MONTREAL — As all music lovers know, or should know, the year 2024 marks the 200th anniversary of the birth of Anton Bruckner. Orchestras have varied in their show of reverence. The Orchestre Métropolitain and Yannick Nézet-Séguin, its arch-Brucknerian artistic director of 25 years, made clear where they stand Sept. 22 by opening their season with a majestic performance of the Ninth Symphony.
And then some. Most conductors content themselves with the three movements Bruckner lived to complete. Nézet-Séguin offered a Ninth with Bruckner’s Te Deum as a choral finale and a new work as a seamlessly integrated starter. I could respect and even admire the appendages without quite abandoning my preference for the symphony’s traditional three-body solution.
The idea of using the Te Deum, a 25-minute hymn of praise written in 1884, as the Ninth’s missing fourth movement has been around as long as the symphony itself. A handful of contemporaries claimed that Bruckner (who worked assiduously on an instrumental finale to his dying day) thought well of the proposal, despite the illogical C major conclusion consequently imposed on a work whose first two movements are emphatically in D minor.
Nézet-Séguin does not mind connecting the dots. As he pointed out in his spoken introduction, he performed the Ninth and the Te Deum together back in 2002. And with some success, to judge by my own review in the Montreal Gazette.
Adding a six-minute introduction is obviously a more radical measure. Happily, Andrew Balfour, a Canadian of Cree descent, approached his assignment with a sense of occasion. There were luminous choral clusters in Mamachimowin — a translation into Cree of Psalm 67 — that could be considered compatible with a Brucknerian (not to mention Catholic) state of mind.
The composer also took care to emphasize the lower strings, so that the pianissimo entry of violins signaled the onset of the symphony proper. All the same, the quiet tremolo at the start of a Bruckner symphony signifies a primordial beginning, an emergence from nothing. Can there be something before the beginning? It is a question that answers itself.
None of this prevented the afternoon from being a great one. Having recorded the canonical Bruckner symphonies for the Montreal-based ATMA Classique label, the OM players know how to produce a big, rounded sound. The brass sometimes emerged victorious in full-scale climaxes, but the strings (violins divided and double basses lined up at the back of the stage) acquitted themselves handsomely at all volume levels. The principal oboe and flute were sweet and pointed. Wagner tubas were warm. Everything sounded authentically Brucknerian.
As for Nézet-Séguin — scoreless as usual — he has always had a gift for releasing the lyrical bar-by-bar expression of phrases without compromising architecture. From start to finish, he imparted a sense of adventure. The flow of the first movement’s second theme, the demonic thrust of the Scherzo, the intense yearning of the Adagio: They seemed at once surprising and familiar. It is hard to imagine a more thorough integration of the human and the divine.
As I suggested earlier, I number among those who feel the Adagio provides a satisfying conclusion. But the Te Deum is a great work in its own right, as this stirring performance (complete with organ) made apparent. The 91-strong Choeur Métropolitain, as prepared by François A. Ouimet and Pierre Tourville, produced some of the richest and best-balanced pianissimos I have heard in the Maison symphonique.
The stellar American solo quartet stationed in the choir loft — Latonia Moore, Jennifer Johnson Cano, Limmie Pulliam, Ryan Speedo Green — reminded us that Nézet-Séguin has certain connections south of the Canadian border. Indeed, the conductor had a little day-after-Bruckner assignment to fulfill in New York: opening the Metropolitan Opera season. Next stop, Philadelphia, for the Thursday opening of the Philadelphia Orchestra season. Not quite sure how he does it. Just happy that he does.
A note is merited about the attentive Orchestre Métropolitain crowd. Likening this 90-minute concert to a service or ceremony, Nézet-Séguin asked for no applause between works. He got no applause, along with remarkably deep silences in the breaks between movements.
What he did not get is a completely full house, even though this was the only performance of the program. One culprit might have been the meaningless title — “Legendary Figures” — the OM gave the concert. Bruckner has turned 200. That is a fact. No sense in hiding it!
