Baroque and Early - my/maSCENA

Bernard Labadie conducts Mozart’s Requiem

By Justin Bernard on 4 April 2022 Baroque and Early, Classical, Orchestral

Les Violons du Roy can once again spread their wings as they please after more than 1½ months of a lockdown reinstatement and a few small-scale concerts at Bourgie Hall. Nicolas Altstaedt will be the guest artist in the Un violoncelle par-delà des frontières concert series on May 6 and 7. On May 26 and 28, Les Violons du Roy will join forces with I Musici de Montréal, under the baton of Jean-François Rivest. This concert will bring back collaborations with orchestras and musicians. Before these concerts take place, former conductor Bernard Labadie, whose triumphant return has long been expected,…

Jean Lesage: Modern-age composer-philosopher

By Justin Bernard on 9 March 2022 Baroque and Early, Contemporary, Interviews

The Société de musique contemporaine du Québec, as part of its series of portraits of composers, focused on Jean Lesage in a presentation scheduled for the Salle Pierre-Mercure last month (March 27). The composer’s world, at once musical and philosophical, is at the intersection of several arts, as he himself has claimed: “I believe a composer should be open to all the great trends which characterize an epoch’s culture. They need feelers to sense the signs of the time, the zeitgeist, whether it’s through philosophy, literature, painting or the visual arts.” Many stylistic influences Surrealism continues to feed Jean Lesage’s…

Amanda Keesmaat, violoncelle; Pierre-Alexandre Saint-Yves, flûtes, chalumeaux, cornemuse, voix; Patrick Graham, percussions; Seán Dagher, direction musicale, cistre, voix; Alex Kehler, violon, nyckelharpa.

La Nef: Styles and fields come together

By Justin Bernard on 12 January 2022 Baroque and Early, Contemporary, Folk, Interviews, Multimedia, World Music

La Nef is continuing its 30th anniversary celebrations under the general and artistic leadership of Claire Gignac. Though La Nef will present many concerts featuring various musical styles this season, it is currently being noted for its disc production at the start of a new year. On February 5, a concert will take the form of an album presentation, featuring Long Way Home by Andrew Wells-Oberegger, composer and multi-instrumentalist. Six musicians will join him at Montreal’s Maison de la culture Ahuntsic in the Concerts au bout du monde series. On March 10, another production will be led by Artistic Codirector…

George Frideric Handel: Messiah (Leaf Music, 2021)

By Justin Bernard on 13 December 2021 Baroque and Early, CD and Book Reviews, Chamber Music, Choral

George Frideric Handel: MessiahEnsemble Caprice, Ensemble Vocal Arts-Québec; Matthias Maute, conductor; Karina Gauvin, sopranoLeaf Music, 2021 The new recording by Ensemble Caprice jointly with the Ensemble vocal Arts-Québec, under the direction of Matthias Maute, was released on the Leaf Music label. A work by Jaap Nico Hamburger to start, one by Matthias Maute himself to conclude and, as a main course, several excerpts from Handel’s Messiah. The voice and voluptuous timbre of Karina Gauvin are first highlighted in Rejoice greatly, a piece full of lyricism and virtuosity. It is with these same assets that the singer then approaches I know…

New Releases – November 2021

By La Scena Musicale Team on 22 November 2021 Baroque and Early, Canadian Music, Chamber Music, Classical, Classical Music, Piano

Mystic Giorgia Fumanti, soprano Velenosi entertainment VEGA2CD-2942 Release: Aug. 20 Giorgia Fumanti has established herself as one of the top female classical crossover singers in the world, having performed in five continents and in some of the most prestigious and iconic venues. Fumanti’s 12th album, Mystic, is a follow-up to her No. 1 best-selling album Amour and her No. 3 best-selling album Aimons-Nous on Canada’s ADISQ charts. (Her albums have also appeared on Billboard’s Crossover Chart.) This collection includes classical hits by Ravel (Bolero), Verdi (“Va, Pensiero”), Puccini (“Nessun Dorma”), Orff (“O Fortuna”) Albinoni (Adagio), Piazzolla (Libertango), Gino Vannelli, Michel…

Photo: Marc Giguère

Upcoming concerts (November-January): Montreal

By Justin Bernard on 14 November 2021 Baroque and Early, Canadian Music, Indigenous, Opera, Orchestral, Piano

27th JAL Gala After the 2020 edition was cancelled because of the pandemic, the 27th Jeunes Ambassadeurs Lyriques Gala is back in full force this year with no less than 30 singers. For the occasion, two dancers will accompany them in arias and ensemble numbers from the great operatic repertoire. Among the works on the programme, the public will find excerpts from Mozart’s Don Giovanni, Puccini’s La Bohème, Rossini’s La Cenerentola and Verdi’s La Traviata and Rigoletto. In order to reach a larger audience, ticket prices have been reduced compared to previous editions ($12 for students and $35 for the…

Emanuel Ax: Just Call Him “Manny”

By Lucie Renaud on 12 November 2021 Baroque and Early, Piano

A version of this article appeared in 2011. An enthralling wealth of sound that serves Brahms beautifully, a crystalline touch that conveys Mozart as if improvising, a virtuosity that remains subservient to the intelligence of musical speech: Emanuel Ax enchants audiences and critics alike. Whether performing with an orchestra or his long-time chamber music companions, including Yo-Yo Ma and Itzhak Perlman; or in tandem with his fellow pianist Yefim Bronfman; or solo, as he will on Dec. 7 for the Montreal Chamber Music Festival; he succeeds in surprising. Whether you hear him for the first time or discovered him years…

Bach Festival: An oratorio, just in time for Christmas

By Arthur Kaptainis on 12 November 2021 Baroque and Early, Orchestral

The Nov. 21 performance of Bach’s Christmas Oratorio in the Maison symphonique is not a Montreal premiere. The series of six cantatas – written to be performed in as many services from Christmas to Epiphany – has been given repeatedly in the 21st century, sometimes complete, sometimes in a package of three or four. It is no coincidence that Alexandra Scheibler, artistic and general director of the Festival Bach Montréal, moved from Germany to Canada in 2001. Nice town, she thought, but where is the Christmas Oratorio? “You have plenty in Hamburg,” the musicologist and violist told the Montreal Gazette…

Bach Festival back, live and sitting

By Arthur Kaptainis on 12 November 2021 Baroque and Early, Chamber Music, Orchestral

Forewarned is forearmed. “There will be no interval,” reads the audience advisory for the Festival Bach Montréal presentation in Bourgie Hall of The Art of Fugue.   Montrealers, of course, are now accustomed to pandemic protocols that require sitting for 80 minutes without a break. But sitting through the 14 movements (each known formidably as a “contrapunctus”) of Bach’s valedictory composition is a special kind of sitting, even when the performers on Nov. 25 are Les Violons du Roy under their founding conductor Bernard Labadie, who supplies the arrangement. “No doubt a rigorous work, but also one equally touching and…

Photo: Michel Pineault

La Nef: 30th anniversary

By Justin Bernard on 2 November 2021 Baroque and Early, Folk, Interviews

No fewer than three events are on the horizon between now and February. The musicians of La Nef will first present a concert on Nov. 11, another on Dec. 14 and, finally, a new album, which is due early in the new year. This is how the 30th-anniversary celebrations of this cultural organization unfold. In an interview, La Nef artistic director and co-founder Sylvain Bergeron shared some of his most vivid memories of the adventure: “Our first trips took us to Spain in the days of Jeanne la Folle, to the Cathars of southern France and even to the Middle…

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