|
|
|
[INDEX]
The Montreal Symphony Orchestra’s annual autumn pilgrimmage to New York’s
Carnegie Hall has produced triumphs over the decades. Last year’s Martha
Argerich showcase was one of them. But this year was a sad exception,
revealing some of the worst playing from the MSO I have ever heard.
The question on everyone’s mind when the MSO took the Carnegie stage on
Saturday, Oct. 26 was how it would sound without Charles Dutoit, who quit
as the band’s Music Director last April. The answer was worrisome, to
judge by the overblown reading of Berlioz's La Damnation de Faust lead
by 69-year-old French conductor Michel Plasson.
Instrumental soloists were sloppy and sometimes off-pitch. Sections lacked
solidity or coherence. Coordination between sections was unpredictable.
The performance as a whole lacked Berliozian style. The MSO’s fabled French
touch - the gossamer strings, the airy lightness and lightning response
of sections, the purity of woodwind and horn solos, the pert rhythms -
was gone. The playing was often deafeningly loud. Plasson was obviously
unable to adjust from the dead acoustics of Montreal's Salle Wilfrid Pelletier
to the subtle, lively surroundings of Carnegie Hall. Some consolation
came from the serviceable vocal soloists: a menacing John Relyea as Mephistifeles,
tenor Michael Schade as Faust, and a rather dreary Ruxandra Donose as
Marguerite.
But what alarmed me wasn’t the sins Plasson committed, but rather the
virtues the MSO omitted. You would expect that after 25 years playing
this music under Dutoit the MSO could play French music well, no matter
how bad the guest conductor. But the band seemed to have completely forgotten
the valuable lessons Dutoit taught them. There seemed to be no collective
memory of the performance techniques and qualities associated with Dutoit’s
successful performances of this kind of music.
 The
concert on Sunday Oct. 27 under Emmanuel Villaume (photo left) was much
better. Szymanowski’s mystical-impressionistic Third Symphony (“Song of
the Night”) was an interesting novelty in the style of Scheonberg's Gurrelieder
and Szymanowski's Krol Roger, which the MSO have played in recent seasons.
The MSO performed with an accuracy, confidence and coherence totally lacking
the previous night. Alas, tenor Jon Garrison was too old for the high
solo part. Ravel’s Daphis et Chloé was given a respectable though less
idiomatic reading than Dutoit used to give.
Saturday’s concert was well-attended but Sunday’s concert was half empty,
the worst attendance I have ever seen at Carnegie Hall. Since bad reviews
had not yet appeared, the poor attendance must have been due to a combination
of factors: no star soloist, no Dutoit, obscure repertoire, and the general
economic downturn which has affected all arts presenters.
Reviews were mixed. The New York Times noted strengths and weaknesses.
The Montreal Gazette cheerled for the home team (memo to the Gazette:
Emmanuel Villaume is not a “fully unknown French conductor”, he is a regular
guest conductor with major US orchestras and he is the artistic director
of the Spoleto Festival, the biggest arts festival in the southern USA).
While it is too early to draw conclusions about the effect of Dutoit’s
departure on the MSO, the signs are not good. To judge by the Carnegie
Hall concerts, the MSO musicians are only as good or bad as their conductor.
If this is true, their rejection of Dutoit could mean they have nowhere
to go but down, since it will be hard to find a conductor of Dutoit's
calibre as the new music director. As Claude Gingras wrote in La Presse
on Oct. 23, 2002, Dutoit’s departure could well prove an artistic “catastrophe”
for the MSO if they do not find strong leadership soon.
[INDEX]
|
|
|
