Are you salivating at the thought of avocado toast on a beach in Mexico? Love watching Gone With the Wind in your pastel-colored loft? The Orchester Métropolitain has concerts to offer you. Here is the guide.
It is sometimes difficult for the neophyte who knows little more than Little Night Music or Ode to Joy to find the right fit in the plethora of classical concerts on the bill. A symphony by Sibelius, a concerto by Prokofiev, a symphonic poem by Strauss, what does it eat in winter?
“When I open a seasonal brochure, I don’t hear the symphonies in my ears,” admits Véronique Allard, new director, marketing, communications and sales, of the training led by Yannick Nézet-Séguin.
“The Orchester Métropolitain was really looking for someone who represents the 96% of the population for whom symphonic music remains rather mysterious or not very accessible,” specifies the one who took up the position just four months ago.
One of his first ideas: a symphonic personality test intended to guide new spectators.
“It’s meant to be fun, playful, light. We see lots of them on our social media, like “If you were a Disney princess, who would you be?” “, she continues, laughing.
After answering around ten multiple-choice questions about their tastes in, for example, cooking, visual arts, decoration or travel, the aspiring music lover is assigned one of five personalities: passionate, timeless, curious, energetic or serene.
Unsurprisingly, Yannick Nézet-Séguin, who tried the test in advance, is an “energetic” personality. We tell him that with him, “you have to move” and that he is “not too keen on meditative activities”. It will therefore be taken to the corresponding concerts, such as the one – which also suits the “curious” personality – from November 1 to 3, “A Thousand Drums”, which includes a percussion concerto by Eötvös and This Midnight Hour, a work by contemporary British composer Anna Clyne described as “a night of wild running” who “pays no mind to the neighbors.”
The author of these lines, an apparently “timeless” personality cherishing “the timeless, that which crosses time and eras without ever fading or depreciating”, is for his part assigned Handel’s Messiah (19 and 20 December) and Mahler’s Sixth Symphony (June 16), a work that is also suitable for serene and passionate people!
Véronique Allard hopes that this initiative without scientific pretensions will convince music lovers who are unaware of it. “Considering the times we are currently living with inflation, when we have a consumer who decides to invest in a concert ticket, who takes a chance and comes to sit at the Maison symphonique to attend a concert of the OM, if he doesn’t like it, it’s going to take a lot of energy to convince him to try again a second time,” explains the specialist, who is convinced that everyone can find what they’re looking for in the orchestra’s programming.
“It’s always funny to hear people say they don’t like symphonic music,” she says. It’s a bit like saying that you don’t like going to restaurants or the cinema. You may not like science fiction, but be a fan of documentaries or romantic comedies. But you can’t not like cinema. It’s a bit the same thing with symphonic music. You can’t not like symphonic music! »
