Contemporary - my/maSCENA

Photo : Pierre-Étienne Bergeron

Ensemble Contemporain de Montreal: 30 years of innovation

By Evelyne Ridyard on 9 April 2018 Classical, Classical Music, Contemporary

“The vision I had of ECM + 30 years ago has remained virtually intact,” says Véronique Lacroix, artistic director of the Ensemble contemporain de Montréal. Lacroix directs the ensemble, which she founded in 1987 as a graduate of the Montreal Conservatoire, with the same ardour and the same philosophy. “Our mandate was clear: to present multidisciplinary creations, to introduce today’s Canadian composers to the general public and to develop a specialist ensemble in contemporary music. It is still done verbatim, year after year.” An admiration for the “total artwork” espoused by Wagner leads Véronique Lacroix towards multidisciplinarity as the guiding…

Kirill Gerstein Bends Gershwin’s Rhythms

By Norman Lebrecht on 6 April 2018 Contemporary, Lebrecht Weekly

Gershwin: Rahpsody in Blue, concerto in F (Myrios) On first hearing, this seemed nothing special – a Russian-Jewish pianist, Kirill Gerstein, tackling the two Gershwin concertos with the all-American St. Louis Orchestra. Worthy cultural diplomacy but nothing that immediately gripped the ear. It took a second spin to grasp the truly challenging aspects of this undertaking. Gerstein takes the jazz band version of Rhapsody in Blue and bends the rhythms in such a way that they sound almost Jewish. Remember that Gershwin’s parents were, like Gerstein, Russian Jews, and that the music the composer knew as a boy did not…

Bohuslav Martinu’s Concertos Passionate

By Norman Lebrecht on 24 March 2018 Contemporary, Lebrecht Weekly

Martinu: Double concertos (Pentatone) It feels like I’ve spent half my life trying to persuade people that the next composer they should discover is Bohuslav Martinu. A Czech of limitless melodic permutations, he takes the legacies of Dvorak and Janacek forward into an early modern idiom, infused by a decade of living in Paris. I know no work of Martinu’s that outlasts my interest. He is incapable of being boring. This jam-packed recording presents three of his most scintillating works. If they don’t convert you to Martinu, nothing will. The concerto for two violins and orchestra are played blazingly by…

The Overcoat: Tailored for Opera

By Gregory Finney on 19 March 2018 Contemporary, Opera

Tapestry Opera continues its tradition of bringing new work to the stage this spring with a full production of The Overcoat: A Musical Tailoring. Based on The Overcoat, a successful play of 1998 which in turn was based on the classic tale by Nikolai Gogol, this opera features a score by James Rolfe and a libretto by Morris Panych. The opera is a product of Tapestry’s LibLab, a program that pairs leading up-and-coming composers with the most exciting librettists working in Canada today. Panych and Rolfe were paired up in 2014; the playwright came up with the idea of reworking…

Geraldine Mucha’s Compositions Show Real Talent

By Norman Lebrecht on 9 March 2018 Contemporary, Lebrecht Weekly, Orchestral

Geraldine Mucha: Macbeth (ArcoDiva) Late in the Second World War, a Scottish girl in London fell in love with a Czech journalist. Geraldine Mucha was a rising talent at the Royal Academy of Music. Jiri Mucha was the son of a world-renowned artist, the man who had remade the fin-de-siecle image of Sarah Bernhardt in a style as unmistakable and widely imitated as Gustav Klimt’s. Newly married, the Muchas returned in autumn 1945 to Prague where, with Rafael Kubelik, they organised the first Prague Spring Festival. When the Communists seized power, Jiri was arrested as an enemy of the people…

Fridrich Bruk’s 17th and 18th Symphonies Demand Attention

By Norman Lebrecht on 16 February 2018 Contemporary, Lebrecht Weekly, Orchestral

Fridrich Bruk: Symphonies 17 and 18 (Toccata) Some 15 years ago I was asked by one of the London orchestras to curate a series titled Other Russia, looking at the composers who fell or were pushed off the wayside under the Soviet Union. We were going to focus on the likes of Karamanov, Kancheli, Knaifel, Roslavets, Tishchenko, Ustvolskaya, Firsova and more. The scheme hit a brick wall when prominent conductors balked at unfamiliar repertoire and the orchestra feared a box-office frost, but it was a worthwhile exercise and one that some braver spirits should still take up. Among the names…

Avner Dorman Wins 2018 Azrieli Prize for Jewish Music

By Newswire on 9 February 2018 Arts Industry, Classical Music, Contemporary, Music Competition, Newswire

Avner Dorman is the winner of the 2018 Azrieli Prize for Jewish Music The Azrieli Music Prizes Gala Concert Takes Place October 15, 2018 at Maison symphonique de Montréal Featuring the McGill Chamber Orchestra (MCO) and Guest Conductor Yoav Talmi The Azrieli Foundation is proud to announce that composer Avner Dorman is the winner of the 2018 Azrieli Prize for Jewish Music for his composition, Nigunim for Violin and Orchestra. The $50,000 cash prize is granted biennially to a composer who has written the best new major work of Jewish Music, and is accompanied by a world premiere gala performance and a professional recording of the…

Patricia Kopatchinskaja & Polina Leschenko’s Deux Ingenious and Exhilarating

By Norman Lebrecht on 9 February 2018 Chamber Music, Contemporary, Lebrecht Weekly, Piano, Violin

Deux (Alpha-Classics) I can’t remember when I last heard a violin-piano recital that was as ingenious and exhilarating as this. On the sleeve, the Franco-Hungarian programme looks a bit odd – the Poulenc sonata written for Ginette Neveu in 1943, a Dohnanyi setting of a waltz from Delibes’ Coppélia, the full-on Bartok sonata of 1922 and Ravel’s Tzigane to close. What do these pieces have in common? Check this: On April 8, 1922, Bela Bartok gave a recital in Paris with his compatriot Jelly d’Aranyi. Ravel was the page turner for Bartok and Poulenc for d’Aranyi. In the audience were…

CD Review – Haydn: Symphonies No. 26 and No. 86. Mozart: Violin Concerto No. 3.

By Norman Lebrecht on 7 February 2018 CD and Book Reviews, Classical, Classical Music, Contemporary

Haydn: Symphonies No. 26 and No. 86. Mozart: Violin Concerto No. 3. Handel and Haydn Society. Harry Christophers, conductor. Aisslinn Nosky, violin. Coro COR 16158. Total Time: 69:15. The British conductor Harry Christophers has his own record label, Coro, which turns out a stream of fine performances, mostly with his own group The Sixteen. This release, however, is with Christophers’ other group, the venerable Handel and Haydn Society of Boston, America’s oldest performing arts organization. It presents two Haydn works written 20 years apart with Mozart’s G Major Violin Concerto sandwiched in between. It shows Haydn looking both to past…

CD Review – Woefully Arrayed : Sacred & Secular Choral & Polychoral Works

By Arnaud G. Veydarier on 7 February 2018 CD and Book Reviews, Choral, Classical Music, Contemporary, Vocal

Woefully Arrayed : Sacred & Secular Choral & Polychoral Works Jonathan David Little, Navona Records NV6113 Woefully Arrayed by the Australian-born composer Jonathan David Little is dedicated to choral music. Recorded for the most part in churches in 2016, the six pieces have been performed by various ensembles, including Vox Futura, the Thomas Tallis Society Choir and The Stanbery Singers. As the title suggests, Little’s musical manner is in line with such Renaissance polyphonic composers as Palestrina and Josquin des Prés. However, Little does not just imitate the language of his predecessors. If he accepts the formal general characteristics, such as contrapuntal…

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