Pleasant discoveries and sure values, Friday evening for the start of the Arion orchestra’s season at Bourgie Hall, a concert which confirmed the talent of pianist Élisabeth Pion.
Chef Mathieu Lussier has a gift for discoveries, whether in concerts or on records. This time, a large part of the credit also goes to the soloist of the evening for what we had the chance to hear.
As the two protagonists recalled, the artistic director of Arion had already had a clue two years ago during a collaboration at the Classica Festival. The pianist then concluded her interpretation of Mozart’s Concertos No. 13 and 24 with Etude No. 26 (for the right hand) by Hélène de Montgeroult (1764-1836), a fascinating character about whom we spoke on these pages last Saturday .
It was enough for the 27-year-old musician, who was finishing her studies at the Guildhall School in London this year, to be invited back to give more space to the one who was called the “dissolute harpsichordist” by her detractors, l “empress” by her thurifers.
The Piano Concerto No. 1 in E flat major was ideal for this reunion. Completed in 1786 (the composer was then 21 or 22), the score, transcribed from two violin concertos by her friend Viotti, does not have the originality of some of her later works.
Pion serves her ideally on the 1826 Broadwood lent by the patron Jacques Marchand, notably with the cadenza that she herself fine-tuned for the slow movement, where she nods to the romantic 19th century.
The real shock came after the break, when Mathieu Lussier conducted his own orchestral arrangement of three pieces by Montgeroult (a fantasy for piano and two pieces for voice and clarinet), a bouquet which he prettily titled Ouverture « The Empress.”
We must obviously give back to Caesar what is due to Caesar. The chief bassoonist, who knows the music of this period inside out, produced an ideally nuanced orchestration, particularly in the winds. But Montgeroult’s musical genius is indeed at work in all of this, particularly in the thunderous last movement, which our neighbor rightly described as “mind-blowing”. An arrangement that must absolutely circulate.
The rest of the evening was devoted to Mozart, eight years his senior, first with Symphony No. 26 in E flat major, K. 184 (same key as the concerto, which he introduced), then with Concerto no. 24 in C minor, K. 491, premiered the same year the Montgeroult concerto was completed.
His first movement is perhaps the only one where Lussier, in our opinion, erred in terms of tempo, directing this four-beat molto presto as if it were written in white form.
The gesture of the leader, who often directs broadly, to measure, also lacks quite a bit of precision. We sometimes have the impression that the gesture and the rhythmic impulse are not coordinated. But we often see nothing but fire thanks to the professionalism of the musicians.
That said, Mathieu Lussier’s energy flourishes in Mozart’s concerto, with tempos always on point, with a well-involved soloist, who again proposed her own cadences.