Continuing their 40th anniversary series, Les Violons du Roy presented their Jonathan Cohen, Mozart and Friendship concert at the Palais Montcalm on Thursday. As the title suggests, the program offered a repertoire drawn both from Mozart’s works and from those of his close friends.
The evening opened with the Sinfonia for Strings in F Major, Fk. 67, by Wilhelm Friedemann Bach, eldest son of his famous father Johann Sebastian. This work is a very interesting choice, with avant-garde colors for its time, in the midst of the transition from Baroque to Classical. There are daring harmonic tensions right from the opening of the Vivace, perfectly underlined by Les Violons du Roy, who give us a superb version of the work. This is an opportunity for each orchestra section to shine, particularly in the Allegro, where the question-and-answer play of the theme is wonderfully executed, a veritable wave of sound moving from one part of the chamber orchestra to the next.
The concert continues with two guests: Mélisande McNabney on fortepiano and Isaac Chalk on viola, for a concert in C Major by Michael Haydn, older brother of the more famous Joseph Haydn, and, as the title suggests, also close to Mozart. The piece highlights each of the two soloists in turn, despite their rather different playing styles: on the one hand, the pianist’s precise, subtle touch, and on the other, the violist’s more rocambolic, baroque flights of fancy. While there is no doubting the individual quality of each of these two performers, their joint playing is open to question. Indeed, while each shines in his or her solo parts, the duet parts sometimes lack synchronization and ensemble playing, especially for the ornamentation effects or the rallentando and accelerando, typical of the style of the period. The staging may have something to do with this: Melisandre at the pianoforte has her back to Isaac Chalk.
After a short intermission, Les Violons du Roy return to the stage, this time with two flutes, two natural horns and a bassoon. The wind section swells the ranks for the Symphony in E-flat Major by Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach, also the son of Johann Sebastian, and a friend of Mozart. At the start of the piece, it seems that one of the horns is struggling to warm up, the instrument being renowned for its technical difficulty. The piece unfolds well, although the flutes, often in their lower registers, are hard to hear, yet they stand upright in the middle of the stage, giving greater visual impact than aural impact.
The concert closes with Mozart’s Clarinet Concerto in A major. Stéphane Fontaine, clarinet teacher at the Conservatoire de Québec and principal clarinet of the Orchestre Symphonique de Québec, brilliantly interprets the soloist’s part with a well-rounded, worked-out sound, mastered from low to high register, with absolutely remarkable soft nuances. Her highly successful performance leaves a strong impression on the audience as she closes the concert, accompanied by all the subtlety of Les Violons du Roy, decidedly masters in the art of dosage, finesse and precision.
