Outdoor concert offers up awkward contrast in music
OSM performs Carmen following tribute to Hiroshima bombing
About 40,000 people gathered to hear the Orchestre symphonique de Montréal through a stadium sound system Wednesday at the Olympic Park esplanade. Every year the miking gets better, but this remains a terrible way to hear classical music that wasn’t written for the outdoors. As something else, it’s kind of fun: There’s a festival atmosphere — the feeling that something special is going to happen — and junk food. You can even talk.
It’s also an efficient way to get a nice round number in the “free concerts” category of grant applications without having to tour the orchestra to the suburbs — the Orchestre Métropolitain can do that.
This year the concert was scheduled on the 70th anniversary of the Hiroshima bombing, so instead of one concert, there were two. Sort of. The first hour was a peace ceremony broadcast from the nearby Japanese pavilion at the Botanical Garden. The Peace Bell was rung, then trilingual speeches reminded us of the horrors of atomic weapons and of the need for personal engagement with peace.
Ichiro Nodaïra’s Paroles de paix, Schubert’s Heidenröslein, and Jean-Pascal Beintus’s yuuyake koyake were performed as an interlude by a small OSM ensemble and the Montreal Children’s Choir.
The second half was Bizet’s Carmen in a concert cut with the whole OSM, nine soloists and the OSM Chorus. There was no relation between these two. One was serious and the other vulgar. The contrast was tasteless.
As for the performance, it’s not fair to judge classical musicians or opera singers through this kind of amplification (some would say, any amplification at all). It suits some and turns others into sonic weapons.
Michèle Losier was an excellent and attractive Carmen, but Hugo Laporte and FrançoisOlivier Jean almost stole the show as Le Dancaïre and Le Remendado. They glowed, and their quintet Nous avons en tête une affaire, with Florie Valiquette and Christianne Bélanger, was electric and charming. Kent Nagano led a lumbering Overture, while later tempos seemed too fast for the choir, who sounded a fraction behind. It could have been some microphone delay.
As for Carmen, the most overperformed opera in history? It can be easily replaced with a rag soaked in chloroform, a feeding tube and an iPod stuck on repeat.
Of the earlier pieces, Paroles de paix was a world première that deserves to be judged in a proper chamber performance. Its conversational structure and delicate timings did not survive the voyage from stage to seats. The straightforwardly melodic Heidenröslein and yuuyake koyake (Beintus works as a film orchestrator) fared better, and the children sang bravely. Yuuyake koyake is introduced with a simple violin melody that sounded like an answer to Schubert from far away.
The week continues in efficiency mode with the OSM’s Classical Spree starting Friday, 30 concerts under an hour each. Details at osm.ca.