By Robert D. Thomas
Music Critic
Pasadena Star-News/San Gabriel Valley Tribune/Whittier Daily News
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Orchestre symphonique d’Montréal; Kent Nagano, conductor, Joshua Bell, violin
GLAZOUNOV: Violin Concerto; TCHAIKOVSKY: Meditation (excerpt from Memory of a Cherished Place), orch. Glazounov); MESSIAEN: Turangalîla-Symphonie, for solo piano, solo ondes Martenot and orchestra
Tuesday, September 13 2011 • La Maison symphonique de Montréal
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When completed, the exterior of La Maison Synphonique de Montréal will be as striking as the interior of the new home of Orchestra Symphonique de Montréal.
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La Maison Symphonique de Montréal — the new and newly named (LINK) home of Orchestre symphonique de Montréal (aka Montreal Symphony Orchestra), Orchestre Métropilitain and, eventually, Les Violons du Roy — has garnered positive reviews from orchestra musicians, audiences and most critics, and based on what I heard last night from Music Director Kent Nagano and Co., the accolades were right on point, at least when it comes to the performing space.
Like many new venues (most notably, in my experience, Costa Mesa’s Renée and Henry Segerstrom Concert Hall five years ago), areas surrounding the interior are very much a work in progress and it will be several weeks, perhaps months, before all the fixtures, wall coverings, signage, etc. are in place.
It’s not just the new hall that’s under construction; Rue Sainte-Catherine, the main street that runs adjacent to Place des Arts (the complex that houses the new hall and several other performing arts facilities and museums) is also under construction as workers try frantically to get finished before the first snow falls in a couple of months.
Fortunately, unlike New York City’s Lincoln Center, the Montréal Metro (subway) direct underground entrance into Place des Arts (Montréal’s equivalent to Lincoln Center and Los Angeles’ Music Center) works just fine, a good thing, too, since the city was raked this evening by heavy thunderstorms and, as noted above, snow will be arriving shortly. The hall rests on about 180 rubber “isolators” that are designed to minimize sounds and vibrations from, among other things, the Metro, which runs quite close to the new hall.
Moreover, once inside, the new hall is a light, airy, cozy space that has many similarities to Segerstrom Concert Hall. For one thing, it seats about the same: about 1,900 plus an additional 200 bench seats behind the orchestra that can be used when a chorus doesn’t accompany the ensemble.
Like Segerstrom, La Maison uses a shoebox design for its interior with subtle curves (far more subtle than either Segerstrom or Walt Disney Concert Hall) fronting the three balconies to break up the rectangle effect and reflect sound. The sides of those three balconies use just one row of moveable chairs to keep clear sightlines to the orchestra. Regular seats fill the balance of the hall’s space.
La Maison features wood walls and floors constructed primarily of Canadian beachwood; unlike Segerstrom’s red seats, La Maison chairs are lined in light gray, which accentuates the airy feeling. As is the case at Segerstrom (and Disney Hall) walking space to the seats except on the main floor is very tight; that’s the tradeoff for the compact feeling — even most of the rear balcony seats seem right on top of the orchestra.
Artec, the firm that oversaw Segerstrom’s sound, also was employed at La Maison. Like its Costa Mesa counterparts, there are giant moveable acoustical panels in the roof that can be adjusted for different types of programs. There are no giant doors as is the case with Segerstrom, but there are open spaces surrounding the orchestra covered by slats that can also be adjusted for sonic shifts. Overall, I found the sound to be quite clean from my balcony seat (more like Disney than Segerstrom). All sections were heard clearly, inner voices came across well in soft and loud sections, and the brass sounds were mellow, not — well — brassy.
Just getting the new Montréal hall built was quite an achievement and took decades to bring to fruition. The cost (reportedly about $269 million Canadian, which includes estimated operating expenses for the first 27 years) was borne mostly by the province of Quebec, although the project was a public-private partnership (LINK). What the province (the Canadian equivalent of states in the U.S.) got for its money was a sparkling new orchestra home that also counts as another great reason to visit this most European of North American cities.
Last night was the OSM’s first subscription concert in the new hall (OSM debuted the building last week opened with a series of gala concerts last week that concluded with Beethoven’s Symphony No. 9). Nagano’s choice of music last night (the program repeats tonight) was designed to show off the hall and the orchestra which has regained the luster it had under the 25-year tenure of Nagano’s predecessor, Charles Dutoit.
The concluding work last night was Olivier Messiaen’s sprawling, 10-movement, 80-minute long Turangalîla-symphonie. When Gustavo Dudamel and the Los Angeles Philharmonic played this piece last October at Disney Hall, this is how I opened my review: “Writing about Olivier Messiaen’s Turangalîla-symphonie … music critic Paul Griffiths reportedly once said the piece was ‘not a work to be understood.’ … Like much of Messiaen’s music, especially his massive works, the Turangalîla-symphonie has long stretches of powerful, sweeping, sometimes rhythmically pulsating music interspersed with moments of mysteriously quiet sublime beauty. There were moments when I couldn’t wait to hear what was coming next and others where I wanted to whine “Are we there yet?” A few people fled the hall at various stages of the performance last night; most stayed and cheered mightily at the end. None of that is surprising for Messiaen.” (The entire review is HERE).
Not much was different about last night. A few people fled — but only a few. As was the case in Disney Hall, most of the rest stayed and cheered, with good reason. The 59-year-old Nagano — the California-born conductor who has led the OSM since 2006 and before that was the first music director of Los Angeles Opera — led a compelling account of this rarely played work and the orchestra (many who had probably never performed the piece before this week) played their hearts.
Nagano, a Messiaen specialist, had some interesting ideas about how to seat his orchestra for the performance. The players sit on semicircular risers (similar to the configuration at Disney Hall). The violins were divided left and right with the violas, cellos and basses in between them. Nagano split the massive percussion section so that, in effect, it wrapped completely around the orchestra along the top tier of risers, divided on that tier by the trumpets, trombones and tuba. Sonically, the effect was fascinating and, even in the final cathartic chord the brass didn’t blast us out of our seats, a tribute both to the hall’s sound and to the careful attention given by Nagano and his players.
The Turangalîla-symphonie calls for two soloists. Montréal native Jean Laurendeau gave a bravura performance on the ondes martenot, a sort of classical version of the musical saw, and he was heard clearly throughout the performance. Canadian pianist Angela Hewitt displayed formidable chops in the lengthy piano portions although, curiously enough, from my balcony seat I didn’t find the sound to be particularly forthright (whether that can be laid at the feet Hewitt, the instrument, or the hall won’t be known until several other concerts with piano have been played).
When Dudamel and the Phil played the Turangalîla-symphonie last year, it was the only work on the program. Whether Nagano wanted to show off the hall’s different sounds, felt that the program needed some additional length or the OSM wanted some additional star power to beef up the attendance, violinist Joshua Bell was the soloist in two different and somewhat oddball pieces prior to intermission.
He and the orchestra opened with Tchaikovsky’s Meditation in D Minor, which is an excerpt from an 1878 work entitled Memory of a Cherished Place. Actually it was the original slow movement of Tchaikovsky’s Violin Concerto; when the composer’s friend, violinist Yasif Kotek, expressed some misgivings about the piece, Tchaikovsky eventually wrote a different second movement for the concerto. Composer Alexandre Glazounov orchestrated the excerpt.
Bell played the eight-minute excerpt sweetly and followed it with an elegant performance of Glazounov’s own Violin Concerto. Especially in the softest sections, both performances showed off the hall’s ultra-live acoustics (which, like Disney, also accentuates any sound from the audience). Nagano and the orchestra accompanied sensitively.
Judging from this first hearing, it’s obvious there will be a period of adjustment in the coming months as the hall settles in and the players continue to become accustomed to their new digs. However, what we heard last night was a promising beginning and things can only get better.
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Hemidemisemiquavers:
• An article from last week’s Globe and Mail (Toronto) has a series of photographs of the new hall HERE.
• High on the wall behind the orchestra is a series of intriguingly placed metal pipes (pictured) in front of sound chambers ; they will, at some point in the future, become the sound elements of a new organ designed by Casavant Frères of St.-Hyacinthe, Quebec. No official completion date has been announced, although one report put it in the 2013-2014 season. With four manuals and 83-stops, the mechanical-action instrument will be considerably larger than Segerstrom Hall’s organ but smaller than the one in Disney Hall. It should be plenty big for the room.
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(c) Copyright 2011, Robert D. Thomas. All rights reserved. Portions may be quoted with attribution.