SYMPHONY, CHURCH MAKE GREAT MUSIC

Outside the parish Church of St. Eustache, still pockmarked by cannon shot from a French-Canadian rebellion in 1837, police slow traffic to a crawl and point to signs reading, “Silence please. Recording in progress.”

The twin-steepled Catholic church, lying northwest of the city across the Milles Iles River, is the unorthodox but spectacularly successful recording studio of the Montreal Symphony.

Nineteen recordings made in St. Eustache over the last six years have elevated the Montreal Symphony to international stature and made its Swiss music director, Charles Dutoit, “the new conducting star of the digital era,” as the New York Times put it.

The right combination of orchestra, conductor and digital recording has brought sales of 1 million discs and tapes worldwide, according to the symphony’s managing director, Zarin Mehta, brother of New York Philharmonic conductor Zubin Mehta.

“The records are our calling card,” said Mehta, and have led to successive European, U.S. and Canadian tours.

Montreal versions of works by Ravel, Berlioz, Saint-Saens and Falla have won international prizes for their clarity and brilliance at a time when compact disc buyers seek transparent detail in a new recording.

British critic Edward Greenfield calls the Montreal Symphony the best French orchestra now playing, and the Boston Herald critic termed a March, 1986 concert “a staggering demonstration of just how good an orchestra can sound.”

Engineers give much of the credit for the symphony’s emerging reputation to the square-shaped Church of St. Eustache, with its arched ceiling, gold-hued interior and pure acoustics.

“And it all happened by chance,” said Mehta, interviewed as he drove from symphony headquarters at the city’s Place des Arts to a recent recording session in which Dutoit conducted Bizet.

Back in 1980, the orchestra was scheduled to make its first recordings under a new contract with Decca-London and engineers began scouring the city.

“They looked at 30 or 40 churches, ballrooms, concert halls and other possibilities, but none were suitable,” said Mehta.

Then someone recommended the out-of-the-way old church in St. Eustache.

“The engineers walked in, clapped their hands, snapped their fingers and said, ‘This is it.’

“Decca says it’s probably the best recording site they’ve ever come across,” said Mehta, an accountant who has taken a leave of absence to help build a first-class orchestra in the world’s second-biggest French city.

Ray Minshull, head of Decca classical records and chief engineer for the Dutoit sessions, said it’s been the luckiest discovery he can recall, and the most meteoric rise of any of the orchestras he has recorded.

Choice of repertory is crucial: The orchestra is updating the catalogue in works recorded a quarter of a century ago by Ernest Ansermet and the Suisse Romande Orchestra.

In exchange for exclusive recording rights in St. Eustache for 10 years, the Montreal Symphony pays undisclosed fees to the parish and provides wholesale copies of discs for the church to sell.

“There’s a little inconvenience,” said the parish priest, the Rev. Viateur Raymond, who convenes weekday Mass in the rectory when the orchestra is in residence four weeks a year.

Declaring a preference for Mahler and Stravinsky, the priest said the musical partnership has put St. Eustache on the map, and only a few of his 18,000 parishioners object.

The orchestra is invited to take part in 150th anniversary celebrations this year of the uprising by Les Patriotes, rebels who opposed British colonial rule. Their protests contributed to later reforms and the 1867 confederation of Canada.

At the Bizet session, Dutoit sat on a raised platform in the vestry, debating the merits of rival takes of Bizet’s “L’Arlesienne” Suite. The engineers’ panel was squeezed between rows of white cupboards containing clerical vestments.

Dutoit, 50, was hired as music director in 1977 and inherited an orchestra floundering after earlier success under the batons of Igor Markevitch and Zubin Mehta (1961-67).

“My work has been to give the orchestra, the city and the province (of Quebec) new motivation and new goals, a pride which had been lost,” said the conductor, who actively promotes the Montreal Symphony in community and government circles.