Bring back Handel's Messiah
BY ARTHUR KAPTAINIS, THE GAZETTE December 27, 2008
...Continued
Perhaps the secret to a successful Messiah revival is to leave the baroque polemic behind us. Reader Marko Velikonja makes this original suggestion: "Commission a French translation, and hire a Quebec composer (or maybe Luc Plamondon) to do a new orchestration - maybe something in the style of Berlioz (or, this being the Nagano era, Messiaen). Something uniquely Montreal, presented in Montreal's unique Notre Dame Basilica." Messiah rewrites are tricky. Even Mozart's has enjoyed little success. But given that Nagano has presented Brahms's Requiem with additional music by the Austrian atonalist Wolfgang Rihm, there might be some future in this line of thought. In my pan of the 2002 MSO Messiah, I wondered, briefly, about the viability of a semi-staged production.
That is all from me on the subject, at least in 2008. Now get busy.
The pianist Alain Lef??vre, known for his advocacy of the late Montreal prodigy Andr?? Mathieu, was spreading the word Dec. 15 on the Charlie Rose show on PBS. You can watch the interview at www.charlierose.com. Ignore the promos for Henry Kissinger, Robert Gates and Hillary Clinton. Click on the last-name search link.
There is some Bach on offer in Montreal, at least in cinemas where the Baz Luhrmann epic Australia is playing. The sweeping score attributed to David Hirschfelder brazenly uses Sheep May Safely Graze as its principal tune. A secondary theme starts off very much like the Pachelbel Canon.
Much is made in the movie of Harold Arlen's Over the Rainbow, but these references are in the context of the boy-protagonist's fascination with The Wizard of Oz. Elgar's Nimrod (from the Enigma Variations) accompanies the final scene with no rearrangement or recognition, except in the credits almost no one waits to see.
Great classics can be deployed to great effect in cinema. Stanley Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey taught us this. But given that I heard Saint-Sa??ns's Aquarium (from Carnival of the Animals) and Bordin's Polovtsian Dances (from Prince Igor) in the previews before Australia, there might be cause to wonder whether the trend is getting out of hand.
akaptainis@sympatico.ca
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