Though museums have long been host to musical events, a partnership between the Orchestre Symphonique de Montréal with conductor Kent Nagano and Musée des Beaux-arts de Montréal brought art to the concert hall this Wednesday evening. Artwork from MBAM’s permanent collection was projected behind the orchestra at the Maison Symphonique de Montréal during performances of three newly commissioned works by Canadian composers Scott Good, Simon Bertrand and Jeffrey Ryan, all using works of Canadian artists as their point of departure. During the second half of the performance, additional artwork by Canadian artists were projected to accompany the OSM’s performance of Mussorgsky’s Pictures at an Exhibition.
The trio of new commissions was the highlight of the program and the most successful pairing of art and music. Simon Bertrand’s Gravité translated the chaos of Riopelle’s 1956 painting Gravity into sound. Scott Good’s Evening, North Shore, Lake Superior offered a beautiful musical interpretation of a painting by Franklin Carmichael. When listening to Good’s piece, you are transported from the concert hall to the landscape in Carmichael’s painting. You can practically feel the last rays of sunshine through orange autumn leaves when hearing his effective use of the woodwinds and the harp.
Jeffrey Ryan’s Moving, Still, inspired by the work of Canadian artist Betty Goodwin, was a rousing finale to this delightful group of works. At first, the particular Goodwin painting projected appeared simple and still, as the name suggests. A group of white, jagged lines cross the canvass from top to bottom. The palette is relatively limited. Upon closer investigation, the painting becomes highly active, agitated, and anxiety producing. Ryan’s piece allowed the audience to experience both the stillness and agitation within the work until it finally explodes. I had visceral reactions to Ryan’s angst-ridden Moving, Still that I rarely experience in the concert hall, and my initial impression of the artwork was transformed.
In the second half of the program, the OSM played Mussorgsky’s Pictures at an Exhibition. MBAM Director Nathalie Bondil curated a series of images to accompany each of the fourteen movements. When Mussorgsky composed his Pictures at an Exhibition, he was likely inspired by particular watercolors that his friend and colleague Viktor Hartmann created during his travels throughout Europe. While the idea to select some of the original Hartmann works that could have inspired Mussorgsky might seem natural, Bondil curated a new “exhibition” to accompany the OSM’s performance featuring paintings by Canadian artists.
Overall, Bondil’s pairings were successful and offered interesting commentary on Mussorgsky’s own musical “exhibition”. For example, the famous “Promenade” that repeats several times in variation offered Bondil the opportunity to present her own visual variations on a theme. For the first several iterations of the “Promenade”, she chose verdant landscapes by Fritz Brandtner and William Brymner. As the “Promenade” variations become increasingly dark throughout the work, the landscapes Bondil selected became increasingly stark until finally were are left with a minimalist landscape by Jean Paul Lemieux, so barren that it only contains a few lonely livestock in the middle of an empty field. Other pairings were less successful. The work paired with the finale, titled “The Great Gate of Kiev”, was far too understated to capture the grandeur of the score or the tremendous sound of the OSM.