Classical music in a rock ’n’ roll setting
Amplified Concert mates classical content with trappings of loud rock-and-roll show
Amplified Concert. For most classical fans, this will look more like an audience advisory than a marketing slogan.
Gunshots will be heard. Show includes strobe effects. Or partial nudity. That sort of thing.
Yet “Amplified Concert” is unabashedly the title of a program presented in the Bell Centre on March 2 under the auspices of Montréal en lumière.
“Classical music with the scenery and staging of a rock concert,” reads the promotional material. Amplification guaranteed.
The featured ensemble is the Orchestre symphonique de Québec under the baton of David Martin, an adjunct professor at the Université de Montréal whom some will recognize also as a former trombonist around town. More than 50 musicians are promised, which is a big band by pop standards but on the small side for a symphony orchestra.
Of course, symphony orchestras are not normally boosted by electronics, let alone adorned with rock-show lighting effects.
The idea is not so much to create a hybrid as to feed classical content into a rock production apparatus and see what comes out the other end. The target audience comprises those for whom amplification and light shows are a given and the Bell Centre is as much a music venue as a hockey arena.
“This show really democratizes classical music and allows masterpieces to be presented in a different way to a whole new audience,” says Daniel Gélinas, who created the concept with the Evenko impresario group.
Repertoire? Bartok’s Music for Strings, Percussion and Celesta, followed by Bach’s The Art of Fugue.
Kidding. The promised works are the first movement of Beethoven’s Fifth, Wagner’s The Ride of the Valkyries, Tchaikovsky’s 1812 Overture, the Montagues and Capulets sequence from Prokofiev’s Romeo and Juliet (which has been appropriated many times by heavymetal bands that identify with its pounding rhythms).
All solid stuff. Ravel’s Bolero starts quietly, but as many listeners will recall, gets louder. It gets louder promptly in this edited version, which moves from the initial flute solo to the boisterous (not to mention hazardous) trombone solo with only one intervening sequence.
Loud, we should bear in mind, is relative. Responsive concert halls like the Maison symphonique might seem loud enough to classical fans, but not to pop audiences who are accustomed to hearing pillow songs belted out at 110 decibels.
Amplification does not always have a benign effect, but Martin has confidence in the good judgment of the audio team taking care of the Bell Centre event.
“I am sure that traditional listeners will enjoy these works played at high volume,” Martin writes in an email. “I remember quite well listening to (the famously forceful) Philadelphia (Orchestra) in Salle WilfridPelletier back in the ’80s, and how the rustling of the pages of my program was louder than the orchestra onstage!”
There is a guest soloist, the crossover soprano Natalie Choquette, who will sing “Ebben? Ne andro lontana” from Catalani’s La Wally. Apart from the classical rep, we hear an instrumental medley of the music written by the late Neil Chotem for L’Heptade, a 1976 album recorded by the rock group Harmonium. Pierre Gagnon made the selection and Martin is working on the arrangement. Boomers are definitely welcome at the Amplified Concert.
Will they respond to the big sound? If so, will they be motivated to try out this classical stuff in the Maison symphonique? The search for a successful popto-classical migration route has been pursued for years, with little success.
Not that the object of the Amplified Concert is to help orchestras sell subscriptions. The aim is to discover whether the classical message can be profitably mated with the highvolume rock medium.
“Even if it is a collection of top hits and warhorses, I’m having a great time, and the OSQ is really a fine orchestra,” Martin says.
And classical types can always bring along earplugs.
Former McGill composition professor alcides lanza (who avoids capital letters) wishes to add his own penetrations II (1974) and plectos III (1987) to the list of compositions performed in the dark in Montreal. To say nothing of the many electroacoustic concerts he organized.
“Just to amuse you with this esoterica,” lanza writes.
On Feb. 16, Kent Nagano and the OSM performed a Concert in the Dark that went off without a hitch. Or a switch.
Yannick Nézet-Séguin’s accelerated start as music director of the Metropolitan Opera in September will not affect his status as artistic director and principal conductor of the Orchestre Métropolitain. So the OM assures us in an official statement that foresees YNS at the head of the orchestra “until at least 2021.”
If anything, Nézet- Séguin’s early move to mahogany row in New York makes the commute to his hometown more feasible than ever. His next concert in the Maison symphonique is a coupling on March 2 of Tchaikovsky (Symphony No. 4) and Medtner (Piano Concerto No. 1 with Serhiy Salov as soloist). This happens the night after a performance of Richard Strauss’s Elektra at the Met.
Then come regional repeats of the OM program on March 3 (Rivières-des-Prairies) and March 4 (Ahuntsic). Yannick is back in New York for another Elektra on March 5. Nothing to it.
The Opéra de Montréal next season will present two 19thcentury favourites, a jazzy opera about a prizefighter, a chamber opera in the Centaur Theatre, and a classic few Montreal Wagnerians ever dreamed of seeing in Salle Wilfrid-Pelletier of Place des Arts: Das Rheingold.
This one-act introduction of the Ring Cycle (which the company is not necessarily committing itself to) will feature the American bass-baritone Ryan McKinny as Wotan in a hybrid naturalistic-industrial production from the Minnesota Opera. Michael Christie conducts the onstage Orchestre Métropolitain.
At the other end of magnitude is Twenty- Seven, a chamber opera by the veteran American composer Ricky Ian Gordon focusing on the Paris salon of Gertrude Stein and Alice B. Toklas. The Atelier lyrique program supplies the singers. This Washington Opera production will run for six performances in the Centaur in March 2019 with piano and cello accompaniment.
The season begins on firm ground on Sept. 15 with Verdi’s Rigoletto. Canadian baritone James Westman plays the illstarred jester and the Italian Carlo Montanaro makes his OdM debut. Another sure-seller is Bizet’s Carmen in a new production directed by the Montreal filmmaker Charles Binamé. The surprise selection for the famous title role is the Alberta-born Schulich School graduate Krista de Silva. Alain Trudel conducts.
Continuing the OdM tradition of big-stage contemporary work is Champion, a 2013 jazzflavoured opera by trumpetercomposer Terence Blanchard on the subject of Emile Griffith, a welterweight who delivered a fatal beating to his opponent in 1962 after the latter mocked his sexual orientation. Former New York City Opera music director George Manahan conducts the OSM in this production from the Washington National Opera.
The company will also present the Lebanese-Canadian soprano Joyce El-Khoury in a Middle Eastern-themed recital at Pollack Hall. Subscriptions to the 2018-19 season are available now; single tickets go on sale June 5. Go to www.operademontreal.com.