Conservatoire de Musique de Montréal; November 14, 2009
There’s something curiously appealing about the idea of hearing a program of orchestral favorites transcribed for six grand pianos, so it should come as no surprise that this concert featuring Ensemble Orford Six Pianos, arranged to benefit the scholarship fund of the Montréal Conservatory, was well attended by an audience determined to show its approval at every opportunity. Much of the enthusiasm was well deserved. Gounod’s Valse de Faust was propulsive and surprisingly buoyant given the potential for heavy-handedness. The program opener, Rossini’s Barber of Seville Overture, obviously lacked the woodwind colors of the original that conceal its repetitiousness, and so it came off sounding a bit like Carl Orff. But then, who doesn’t like Rossini, or Orff for that matter? Saint-Saëns’ Danse Macabre worked amazingly well—perhaps there’s something about triple time rhythm that particularly suits the medium—while Prokofiev’s Classical Symphony proved that with this composer it’s all basically piano music anyway. It would have been nice, however, if transcriber and lead pianist Olivier Godin had thinned out the textures in the middle movements. Not everyone needs to be playing so often, or so loudly.
Musically speaking this was the good news, and as I said, because this was a benefit concert the feelings of good will between players and audience were palpable. However, since this group obviously takes its work seriously, it deserves to be treated accordingly and given the full story. At least three items fared badly, albeit for very different reasons. Smetana’s The Moldau is, as we all know, a “water” piece, which means in this case of lot of arpeggio figuration outlining simple harmonies. In the orchestra, it shimmers and swirls. On six pianos it comes across as a minimalist nightmare, further let down by Godin’s inability to capture the trumpet-led climax (which would have at least broken the monotony). Mack Wilberg’s Fantasy on themes from Carmen represents one of the latest, and certainly the ugliest, arrangements based on Bizet’s masterpiece. It consisted of little more than the familiar tunes, liberally spiced with wrong notes, for the most part played as loudly as humanly possible. The end was deafening, as was the applause, and musically pointless as the whole thing was one must concede the visual thrill of seeing six Bösendorfer grands being pounded into sawdust.
The program closed with one of the slowest and dullest version of Gershwin’s Rhapsody in Blue in living memory. Despite being a piano piece in the first place, and despite the fact that Godin transcribed the abridged version, the arrangement stubbornly refused to flow largely because the solo part was broken up every few bars among the various pianists, each of whom had a slightly different sense of touch and phrasing. The result lacked any continuity, never mind the free, improvisational style that the piece demands. Still, one of the fascinations in a program such as this lies in the fact that even when the transcription obviously fails, it remains interesting to the extent that the reasons for its failure often reveal pertinent facts about the composition itself: how it’s made and what it ideally requires. So the evening as a whole, even if only fitfully enjoyable, and often way too loud for the size of the space (a smallish chamber music hall in the Montréal Conservatory), was always intriguing. More importantly, it made an excellent case for supporting the conservatory in its efforts to nurture talented students and offer them a top-quality musical education, irrespective of their economic means. That goal we can all applaud with no qualms whatsoever.
David Hurwitz
