A musical journey with the HPO
Gluck, Beethoven, Mozart and a bit of bite, that’s what the Hamilton Philharmonic Orchestra’s concert on Saturday, Oct. 20, in FirstOntario Concert Hall is made of.
The Gluck is the “Dance of the Furies,” vibrant ballet music introduced in the composer’s 1774 version of his opera, “Orphée et Eurydice.” The Gluckists in the audience on the 20th will immediately recognize this music as being lifted from Gluck’s 1761 ballet, “Don Juan,” albeit with minor retouches to the orchestration.
The Beethoven is the “Piano Concerto no. 4” with soloist André Laplante returning to the HPO after a four-year absence. This concerto’s second movement has long been the object of speculation and debate. Beethoven’s student, Carl Czerny, described it as “an antique tragic scene.” Years later, critics such as A. B. Marx and Sir Donald Tovey built on to this trope, with musicologist Owen Jander in 1985 going so far as to argue that each phrase supported the Orpheus narrative.
The Mozart is the “Symphony no. 41,” nicknamed the Jupiter. Alas, there’s nothing other-worldly in this out-of-thisworld symphony. That king-of-the-Roman-gods moniker wasn’t coined by Mozart but by the London impresario Johann Peter Salomon, who used it to promote an 1819 performance. The Mozarteans in the audience on the 20th will immediately recognize that the four-note motif in the fourth movement’s fantastic fugato section was first heard in the second movement of Mozart’s first symphony, written at the age of 8 in 1764.
The bit of bite comes courtesy of “Antinomie” composed in 1977 by the late Jacques Hétu, a native of Trois-Rivières. Though HPO music director Gemma New programmed the Gluck, Beethoven and Mozart, it was Cap-de-la-Madeleine native Jacques Lacombe, returning after an absence of some 18 seasons to guest conduct the HPO, who programmed the Hétu.
“I’ve done a fair amount of his music,” said Lacombe of his late colleague while on the phone last week from Mulhouse, France, where he was readying for his debut as music director of l’Orchestre symphonique de Mulhouse. “For me, he always wrote very, very well for the orchestra. He knows how to make the orchestra sound good. He doesn’t trick the musicians, not that it’s easy to play.”
“Antinomie” translates into English as “contradictions.” And true to its title, Hétu’s piece is brimming with musical contradictions.
“There are contrasts of sections, basically, and also textures and colours,” explained Lacombe of Hétu’s eight-minute work which was originally commissioned by the National Arts Centre Orchestra
in Ottawa.
Not that the piece is a disconnected patchwork of sections.
“Interesting enough, when you play it, it’s so organic that it makes perfect sense and you have a strong feeling of unity within those contrasts,” added Lacombe. “And I think that’s one of the strengths of this piece. At the end of the piece, you really feel that you’ve been taken to a journey, to a different mood, a different feel, but with a great sense of unity.”
Lacombe isn’t expecting to hit any hurdles in rehearsals, either.
“I travel a lot and I basically work the same way with all orchestras: step by step, getting the orchestra to know the piece, so you go from the big picture to more detail,” said Lacombe, who is on a one-year sabbatical as artistic director and chief conductor of l’Orchestre symphonique de Trois-Rivières due to his international and guest conducting commitments. “In the case of Hétu, that process is usually very smooth and fairly quick. Already by the first read, you have a good idea where the piece is going and what the piece is about. You don’t need to really put the piece all in pieces to try and understand how all this works. Later works might sometimes have some tricky passages, but it’s always playable, always very well written, and the audience usually loves it.”
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Sunday, Oct. 14, at 7 p.m. in The Rock on Locke, 320 Charlton Ave W., Peter Thompson’s one-hour, one-act chamber opera, “Ubu Roy,” is premièred in concert by the Wild Geese chamber music collective. Erika Reiman directs this political satire based on Alfred Jarry’s play with vocalists Julia Morson, Arieh Sacke, Domenico Sanfilippo, Katerina Utochkina, Vania Chan, and the composer as Ubu, plus violinist Christine Chesebrough and cellist Gord Cleland. Tickets: $30, student/senior/arts worker $20. www.brownpapertickets.com/event/ 3602742 (bit.ly/2IR89TG)