Alondra de la Parra with the Quebec Symphony Orchestra
Le Soleil
Published the 16th of April 2015.
Alondra de la Parra with the Quebec Symphony Orchestra: pure dynamite.
Photograph: extraordinary breath, vitality and youth inhabit Alondra de la Parra.
LE SOLEIL, ERICK LABBÉ.
RICHARD BOISVERT
Le Soileil
(Quebec) The Mexican orchestra conductor, Alondra de la Parra, led the dance this Wednesday night at the Great Theater. Her contagious dynamism was first transmitted to the Quebec Symphony Orchestra and the on to the entire concert hall.
So much so that the concert ended in a party ambience, or a fiesta. Everybody was standing up to clap and to dance. Cries of joy said goodbye to the last encore. Alondra de la Parra doesn’t only have the rhythm in her blood: extraordinary breath, vitality and youth inhabit her. We don’t always have the chance to see a director in front of the QSO who seems so motivated, determined, self-assured and that, above everything else, achieves such a convincing and exciting result.
This orchestra conductor seems to be dancing with the orchestra. During the Danzón no 2 by Arturo Márquez, she decided to drop the baton as if she wanted to take a better hold of her partner. The execution is spectacular also because she knows exactly where she wants to take her musical world. Without a doubt, she is the one conducting.
She never is as sure of her movement as during the four ballet dances Estancia by Ginastera, which she conducts perfectly from memory: she anticipated every passage as if she had written the score. One should have heard those choirs in the last movement as they delightfully conquered the acute register, supported by solid percussions!
The ambience was completely different during the first part since, still under the direction of the invited conductor, the QSO and the pianist Éric Le Sage offered a beautiful and conscious execution of the Shumann Concerto.
There probably isn’t any musician that is more perfect for the occasion than Éric Le Sage. We know it right ahead: he is incapable of cheating. He plays in full light, eyes turned towards the conductor, which gives the impression that he constantly has everything under control. He almost seems as if he was could manage everything beyond him, perhaps as a result from his beautiful energy saving that we observe in his interpretation and in his relaxed hands.
In the opening of the program, Alondra de la Parra conducted Ouverture tragique by Brahms. Her proposition didn’t lack tone nor punch. There was also something ethereal in her way of painting the legato, something that gave the piece a personal and very original character. It very well was Brahms, but from this approach it retained a little bit of its heaviness and gave the impression to be much larger and grandiloquent.
QUEBEX SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA: Director: Alondra de la Parra, conductor. Éric Le Sage, piano. Brahms: Ouverture tragique, op. 81. Shumann: Concerto pour piano en la mineur, op.54. R.Castro: Intermezzo de Atzimba. A. Ginastera: Estancia, four dances. A. Márquez: Danzón no 2. Wednesday night at the Luis-Fréchette concert hall. Presented again on thursday at 10:30.