Classical music review: OSM summons Vaughan Williams's power

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Ralph Vaughan Williams's No. 4 symphony got a powerful reading under the baton of Vancouver Symphony music director Bramwell Tovey and the OSM.

MONTREAL - Not a factor during the Charles Dutoit era, the symphonies of Ralph Vaughan Williams have been largely overlooked in Montreal. We waited until Sunday afternoon in the Maison symphonique to hear the OSM premi?re of No. 4, now the most popular of the nine despite (or because of) the fact that it runs contrary to type.

Far from a British pastoral reverie, this is an aggressive work in F minor written between the wars and sounding like an exercise in simultaneous recollection and premonition of disaster. It got a powerful reading under the baton of Vancouver Symphony music director Bramwell Tovey.

This articulate Englishman might also have been defying expectations, given his popularity as a quick-witted conductor of outdoor summer concerts with the New York Philharmonic. There could be no doubt of his thorough command of the complexities of the score, including the gnarled fugue with which it concludes, or his ability to elicit a performance of high commitment from players seeing the notes for the first time.

One might even call this a template of what the OSM does as well as any orchestra in the world: play rough and tough with tonal integrity and respect for the terrifying beauty of dissonance. However heavy the weather, the clarity of the composer?s harmonic thought and his mastery of orchestral colour were apparent. Fortissimos roared boldly and pianissimos filled the hall with mystery. Contributions from all quarters were very fine. Special mention is owing the brass and flutist Denis Bluteau.

Tovey was no less effective as an accompanist in the Berlioz song cycle Les nuits d??t?, with Measha Brueggergosman, a New Brunswick-born soprano who got her start as the winner of the 2002 Montreal International Musical Competition and enjoys star status in the ROC.

Possessing a voice of moderate rather than gigantic dimensions, she nonetheless gave the impression of amplitude with her range of tone and spirited identification with the arch-romantic poetry. There was subtle interplay with the clarinet at the end of Le Spectre de la rose, and her sound in the concluding L??le inconnue had an agreeable shimmer. Tempos inclined to the slow side, but orchestral colours made amends.

The concert started with Winter Poems, a 25-minute triptych of 1994 by Glenn Buhr. This Winnipeg composer certainly knows his way around the orchestra. There were points at which one felt he was almost too adept in this art, letting sonorous pedal notes and tinkerbell percussion effects do the work properly assigned to harmony and counterpoint.

It is common to call such music evocative, but I wonder of what. The snow-swept prairies were supposed to be the inspiration, but I heard nothing to put me in mind of the bleak beauty of a Canadian winter. Buhr might have titled this piece Asian Monsoons to equal effect.

akaptainis@sympatico.ca

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Source: http://www.montrealgazette.com/entertainment/Classical+music+review+summons+Vaughan+Williams+power/8080219/story.html

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