Rafael Payare and the riddles of Shostakovich

Our new OSM conductor, Rafael Payare, met his audience for the first time at the Maison symphonique on Tuesday evening for the opening of the 2021-22 season that we all hope has calmed and normalized. The concert, with Kaleidoscope by Quebecer Pierre Mercure, The waltz of Ravel and the 5th Symphony de Shostakovich was spectacular, but very disconcerting.

Why are the Taliban so afraid of music that they blacklist it? After a few notes of the poignant slow movement of the 5th Symphony by Shostakovich, in which Rafael Payare sometimes made the OSM strings whisper, it was so easy to understand. The music makes it possible to feel and share the joys, the pains and the sufferings to the point where we were able to project ourselves in Kabul alongside these women shouting in the street to preserve the little of a dwindling freedom.

Incredible news from Shostakovich, who expressed this decades ago in the face of the Soviet freedom-killing grip. Phenomenal power of this music, piercing pain of Theodor Baskin’s solo on the oboe, on this “ultra pianissimo” of violins precisely.

Only small regret in this 3rd movement: in the great furious climax punctuated by the cellos, the lacerating punctuation of the double basses (real stabs, straining, very strong) was not violent enough.

But on the other hand, Rafael Payare gave, up to a certain point, a 5th by Chotakovich as was expected of him: very spectacular, culminating in intelligence in the 2nd movement, a real parody theater, with creaking woodwinds and brass and very intense pizzicatos, with a perfectly ironic ending.

Already the 1st movement contained very subtle ingredients such as the differentiation of vibrato between violins (little vibrated) and cellos (more generous vibrato). The great central cataclysm was being carried out with great efficiency. Rafael Payare has a more uninhibited attitude towards percussion than Kent Nagano. Small regret: the end of this 1st movement should be “morendo” and not linearly indifferent.

A vision that detonates

In his educational film dedicated to this work, Keeping Score, Michael Tilson Thomas, who will be a guest of honor later this season at the OSM, concludes: “The goal of music is to touch you. Inevitably it will have different meanings in the eyes of different people. But we all know that Shostakovich is telling us something necessary, serious that he feels in his flesh. What is left in you when the last note has been played? At the end of the route, it’s your work ”

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Why are we suddenly calling on Michael Tilson Thomas? We were surprised to see the title in the brochure: “The OSM and Shostakovich: Meet Hope”. What hope, since the Fifth is anything but that? Listening to the concert, we understood. Rafael Payare’s vision of the 4th movement is 180 degrees opposed to ours.

Shostakovich composes a “triumphant” finale. The question is whether this is a true or false triumph. “I am happy” or “I order you to be happy”: that is a huge difference. We absolutely do not believe that a final conqueror is legitimate.

So we could already be taken aback to see Rafael Payare chaining attacks movements 3 and 4. That, for once, that is hardly ever done, because not only does this underline the small harmonic hiatus, but it especially prevents to meditate on the deep pain of the slow movement.

The key to Finale is in the coda (the end) with doubts about the notation that the last pages can be taken either quickly or downright twice as slow. Leonard Bernstein’s recording in 1959 caused confusion with its quick end. But more and more the slow version which exacerbates the harmonic tensions in a great and unbearable cry of a note ” the Repeated indefinitely (in fact 252 times), is obvious.

Chief Kenneth Woods aptly notes that the thematic unit of the movement takes up the notes of the lyrics “Beware” of Carmen and finds, elsewhere, connections with passages of the execution of the mischievous Till (Richard Strauss) and the March to the torture of the Fantastic Berlioz. We are very far from the great celebrations.

In 2021 and with all that we are going through these days, the Finale Rafael Payare’s 5th Shostakovich sounds candid and strangely incongruous.

Be careful with the suspenders

We will thank the OSM conductor for choosing Kaleidoscope by Pierre Mercure. It is a great Quebec work that it is a pleasure to hear again from time to time. Those who want to listen to it at home will be reminded that Yannick Nézet-Séguin recorded it with OM in a coupling with The sea by Debussy (ATMA). The two interpretive looks are very close.

On the other hand, after My mother the goose a few months ago, Rafael Payare once again surprised and disappointed by directing Ravel. It was this time The waltz. We understand that the conductor does not want to add more and approach Ravel with expressive restraint and a sort of Cartesian straightforwardness. But there are still limits to not putting anything at all.

The will is not to linger in the transitions so as not to create a “voluptuous” Ravel, but there is a way to be both rigorous and flexible, to have tensions and relaxation. At first it all seemed like a poorly understood Charles Munch approach. But where to go, towards what high point, to manage what transition, with what resolution? These questions finding no answer, we were swimming in the most complete stylistic fog in this false otherwise noisy and not very textured.

For the moment, we can only suggest too often to the OSM not to freak out too much. An advertisement received today from a New York public relations company touting the orchestra’s “ambitious season” across the Americas, claiming that this 88th season confirms that the OSM is ” The best Gallic orchestra in the world », Quote from Chicago Tribune.

This type of reference, which we do not even know from what era (Dutoit or Nagano?), Should not be juxtaposed with the global webcast of such a false de Ravel fell under the eyes of French critics, who would no doubt have some scathing remarks to make on the “gallicity” of some and others.

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