Last night I was at the opening concert of the Orchestre Métropolitan's new season, the first concert with a sizeable audience in a long long time. The excitement of the crowd was palpable. The centre piece of the evening was the Ravel piano concerto in G major featuring Hélène Grimaud, and at the end of the wild and jazzy first movement we couldn't contain ourselves, breaking into applause to the obvious pleasure of the musicians. Grimaud paused for a while before beginning the lyrical second movement which was just stunning, lifting us all on waves of music. When that movement concluded there were ten or fifteen seconds of electric silence, not a cough or sniffle to be heard, everyone suspended in an atmosphere that was almost radioactive in intensity. And then the orchestra launched in to the super third movement.
What a evening.
The opening piece of the night was also wonderful, a composition by Barbara Assiginaak, a composer with First Nation's ancestry, evoking the Fleuve St-Laurent as it meandered through this ancient land. It succeeded perfectly.
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