The winners are ... all of us
BY ARTHUR KAPTAINIS, THE GAZETTE January 31, 2009
...Continued
There are other tendencies. Baritone Marc Boucher has won opuses in two consecutive years. Like Jean-François Lapointe, who won the Opus for the best Montreal concert (a presentation of the André Turp Musical Society), Boucher specializes in French art songs. Both the Quatuor Molinari (a contemporary string quartet) and La Nef (a neo-medievalist ensemble) do good work, but the double nomination of the former (winners of multiple Opuses in the past) and two victories of the latter (ditto) seem a bit redundant. The Concerts aux Îles du Bic, a summer festival near Rimouski, also won two awards last Sunday.
Then there is the perennial Opus fixation on electronic music, a form practised by the smallest of elites almost exclusively for their own gratification. At the ceremony on Sunday, the captive audience got a performance (if performance is the word) of a virtually feature-free blippity-bloop work by a foursome seated at a table like panelists at a game show.
There are also Opus awards for recordings. How the Orchestre Métropolitain-Yannick Nezet-Séguin recording of Debussy's La Mer lost in the classical-romantic-impressionist category is a mystery matched only by the victory of a pale little guitar disc in the baroque division.
Perhaps the right perspective on the Opus phenomenon is not skepticism, but celebration. Where else would instrument makers, graduate-student essayists, baroqueurs and electrogeeks get a chance to accept an award on a classy stage with a live band (new music prevailing) and a slick-talking host and hostess? Not in the rest of Canada.
Opus Awards. Only in Quebec.
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Just in case you equate the Opus phenomenon with nationalist hyperbole, take note of the concert performances of Mozart's The Magic Flute given last week by the Toronto Symphony. Bernard Labadie, of Quebec City, was the conductor. The two leading sopranos, Karina Gauvin (Pamina) and Aline Kutan (Queen of the Night), were from Montreal. The leading males, tenor Benjamin Butterfield (Tamino) and baritone Joshua Hopkins (Papageno), were McGill grads.
The Magic Flute, presented by the Toronto Symphony, made in Quebec.
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Rich in music of all kinds, Quebec has a disproportionate share of orchestras and conductors. Now in their ninth year are the Orchestre de la francophonie canadienne and the young Chicoutimi native who created the ensemble, Jean-Philippe Tremblay.
The trans-Canadian orchestra admits players age 18 to 30. It is not explicitly of Quebec. Indeed, it was created for the 2001 Francophonie games in Ottawa, and is settled in the capital, where Tremblay will lead a Beethoven cycle in July. (The Nine Symphonies will be performed also in Montreal in August, at a yet-to-be-announced venue.)
But the OFC obviously could not exist without Quebec. Summer activities include concert performances of two Luc Plamondon musicals, Notre Dame de Paris and Starmania, as well as residency work for the Vocal Arts Institute at the Université de Montréal.
The OFC. Not only Quebec.
