The winners are ... all of us
BY ARTHUR KAPTAINIS, THE GAZETTE January 31, 2009
There are at least two ways to win a Mecca Award: from the Montreal English Critics Circle, for excellence in English-language theatre, or from the Manitoba Customer Contact Association, for, well, your guess is as good as mine. Opus Awards you can get from the University of Windsor Organization of Part-time University Students or the Conseil québécois de la musique.
Neither the Meccas nor the Opuses - I mean the ones conferred in Montreal - get much play on Entertainment Tonight, but they testify to the great strength of the arts in the city and in Quebec, even in disciplines where the expectation of support would normally be lower. As I sat through the opera-length Opus gala last Sunday at the Université de Montréal, I found myself thinking yet again: Boy, there is a lot of music in this place.
The Opus Awards (my translation of Les Prix Opus) were created by the Conseil 12 years ago to recognize that reality. They span all of the classical domain and extend into jazz and worldbeat. There are awards for instrument-building and scholarly publishing as well as performances and recordings. Unlike the Meccas, they are not decided on by critics. A good thing. Critics have daily opportunities to bestow awards.
Not that the Opus Awards are immune from criticism themselves. They always come too late. The Opuses given this week were for concerts performed (or recordings released) from September 2007 to August 2008. They could, and should, be given in the fall.
Categories are legion and frequently intersect. There are eight Concerts of the Year, broken down by region and musical era. Somehow these still leave room for a Musical Event of the Year. There is an Opus for composer of the year and for composition of the year. The recipients this time proved to be one and the same: Nicolas Gilbert, a Conservatoire and McGill grad who already has two Opuses on his mantle.
Winners, whether of Oscars or Opuses, are always debatable. As are certain trends in Opus nominations. In the early years, the MSO was conspicuous mostly by its Opus absence. Opéra de Montréal productions were only occasionally recognized, as were performances at the Lanaudière Festival and discs on the internationally distributed Analekta label.
There seemed to be an unwritten Opus policy of dissing the big players and boosting the little guys. This Robin Hood approach might sound laudable in principle, but it does nothing for the credibility of the award.
This year (i.e. 2007-2008), the MSO had to content itself with the kiddie-concert Opus. The orchestra was not even nominated for any of the other "concert" awards. Last year, the MSO got a token "event" Opus for the opening of Kent Nagano's tenure as music director.
The winner last Sunday for the best Quebec City concert and best classical-romantic-impressionist concert was, reasonably enough, the Quebec Symphony Orchestra, which gave a cast-of-more-than-a-thousand performance of Mahler's Eighth Symphony last March under Yoav Talmi. The latter victory would have been that much more meaningful had the MSO been nominated. A boxing champion cannot be called great if he does not defeat great challengers. ...Continue
