Discographie

In Magnum Opus we are privy to the meeting of minds, ideas and styles. Three composers, three compositions and a multitude of images are hung together in this dynamic release. It truly is a 21st Century approach to Trumpet Concertos. Magnum Opus opens with a concerto featuring Rex Richardson and the Ensemble Instrumental Appassionata under the direction of Daniel Myssyk: A Meditation on Yeats. With movement titles from Yeats’ poetry this meditation is a poignant torture that has many profits. One of which is a timeless emotionality. With expert patience in its revelation, Wilson’s composition offers a tireless Richardson a freedom to unleash a resolute and velvet approach to his instrument.

Richardson’s stylistic playfulness, strategic articulation and virile delivery work to the benefit of Wilson’s incredible rendering of a Yeats-ian world. A place that is expressive of the tension that lies between love and war, oppression and liberation. The concerto has the makings of an epic romance and Richardson’s approach has all the secrecy and testimony of a human voice. Impressive amounts of discretion and conflict resolve themselves nicely in the third movement Had they but courage equal to desire which is a complete stand out. Richardson’s work in the movement’s improvised cadenza shows an attention to this self indictment and a human pulse that is too good to be true.

Créé il y a huit ans par son chef actuel Daniel Myssyk, l’Ensemble instrumental Appassionata est le moins connu de nos orchestres de chambre. Il vient d’ailleurs de lancer son tout premier disque, réalisé en décembre dernier. Le programme est celui que le petit orchestre présentait en juillet au Centre Pierre-Charbonneau, à une exception près: le concert comportait une oeuvre de plus.
Ce programme m’avait paru un peu sérieux pour ces concerts populaires d’été agrémentés d’un goûter. Mais il passe mieux écouté chez soi, dans un contexte qui permet la concentration. Ainsi, les nuances que le chef apporte à la rare suite Idyla de Janacek confèrent une belle intimité aux sept mouvements. On a d’ailleurs choisi le titre de cette suite très peu enregistrée comme intitulé du disque de 62 minutes.

L’ensemble est impeccable à tous égards: coordination, équilibre, justesse, musicalité, avec une beauté de son parfaitement reproduite ici. Comme au concert, Myssyk tire de son Appassionata le maximum d’expression dans ces pages graves que sont l’Adagio de Guillaume Lekeu et les deux Mélodies élégiaques de Grieg.

L’ordre des pièces est entièrement l’inverse de ce qu’il était au concert. La Serenata notturna de Mozart, alors jouée en premier lieu, conclut le disque, et d’une façon fort brillante. Myssyk dirige avec élégance et humour, il fait toutes les reprises, varie très légèrement le second énoncé et laisse le violon-solo et même la contrebasse et la timbale improviser d’amusantes petites cadences. Olivier Thouin était alors violon-solo; il est maintenant à l’OSM.

MARCH 2010 - If one were competing to put together the most unusual program of diverse works to showcase a string orchestra, I would expect this one to take first prize. It kind of reminded me of some of the creations one encounters on California cuisine menus, like sardines sautéed in suet and wrapped in seaweed.
That was pretty much my initial reaction at surveying the list of ingredients represented by the composers on this disc. But that was before I listened to it. Two of the works with which I was totally unfamiliar—Janáček’s Idyla and Lekeu’s Adagio for String Orchestra—turned out to be some of the most gorgeous music to caress these jaded ears in quite some time.
I’m not sure whether to call Idyla (Idyll) a suite or a serenade, as it subscribes to the formal layout of neither yet contains elements of both. The piece is in seven movements, and either Smetana or Dvořák would have been proud to claim it as his own. Written in 1878 when Janáček was 24 (he was a fairly late bloomer when it came to developing his personal modernistic style), the piece is ripe Romanticism at its best. I’m a little embarrassed at not having heard it before—or for not remembering it if I had—for there are a number of prominent conductors and ensembles that have recorded it: Iona Brown and the Norwegian Chamber Orchestra for Chandos, Frantisek Jilek and the Brno State Philharmonic Orchestra for Supraphon, and Ross Pople and the London Festival Orchestra for Arte Nova, among them. In any case, I’m glad to have discovered (or rediscovered) it in this exceptionally fine account by the French Canadian, Montreal based Ensemble Instrumental Appassionata.
When it comes to Lekeu’s Adagio for Strings, I know for certain that I’d never heard it before, and I find no other current recordings of it listed. Guillaume Lekeu (1870–1894) belongs near the very top of the list of shortest-lived composers, dying of typhoid fever at the age of 24. Off the top of my head, I think only Arriaga (1806–1826) died younger. Belgian by birth, Lekeu, like a number of the Franco-Belgian school of composers, ended up in Paris, where he became a student of César Franck and, upon Franck’s death, of Vincent d’Indy. Of Lekeu’s approximately 50 works, the only one that has retained some currency is a violin sonata he was commissioned to write by the great violin virtuoso Eugène Ysaÿe. Menuhin took it up and gave the piece its first outing on record in 1938
with sister Hephzibah at the piano, a recording re-mastered and available on Naxos’s “Great Violinists” series.
Written in 1891 when Lekeu was 21—barely an adult by normal standards, but with only three years left to live) the Adagio for Strings is shocking in its uncanny pre-echoing of Schoenberg’s 1899 Transfigured Night. Did Schoenberg know Lekeu’s piece? Who knows? But premonitions of the Schoenberg at certain points in Lekeu’s 11-minute work seem almost too strong to be accidental or coincidental. Again, as is the case with Janáček’s Idyla, Lekeu’s Adagio is an exquisitely beautiful piece.
Little needs to be said about the Grieg and Mozart numbers on the disc. They’ve both been done to death by countless ensembles and on countless recordings. So, buying this release for either the Two Elegiac Melodies or the Serenata Notturna, superbly as they are played here by the Ensemble Instrumental Appassionata, will probably make for redundant additions to your collections. But for the Janáček and the Lekeu, I cannot give this CD a stronger recommendation. It’s over an hour’s worth of pure bliss. The ensemble’s official website lists this as their sole recording. Based on the sheer beauty and sheen of their playing, I hope there will be many more to come.