Search - Claude Debussy, Benjamin Britten, Pierre Mercure :: La Mer [Hybrid SACD]

Nezet-Seguin Leads OMGM: Debussy in Montreal: Stunning Fines

Dan Fee | Berkeley, CA USA | 11/18/2007

(5 out of 5 stars)

"I am slowly but surely becoming a dedicated fan of this young Canadian conductor. I am a fan, too, of this increasingly fabulous regional-city orchestra. The OMGM was founded only in 1981, by bringing together various graduates of the Quebec conservatories to play with faculty members.



I have already remarked favorably on the general rise in palpable musicality of so many regional bands around the world, not least the musical rewards reaped in the Braunschweig band recording led so well by Jonas Alber doing Strauss' Alpensinfonie in super audio on the Coviello label. (I have yet to be a fan of the Coviello's catalogue with the orchestra of Aachen under Marcus Bosch. Braunschweig catches high fire, and to my ears, Aachen is still a small regional band playing very competently.)



When it comes to French-speaking Canada, the regional bands rewards tally much better. We have been getting fine performances from OMGM under Nezet-Seguin, plus Yoav Talmi leading Debussy orchestrations with the OSQ (Orchestre Symphonique du Quebec). The latter disc is a super audio sleeper if there ever was one, and if you don't have it yet, well what are you waiting for?



So far as OMGM goes, the Saint-saens' Third Symphony in super audio is also an obvious winner. We also get the Bruckner Seventh Symphony in a youthful-sounding reading that I will take any day, over the likes of Seiji Ozawa and the Saito Kinen, or the likes of Yakov Kreizberg and the Vienna Symphony. So we come brightly to the disc at hand.



Starting with Debussy's trail-blazing La Mer, the band does some performance trail-blazing of its own. Captured in vivid multi-channel super audio - and in this regard, vivid does not mean, Loud - the OMGM under Nezet-Seguin simply does a stunning job. Now I have already praised the other recent and stunning La Mer given us on the BIS label with Lan Shui and the Singapore Symphony, but this La Mer must also go right to my keeper shelves. Whereas I was carried away by Singapore's color and sensualty, in this reading I am just as carried away by the musical finesse and elegance being devoted to the composer's musical purposes. Under Nezet-Seguin the band simply offers up a bottomless display of instrumental virtuosity and refinement. Nothing is played on automatic pilot, and every note, every phrase is considered anew.



Interpretatively, the whole of this La Mer is something other than the considerable sum of its elegant, refined parts. One garners a lasting impression of intimacy as if this orchestral work were the world's largest French chamber music, instead of being a symphony orchestra hard a work in a new French direction. Though passing touches of sea-salted air and Mediterranean sun and wind are present, the greater lessons are about music and modernity - as if Debussy's genius was an inevitable precursor to Ravel and Messiaen and Milhaud. The colors are all here, in this La Mer, but they serve almost twelve-tone-school purposes of clarity, brilliance, and structural strength. Nor an ordinary big band show in this La Mer, then.



Next the conductor and band give us Britten. Four interludes are taken from Britten's opera Peter Grimes. The same attention to detail that repositioned La Mer into more abstract music for its own sake, and not just a new way of going for Late Romantic tone painting, bring Britten's evocative seascapes into being more like character studies, equal to the opera's main protagonist Peter Grimes and the local townsfolk. It is not so much the sea we get in this reading of Britten's Interludes, as how the sea brings people and events into dramatic and tragic being as the opera plot unfolds.



Then we are handed over to a contemporary French Canadian composer, Pierre Mercure. His symphonic work is called, Kaleidoscope. A listener waits, skeptical. Can this rather unknown work stand being in the company of great modernists like Debussy and Britten?



Well, as it happens, Mercure can take the daring exposure. His style is as capable of color and clarity as his confreres on this disc. In addition, we get a generous helping of fun and jazzy frolic, with George Gershwin reminiscences joining Ravel and Milhaud. Mercure's style is cinematic and capable of a sort of Poulenc-flavored travelogue and happiness to be human - alive and on the move. Given all this in the Mercure work, one wishes that this conductor and orchestra would turn their attention for a good while in the near future to Darius Milhaud. These very gifts might help bring his genius further out of the shadows of the past century than might otherwise stay the case, on super audio recordings at least.



To wind up the disc, conductor and band turn back to Debussy. The final reading is that other Debussy trail-blazer, the famous orchestral Prelude, based on a Mallarme poem about an afternoon, and a faun's erotic, sensual daydreams of nymphs. The Ballet Russe and Nijinsky made yet another Parisian scandal of it at its dance debut. The work was an unprecedented musical first as well at its premier in 1894, and it remains, clearly a perihelion ray of genius and musical sunlight, in this reading by these artists. Aside from a Stokowski reading captured very late in that maestro's long recorded career, I can hardly recall such a breakthrough reading of this prelude. If anything, Debussy's uniqueness shines through in this prelude reading, even better than it does in the recording of La Mer.



Fair disclosure as a wrap up. I heard this disc while on Tylenol 3 tablets, treating some painful bruising that resulted from a bike accident that could have been much worse than it was. So maybe my perceptions were fired up by the drugs involved. But I think not, and recommend any listener who cares about super audio's musical potentials to give this disc a good whirl. I bet you will end up keeping it. Five elegant stars."

Superb SACD !

jean couture | Quebec city - Canada | 10/25/2009

(5 out of 5 stars)

"This heterogeneous program, recorded in the live ambiance of a church, presents an exquisite `La Mer' (`The Sea') from Debussy. Without being exceptional, the `Prelude to the Afternoon of a Faun' is equally fine, although, to be honest, it will hardly suit at all any theme related to "sea music". Anyway, in the hands of Nezet-Seguin and l'Orchestre Metropolitain du Grand Montreal, the Late Romantic or "impressionist" facet of Claude Debussy has the appropriate "floating" quality that seems to be requisite in this music--and those works sound quite a bit in the vein of Ravel's `La Valse' or `Daphnis et Chloe'. The multi-channel SACD is splendid (just as the two-track stereo mixdown), with clarity of textures, vibrant colors and nicely done balance throughout. The ATMA engineers have succeeded in partially "taming" the resonant acoustics of the church, Eglise Saint-Nom-De-Jesus (Montreal), where the sessions took place.



`La Mer' has received numerous appearances on disc since the LP era. Of course, any individual will have a tough time in trying to rival the great ones--Toscanini, Reiner, Munch, Paray, Haitink, Ansermet, van Beinum, Giulini, Boulez and Shui (among others). But, from now on Nezet-Seguin's should be considered one of the best--and most effective--interpretations in the middle of a crowded field. His `La Mer' really taps into something profound and the recording is so crystal-clear! And the musicians' jeu d'ensemble is lovely, if sometimes only a bit too cautious... The brasses have the necessary bite and the woodwinds gleam above a pellucid cushion of strings. In my book, Yannick Nezet-Seguin's fresh view of Debussy's `La Mer' is definitely one of the best.



I am also quite impressed by Pierre Mercure's `Kaleidoscope', a work i previously didn't know. The melodic, rich and finely built orchestration makes one wonder why this composer is not more performed today. It truly sounds original but i must say it reminded me at times of Stravinsky or some works by Arthur Bliss, albeit being overtly of the French school type of Ravel, Debussy and Milhaud. The Montreal team's playing of that minor masterpiece is stirring to the bone and i can't imagine a better performance. The Britten `Interludes' are very good on their own, but here i miss the last ounce of that very English soundscape, the indispensable scent of swelling waters and damp rocks--the very essence of this opus--as fully portrayed by the likes of Vernon Handley, Andre Previn or Leonard Slatkin. Still, here's a pleasant--and different--depiction of that little marvel in orchestration known also as part of the opera `Peter Grimes'. In short, here's a refined disc that offers a broad range of musical excitement. The open space "airy sound" of the recording lieu makes its distinctive presence felt and most of the music featured here is a treat, especially the symphonic tone poem `La Mer' and the orchestral bijou `Kaleidoscope'. This admirably produced ATMA release is a musically fine album which i recommend highly. *****"

OMGM is a world class ensemble!

Ethan E. Matthes | 02/01/2008

(4 out of 5 stars)

"Although the previous two very positive reviews were detailed in analysis, I was still a little suspicious that the reviewers might be overhyping their local ensemble. This was Not the Case at All! The OMGM is an excellent ensemble producing vibrant sound in a concert hall with fine accoustics. This disc sounds wonderful as one would expect from a modern DSD recording. "Kaleidoscope" by Pierre Mercure was an unexpected delight. My only gripes relate to (1) the missing Passacaglia from Peter Grimes... Why is this ommitted so often?! And (2) the Four Sea Interludes from Peter Grimes, that while played very beautifully, are not played foreboding enough for such a dark storyline. Overall, this disc is Recommended!"