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Osm strike takes a toll on soloists At the Lanaudière festival, Ben Heppner and Deborah Voight soar over the sour notes from a pick-up band. Alan Conter The Globe and Mail July 26, 2005 It was supposed to have been one of the highlights of the Festival de Lanaudière -- Deborah Voigt and Ben Heppner with the Orchestre symphonique de Montréal under Asher Fisch's able baton performing Beethoven and Wagner. "The Debbie & Ben Tour," as some wags in the opera press are calling it, hit Lanaudière Saturday, opened last week at the National Arts Centre in Ottawa with the NAC orchestra, and will be heard in New York and Berlin later in the season -- always with local orchestras. Of course Quebeckers were hoping to hear this dynamic duo accompanied by the superb playing of the musicians of the OSM. While some in English Canada cling to the notion, first played up by former conductor Charles Dutoit, that the OSM is a French band, Dutoit transformed the group into a credible Teutonic titan with a firm grasp on Wagner and R. Strauss. But Saturday night Voigt and Heppner were backed by a pick-up band. A festering labour dispute between OSM management and the musician's union meant that all OSM summer gigs were cancelled. More than a few Lanaudière patrons weren't willing to accept that compromise. The natural amphitheatre of the Festival de Landaudière in Joliette can seat 2,000 people under the roof and well over 5,000 comfortably picnicking on the sloped lawn. The remarkable acoustics allow everyone to hear well. On Saturday there were orchestra seats to be had and plenty of space left on the lawn. "It's hard to say exactly why concerts sell," Frédéric Bédard, the festival's director, said Friday. "Last year, despite the presence of the OSM, we had a disastrous year. The weather was a big factor and it had rained through July. But yes, we certainly wanted the conflict settled. We held out to the very end of June before committing to our pick-up orchestra. There was no question of cancelling the concert." While the show must go on, it wasn't entirely satisfactory. It was impossible not to think about what listening to Voigt, Heppner and mezzo-soprano Guang Yang would have been like had they been backed by the subtle and accomplished playing of the OSM in the immensely intricate orchestral shifts of Wagner's O sink hernieder, Nacht der Liebe from Tristan and Isolde. Earlier the horns had shown that they were simply not up to playing together in the overture to Beethoven's Fidelio, and there were cringe-making moments under both Voigt's and Heppner's Fidelio arias. Indeed at the outset of Heppner's In des Lebens Fruhlingstagen he seemed unnerved but recovered admirably. The musicians did their best to keep up but faltered under the insistent and dramatic repetition of the tenor on the words "zu freiheit." In the Tristan and Isolde excerpt all three singers had to truly soar over the orchestra to lift the music to a lofty enough plateau. After the intermission Voigt sang an achingly beautiful Dich, teure Halle from Wagner's Tannhauser and Heppner's Meistersinger was full of enthusiasm and rich colour. The orchestra gave a credible if not especially memorable reading of the instrumental excerpt Forest Murmurs with some fine work in the woodwinds. The program closed with Ewig war ich, ewig bin ich duet from Siegfried. The audience had got what they had come for, some truly great singing. But the festival is thankfully not dependent on large orchestral concerts. In fact there is a whole other side to the festival. While it generally requires some off-the-beaten-track exploring, you end up in some lovely churches in the Laurentian foothills listening to some fabulous chamber ensembles or solo artists. Thursday night, for example, 20-year-old Ang Li, the winner of the Montreal OSM 2003 Piano Competition, gave a concert in the village church of Ste-Émélie-de-l'Énergie. The evening started with three lovely sonatas by Scarlatti. She then moved onto Chopin and her reading of the 2nd Nocturne was really fine. During the Brahms sonata that made up the second half of the concert she showed a mastery of the colour of her instrument, though that was marred somewhat by the piano itself having a bit of a tuning problem around middle E. Today, cellist Pieter Wispelwey plays Bach, Britten and Kodaly at the Church of St-Calixte. On Thursday he joins forces with pianist Dejan Lazic at the Church of St-Paul, just outside Joliette. Friday, Angela Hewitt plays with the Australian Chamber Orchestra at the Amphitheatre. However, next Saturday's concert sees the Orchestre Métropolitain replacing the OSM at the Amphitheatre for a Tchaikovsky program. Meanwhile the talks between the OSM and its players continue, but seem to go nowhere. Last Wednesday, playing Terry Riley's In C, OSM players and their families and friends marched from Place des Arts with police escort along downtown Montreal streets to Phillips Square. They collected signatures along the way and got enthusiastic honks from passing motorists. "Yeah, we need the OSM back playing. They're stars and the city needs them," said Benoît Barisé, as he interrupted his lunch on the grass outside Christ Church Cathedral to sign the petition proffered by a striking musician. "Montrealers need to see this settled soon." "You know, spirits were down earlier this month," said Ed Wingell, a bassist with the orchestra and a member of the negotiating committee, "but as you can see here we're united, we're determined to see this through and we want to play for Montrealers." The striking musicians of the OSM will play for Montrealers tomorrow at Église St-Jean-Baptiste on Rachel Street at 8 p.m. under the baton of Mario Bernardi. The free concert includes Berlioz, Mozart and Schumann. Festival International de Lanaudière Ben Heppner, Deborah Voight and the Festival Orchestra conducted by Asher Fisch