RDSO ‘explodes’ with stories
New and old music was served up with the technicolour vibrancy of a Cecil B. DeMille movie by a baroque-style Red Deer Symphony Orchestra on Saturday night.
The RDSO might have been chamber sized, with a mere 25 musicians, but the French Kiss concert at the Red Deer College Arts Centre provided an explosion of colourful imagery as nearly every evocative work on the program was written to tell a story.
The most famous was the tale of Don Quixote, which underpinned four songs that were composed by Jacques Ibert, and performed by solo vocalist Paul Grindlay.
While it initially seemed a little odd to hear classical songs delivered in the bass registers of the Calgary-based opera singer (audiences being more attuned to the more common sopranos and tenors), it was a short-lived strangeness.
Grindlay proved the rich depth of his low range as his resonant voice drew on various emotions to tell the story of the misguided Spanish knight whose quests end tragically.
The Chansons are based on ancient and contemporary poems, and were written for a 1933 French film that starred a Russian operatic superstar of the day, Feodor Chaliapin.
They recount the Cervantes classic, starting with the departure of the man from La Mancha on a chivalrous mission. The songs continue with Quixote’s lament for the unrequited love he bears for the beautiful and elusive Dulcinea, as well as Quixote’s meeting with a trickster duke on the road.
Ultimately, they describe the knight’s untimely death.
Grindlay’s nuanced, sensitive performance of the last song struck a particular chord with the audience, as he turned the inherent sadness of an individual’s doom into a general requiem for the human condition.
The goose-bump inducing moment earned the singer a swell of well-earned applause.
The other soloist of the evening was oboe player Sarah Brown, who won a Kiwanis Festival prize to play with the RDSO.
The 18-year-old from Rocky Mountain House showed considerable skill — as well as poise under pressure — in her performance of the only non-French piece on the program, Josef Haydn’s Oboe Concerto in C Major.
The talented Augustana University student handled Haydn’s trills smoothly and melodiously, living up to the challenges set by the Austrian composer.
The RDSO took another bite out of history with Jean Phillippe Rameau’s baroque Suite from Les Boreades, involving the harpsichord and some unorthodox use of clarinets.
Rameau was among the first to put the then-new instruments into an orchestral setting. But conductor Claude Lapalme noted this didn’t mean the composer knew what to do with them.
Clarinets “make an appearance, but he treats them like funny-sounding oboes,” said Lapalme, who commended the RDSO’s clarinetists for being quick studies.
They sized up all of the unusual ornamentation Rameau demanded, and hopped to the task nicely.
The nearly full-house crowd lapped up all the baroque touches in this operatic ballet that lived up to Lapalme’s description of being “an exhilarating experience.”
Another vivid work was Maurice Ravel’s charming ode to childhood, Ma Mere L’Oye (Mother Goose).
Particularly memorable was the Asian-inspired movement that used unusual percussive accents, and the chirpy Tom Thumb one that recreated the bird sounds of a forest.
But the very first piece performed, French-Canadian composer Claude Champagne’s Danse Villagoise, was probably the most soundtrack-like of all. The jaunty, rural tune brought to mind rollicking, 1950s-style Hollywood musicals, such as Seven Brides for Seven Brothers.
The music is bold, bright and colourful — perfect for those times in life when subtlety seems overrated.
lmichelin@reddeeradvocate.com
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