Claire Guimond Shares the Baton with Mathieu Lussier as Co-Artistic Director

The brilliant bassoonist Mathieu Lussier made himself known with his performance Telemann’s Concerto for “flute a bec and bassoon in f major”. He is truly a virtuoso player and was perfectly paired to Claire Guimond’s marvelous flue playing. Their timing was perfect, most notably heard in the allegro movement. The orchestra seemed to come to life with this work. One must single out Vincent Lauzer. His recorder performance was spell bnding. Telemann would have been so pleased hearing how brilliant Vincent rendered his C Major Concerto. 
However, something seemed to be amiss with the  first three  previous works on the program – none of which were composed by Telemann, though the concert was titled Telemann in Paris. But all were influenced by him and lived during his time.

There seemed to be a the tenuous approach by the orchestra, It must be hard to conduct an orchestra while playing the bassoon at the same time. The other pieces seemed to suffer from a lack of direction. The usual crispness and sparkle were missing in the first part of the program, save for that Telemann Concerto. This lackluster delivery was not up to the usual standard of Arion. Were the under-rehearsed?

I also would suggest that if Mathieu is to talk between performances – and talk he certainly did, he make an effort to translate even part of his monologue, as Claire always used to whenever she had something to say (which usually happened before the orchestra started playing).

Mathieu Lussier

Arion’s musicians are brilliant, but this opening concert of the season did not reflect their enthusiasm and wonder. Maybe, it was raining in Paris during their Sunday performance, and Francoeur, Naudet, Leclair. Blamont and Rebel – the other composers on the program did not bring their umbrellas to shelter the musicians from it. 

Visit www.arionbaroque.com for the upcoming concerts.

Claire Guimond

On that note, it must be highlighted that the great Cliare Guimond received the Betty Webster Award, Congratulations, Claire!

                            https://oc.ca/en/betty-webster-award/