Browsing: Chamber Music

In a concert called “Beautés culturelles”, Trio de l’Île presents a musical excursion that starts with Shostakovich’s Trio op. 8 no. 1 composed at the age of 16 when young Shostakovich was still at the Conservatory in St-Petersbourg. Dedicated to Tatyana Glivenko, a girl he had fallen in love with in Crimea, this work reveals a young Shostakovich already in complete mastery of harmony, counterpoint and form. The concert then takes a turn towards Spain, with Joaquin Turina’s Trio op.76 no.2. With distinctive Spanish elements this refreshing work is sparkling and evocative while keeping true to the classical and romantic…

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There are so many misnomers about Ms Clarke that it’s worth taking a sentence or two to put them straight. Clarke (1886-1979) is widely regarded as one of the first English women composers. But her father was an American photographic executive, her mother was German and as soon as she reached 30 Clarke sailed off to the US to spend the better part of her life over there, playing mostly English music in a trio. Her own music is English in rather dated sense of the term, heavily reliant on folk music and simple modulations. Her viola sonata is not…

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Special symbols on the keyboard, sometimes it’s a little tough,” cellist Joshua Gindele said about the distinctive accent that adorns the name of the Miró Quartet. “But I haven’t seen one missing for a long time.” Yes, software is better than it was in 1995, when four students at the Oberlin Conservatory in Cleveland rallied around the surname of the Catalan artist Joan Miró to form an ensemble that took first prizes at the 1998 Banff International String Quartet Competition and the 2000 Naumburg Chamber Music Competition. Now in robust mid-career, the foursome of 40-somethings will appear in Pollack Hall…

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Marc Djokic is a violinist on the move. Winner of the 2017-2018 Mécénat Musica Prix Goyer and an Opus award from the Conseil québécois de la musique, he’s had a busy year touring while pursuing new projects. Last summer, Djokic began his first European tour with solo recitals, chamber music concerts and masterclasses in Venice, Geneva and Bern. He was also recently appointed concertmaster of the McGill Chamber Orchestra. His first album, Solo Seven, was released on the ATMA Classique label in the fall. For our interview, Djokic suggested that we meet at the Association Récréative Milton-Parc, in downtown Montreal,…

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PREVIEW: of Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn at 100, at New York City’s 92nd Street Y, Monday, November 19, 7:30 p.m.; and INTERVIEW: with pianist and conductor Ignat Solzhenitsyn, son of Nobel Prize-winning author Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn. Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, the heroic anti-Soviet dissident whose vital and uncompromising documentation of the horrors of the Stalinist police state won the 1970 Nobel Prize for literature and provided indispensable impetus to the forces that brought on the communist regime’s late 20th-century downfall, would have turned 100 this December 11. In what promises to be an especially rich, personal and heartfelt early celebration of that centenary, New York City’s…

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REVIEW: of The Anchoress, a world premiere of a new musical monodrama/song cycle composed by David Serkin Ludwig with text by Katie Ford, performed by soprano Hyunah Yu, accompanied by saxophone quartet PRISM and ancient-instrument ensemble Piffaro; on Wednesday, October 17, at the Perelman Theatre of Philadelphia’s Kimmel Center, and on Thursday, October 18, at New York City’s DiMenna Center for Classical Music (the latter performance reviewed here); and INTERVIEWS: with composer David Ludwig and poet Katie Ford. The impulse to retreat from the world in search of spiritual insight or purity has manifested throughout human history. Twenty-one centuries of Christianity…

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REVIEW: of works by composers David Lang and Gregg Kallor – The Mile-Long Opera by Lang, performed on the High Line; and sketches from The Frankenstein Suite, plus the monodrama “The Telltale Heart,” by Kallor, performed in the Catacombs of Brooklyn’s Green-Wood Cemetery. Some uncanny musical surprises graced unusual locations both above and below New York City street-level during the early part of Halloween month. Here’s a diary retrospective. Going the Extra Mile Beginning at twilight on six consecutive evenings (October 3 through 8; viewed October 7), Pulitzer-Prize-winning composer David Lang and a host of collaborators presented a unique choral…

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Dominique Beauséjour-Ostiguy is a cellist, composer and multi-instrumentalist who combines passion and creativity in a many-layered career on the Quebec artistic scene. In June his performance of Dvořák’s Cello Concerto, with accompanist Michel-Alexandre Broekaert, won him the Prix d’Europe. Following a Bachelor’s at the Conservatoire de musique de Montréal under Carole Sirois, the native of Laval has just completed a Master’s at Université de Montréal under Yégor Dyachkov. “I’d like to go and do further training in Europe next year, keeping one foot in Quebec, where I am part of various ensembles,” he says. As a performer, he’d like to…

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Chansons d’amour d’Acadie et de France – Chœur Louisbourg, dir. Monique Richard ; Skye Consort This album offers a happy musical reflection of publications of recent decades. The Acadian folk songs are from compilations published in 1988 and 1996. Musical style range from the languor of Écrivez-moi to the light touch of Moine Simon. The Louisbourg Choir, directed by Monique Richard, lends rich tone and consistency to these songs, whose harmonies have been carefully chosen to give them a traditional sound, complemented by the instruments of the Skye Consort: recorder, chalumeau, rauschpfeife, cittern, violin, nyckelharpa and cello. Jacotin Le Bel’s songs complement a…

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A fixture on the Montreal music scene with an impressive following abroad, Josh Dolgin, a.k.a. Socalled, has been dubbed “the mad wizard of Yiddish hip-hop.” Over the last two decades, his whimsical blend of seriously irreverent artistry has popped up in concert halls, clubs and cinemas, as he dabbles in cartooning and magic and takes part in far-flung collaborations like Tales from Odessa, his Yiddish gangster puppet musical for the Segal Centre, and the Juno-nominated album AKOKA, with classical cellist Matt Haimovitz and klezmer clarinettist David Krakauer. This fall sees the release of both his original queerotic film The Housesitter along…

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