efforts, listeners should never be allowed to prematurely surprise a creation in this way. We know or we do not know the Russian roots of Ichmouratov. But imprisoning or guiding the imagination of an entire room in a Russian frame of reference is a big mistake. Because it is the references of each one that count.
We found Ichmouratov as we know him: consonant, but less Russian and folkloric and more cinematic in a way. Each movement thus has its “grand deployment” type episodes with rich orchestration. The 2nd part is the most immediately meaningful, the 1st the most disconcerting. With the flute in solo, the dreamlike episodes of the initial part inevitably recall a little Rimsky-Korsakov while other digressions seem to come out of cartoons. It’s a bit like the improbable meeting between the Virgin Fevronia and Harry Potter. As for the 3rd movement, at the brilliant conclusion, one could only admire with what apparent impassibility Robert Langevin chained passages more formidable than each other. In the number of notes, Ichmouratov competes here with the young Mendelssohn (Piano concertos and Concerto for violin and piano).
More seriously, the ease of this composer is such and his sense of the sound image so affirmed that one wonders how it is that Hollywood has not yet spotted him. If the Quebecer Denis Villeneuve realizes Dune, why the music of Dune could it not be from a Quebecer? Apart from performing in Los Angeles, what does Hans Zimmer have more than Ichmuratov, even though a Howard Shore misses his concertos, as we have seen with the Concerto for guitar written for Milos.
Brilliant Hindemith
As regards the symphonic works, Alain Trudel had “pushed” his OSL by choosing the Galánta dances by Zoltan Kodaly and the Metamorphoses on Weber’s Themes by Hindemith. The final of the Chopin Competition deprived us of the OSM concert where these Galánta dances. We cannot therefore compare the two services given 15 days apart. Trudel and his troupes put a lot of energy into it, but with a priority on kinetics (tempos) more than on the shock of accents and sudden changes of rhythms. Everything is not necessarily in speed (except to be called Mravinsky-Leningrad in the Music for strings by Bartók). This Hungarian music must retain a certain stature, like that which Trudel and his troops admirably conferred on Hindemith’s work.
The Metamorphoses on Weber’s Themes giving way to the brass, the concert ended with a fanfare in the most beautiful and spectacular way, with a great work by a composer much more eminent and important for the twentieth century than is usually believed. Trudel and the OSL also did very well with the formidable 2nd movement where the motif circulates between all the desks.
Well done to all the protagonists and to the work done in general, with respect for the mission, for musical integrity. Bravo, too, for the involvement of Trudel and the OSL during the pandemic to try to bring art and music to life. All of them deserved the setting of the Maison symphonique and the musicians seem to have taken advantage of it.