Rameau and Mahler in a single concert program is an unusual pairing, and if one could say that both Les Indes Galantes and Das Lied von der Erde are examples of inspiration in the exotic, the truth is that the French orchestra Les Siècles has as mission performing music with instruments as close as possible to those used by the time of the creation of the pieces performed by them. As a result, a program involving music of the 18th and the 20th century allowed the orchestra to showcase its collection of historical instruments, its technical panache and its mastery of style in a wide repertoire. Although conductor François-Xavier Roth explained that this is what makes Les Siècles special, I would say this only one reason to use call it singular. I would rather say it stands out by the way these musicians are able to display a “chamber music” attitude in such a large formation; every musician seemed to be personally contributing to the interpretation rather than simply following the instructions of the concept single-handedly developed by the conductor. In any case, Mr. Roth is also a special conductor, whose understanding of a score’s structure allows him to offer unusually coherent performance in which tone colouring, tempo, accent, phrasing, everything concur to illuminating readings of music the audience thought to know everything about. His Lohengrin in the Bavarian State Opera was one of the most impressive pieces of Wagner conducting I have seen in some years, and I was eager to hear him with his own orchestra. As it was, he offered a grand-scale account of the excerpts from Les Indes Galantes, a dense string section and agile yet not hectic tempi. If one has a conductor like Emmanuelle Haïm in mind, one could find it a tad gemütlich, but I can’t help considering this the right choice for a program that featured Mahler after the interval for an audience maybe not 100% familiar with the music of Rameau. And there was no lack of charm and vitality, the conductor himself playing the drums to keep the beat, the same way Lully used the staff. Actually, not the same way – he fortunately did not hurt himself in the process!
My experience of hearing Mahler’s Lied von der Erde invariably involves a powerhouse German orchestra. Last time I listened to it in the concert hall, it was the Berlin Philharmonic. And the time before that too. This is maybe why I was so surprised to hear such a transparent and bright string sound this evening. The gain in terms of harmonic clarity was remarkable, not to mention the possibility of hearing the combination of sounds in the woodwind department in such detail, making the piece seem more modern and less sentimental (always a risk in Mahler). The imagination of the members of the orchestra in their solos was also something to marvel. Every one of them seized the opportunity to add a distinctive trait to the performance, sustaining the dialogue with the vocal soloists just like an obligato part in a Bach cantata. Beautiful. And the singers featured this evening could not have been better chosen for this orchestra and this conductor. I had seen Andrew Staples only once as a Don Ottavio short in tonal glamour and very angular, and now I see that Mozart is probably not his better suit. Here he proved that a lighter tenor with a bright and easy high register can be very effective in this challenging part. First, he proved to be entirely at ease with what he had to sing, his voice acquiring enough squillo and rock-solid in exposed heroic high notes and also pure-toned and ductile enough for more lyric passages. Confident as he was – and I’ve seen important singers ill at ease here – Mr. Staples paid unusual attention to the text and exuded congeniality on stage. Marie-Nicole Lemieux is a singer I’ve seen both as Zenobia in Handel’s Radamisto and Azucena in Verdi’s Il Trovatore, and in her rather unconventional way she has proved to be surprisingly effective. Therefore, it feels almost strange to write that her singing of the alto part in Das Lied von der Erde was just ideal. Nothing was too low or too high for her voice, which has more than enough volume to keep with an orchestral forte while floating freely in mezza voce whenever this was necessary. As Mahler is here gentle with the demands on the middle register, she could keep it natural and warm. The quality of her performance goes beyond vocal aptness, though. She sang it with such concentration, imagination, spirit, feeling for the text and emotional generosity that one could mention her name together with the greatest contraltos and mezzo sopranos who have inscribed their names in the performance history of this piece. Brava.
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