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A little bit of Strauss lit up Salle Wilfrid Pelletier on New Year's Day.
Photograph by: Dave Sidaway , The Gazette
MONTREAL ? If most big cities in Canada feel a little like Vienna on New Year?s Day, some credit is owing to the Salute to Vienna organization, which has been promoting reasonable facsimiles of the Neujahrskonzert for the better part of two decades.
The Montreal edition proved characteristically easy to like on Tuesday in Salle Wilfrid Pelletier of Place des Arts.
Our conductor was Matthias Fletzberger, a Viennese who once tried a crossover career, to judge by web images of him seated at a white piano adorned with rose petals. He was in formal tails for this occasion, leading a pickup Strauss Orchestra that sounded both relaxed and rehearsed. String sounds were warm and balances refined. The output was a testament to the musical infrastructure in Montreal and Quebec City (where the concert is repeated on Wednesday) and to the fact that performers love to play this music almost as much as people love to hear it.
All the instrumental numbers were by a Strauss, either Johann Jr. or Josef (Johann Sr. provided the encore). Nevertheless, the selection was relatively original, with a surprising dearth of A-list waltzes, unless we can place the Acceleration in that category.
Our master of ceremonies in both official languages, Fletzberger showed a knack for sustaining soft interludes in the Overtures to The Gypsy Baron and A Night in Venice. Not to worry: polkas nipped along smartly. Extra points to the percussionists for their colourful work in Josef Strauss?s Feuerfest.
We had the standard condiments of a vocal duet and ballet troupe, the latter from the Kiev-Aniko Ballet of Ukraine. Tenor Thomas Sigwald, if not the steadiest singer in the world, approached his numbers in an appealingly open style. Lyne Fortin was in wonderfully lustrous voice and armed as usual with a natural sense of line and rhythm. This is my candidate for Canada?s most unjustly neglected soprano. No points to the conductor for getting her name wrong.
The Radetzky March was the encore. I had a feeling that the persistent applause at the end was an appeal for the Blue Danube and the attendant rituals. When did these go out of style?
akaptainis@sympatico.ca
? Copyright (c) The Montreal Gazette
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