MSO version of Don Juan a joint conquest
BY ARTHUR KAPTAINIS, THE GAZETTE January 24, 2009
"I'm on good terms with the musicians," conductor Jean-François Rivest said recently about his soon-to-be former colleagues in the MSO. "Of course, not 100 per cent. This is an orchestra."
Yes, this is an orchestra. One hundred per cent, I am inclined to add, after the Air Canada concert of Tuesday, which ended with the best live performance of Strauss's tone poem Don Juan I recall ever hearing. Surging, grandiose, brilliantly imagistic, accurate down to the last detail, this one had it all. Even the quiet final chords, reflecting the exhaustion of the amorous title character, seemed perfect in their timing and sculpted resonance.
Full marks to Rivest, right? Phooey, responds one player, who apparently numbers among the contrarians the MSO resident conductor alluded to. Then why was this Don Juan so good?
"Because we are a great orchestra," this player responded. "And we know the piece by heart."
The latter claim is not as idle as it sounds. Strauss's breakthrough tone poem of 1888 is among the most overtly virtuosic works in the repertoire. Even the opening upward rush takes a nimble bow. For this reason, Don Juan has been standard fare for years in orchestral auditions. Musicians must play it spotlessly or expect to move on.
Yet the Don Juan chronicle over the years has not been unsullied. Charles Dutoit programmed it repeatedly even though it was one of the few standards he did not get right. The Swiss maestro took Don Juan on a European tour in 1987. Among the first things I did on my return to Montreal was put on a recording by Karl Böhm (an LP, imagine) to remind myself of how it really ought to go.
The most conspicuous Don Juan catastrophe fell on Nov. 7, 1993, in a 60th-birthday MSO benefit concert in which Dutoit and Zubin Mehta shared the podium in Place des Arts. Mehta got to conduct those great Dutoit hits, Ravel's La Valse and Daphnis et Chloé Suite No. 2, while Dutoit, evidently in a stubborn mood, assigned himself Don Juan. "... Apart from Ted Baskin's songful oboe solo, this was a flinty, not especially accurate account," I wrote, probably with a measure of birthday-bash diplomacy.
There is no orchestra on the continent prouder of its own high standards than the MSO, but on this evening it was hard not to escape the conclusion that the players were blowing kisses to Mehta and expressing themselves otherwise for Dutoit. And this was nine years before the famous meltdown and resignation.
So now that we have exploded the theory that Don Juan is always good, regardless of the conductor, what other reasons can we find for the show of brilliance on Tuesday? One explanation might be the actual position of the orchestra on stage. With the concert hall still years away, Kent Nagano has authorized experiments with new formations and acoustical aids.
The Sunday before last, a performance of Rachmaninoff's Second Symphony under Mark Wigglesworth sounded rich in front of the white acoustical shell used by the city of Montreal for its east-end summer concerts. Nagano moved the shell forward the following Friday to enhance the soft-spoken Tafelmusik Baroque Orchestra. ...Continue
