On Friday and Saturday at the Lanaudière Festival, a diptych of Felix Mendelssohn’s oratorios Paulus and Elias was performed. For the occasion, the Akademie für Alte Musik Berlin (Akamus) and the Audi Jugendchorakademie visited us, all under the direction of Martin Steidler. According to artistic director Renaud Loranger, “this is the first time in Canada that the two oratorios have been presented in this way, and also sung in German; the usual language is English. We were there on Friday.
In front of a sparse audience and an almost empty lawn, this magnificent concert took place. Over the course of the two-hour evening, everything fell into place. The orchestra, enlarged for the occasion, played on period instruments (with a snake!), leaving plenty of room for the choir. The choristers’ pronunciation is precise and impeccable. They skilfully varied the palette of colors, being sometimes incisive (“Lapidez-le”), sometimes gentle, notably in the various chorales. One of the evening’s highlights was the appearance of Jesus at the end of Act 1. Performed by the women’s voices, it was an extremely luminous passage, without being angelic or honeyed.
Among the soloists, it was viola Ulrilke Malotta who was the best, despite singing only two short interventions. Her voice is deep and resonant. The soprano Marie-Sophie Pollak has a beautiful voice, but never stands out during the evening. Replacement tenor Magnus Dietrich does well, but remains too stoic, despite the fact that he was the soloist who best embodied and “played” his roles of Stephen and Barnabas. Finally, bass Krešimir Stražanac had a few problems during the evening. Sometimes too rounded, his emotions and words were lost. He would have gained by sticking to the score and not trying to give more.
Finally, a word about the overall presentation of the concert. There was room for improvement in the choice of images projected on the giant screens. All too often, there were images of instrumentalists not in the foreground, and this does the spectator high up in the valley no favors at all. And that’s in addition to correcting mistakes in the surtitles.
Photo Credit : Gabriel Fournier
