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A striking performance: MSO players sound great in resonant church

Arthur Kaptanis
The Montreal Gazette
May 26, 2005

The striking musicians of the Montreal Symphony Orchestra chose what would have been the final evening of the 2004-2005 season to present themselves in a 100-per-cent-union-made concert in St. Jean Baptiste Church.

How many in attendance were regular MSO subscribers? Hundreds. How many where clap-between-movement neophytes attracted by the free admission?
Hundreds.
How many loved what they heard? About 2,400, which is to say, everybody. This was a wonderful expression of love for music and pride in playing well that transcended the temporal (and we hope temporary) irritation of labour-management strife.

The players found a conductor, William Henry Curry, resident at the North Carolina Symphony, who presumably believed he had nothing to lose by accepting the invitation. As stoutly presidential as his name - did Curry come before or after Taft? - this native of Pittsburgh led a full-blooded program of Beethoven and Brahms.

The Academic Festival Overture of the latter came first. Rhythms were crisp and brass chorales were handsome. Cymbal crashes had an edge of excitement they never have in that monument to acoustical mediocrity known as Salle Wilfrid Pelletier of Place des Arts.Woodwind clusters made a similar handsome impression in the same composer's Tragic Overture, which was nobly sustained and driven to a imperious conclusion. Rarely has the MSO sounded more Brahmsian.

Nor more Beethovenian in the Seventh Symphony, if we accept the traditional vision of this composer as a titan wrestling with the gods. This was a big-orchestra account of the famous score, although with many pure and beautiful solos, notably by flutist Tim Hutchins and oboist Ted Baskin, and lucid strings in the Allegretto (taken more slowly than is fashionable.) The finale, however, was electric, and drew fitting cheers from the crowd. Glinka's Russlan and Ludmilla Overture was what Curry wittily called the "spontaneous" encore.

The concert was intended as an exercise in public relations. Players were dressed in concert tails. Solidarity buttons and T-shirts were for sale. But the event was above all an affirmation of what the MSO stands for, heard by the Montrealers to whom it belongs.