Browsing: Classical Music

Many years ago, Ft. Worth, Texas was perhaps best known for its stockyards. Ranchers would organize massive cattle drives to bring their herds to its railhead and slaughterhouses. It was a “cowtown” with all the unsavoury services that went with that connotation, including gambling, drinking, prostitution, and all-out hell-raising. Bits of the stockyards are still there, now a tourist attraction rather than a collection of foul-smelling pens and meat-packing factories. Over the past 20 years, Ft. Worth has ­undergone a major transformation. Its ­population today approaches a million ­residents and it boasts such major businesses as Lockheed Martin, one of…

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La Scena Musicale will present key moments from celebrations that take place as part of Canada’s 150th and Montreal’s 375th anniversaries. It will illustrate the rich diversity of artistic and cultural expression, as well as the creative energy that goes into all the hard work in different fields across the country through various Montreal, Quebecois, and Canadian art scenes. Alain Trudel: Birth made especially for Canada’s 150th The Ottawa Symphony Orchestra presents conductor Alain Trudel’s latest work, Birth: Sesquie for Canada’s 150th (April 3, Southam Hall at the NAC). This piece, which commemorates Canadians of all cultures and origins, was…

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“After this, what is left for us to write?” —Franz Schubert after hearing Beethoven’s late String Quartet No. 14, Op. 131 This year at the Montreal Chamber Music Festival, the Dover Quartet will be in residence to play the complete cycle of Beethoven’s 16 String Quartets and the Große Fuge Op. 133. Winners of the first prize at the 2013 Banff International String Quartet Competition (BISQC), this youthful US-based quartet recently won Avery Fisher Career Grant, the highest honour for performers at this stage of their career. The Dover Quartet—comprised of violinists Joel Link and Bryan Lee, violist Milena Pajaro-van…

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In 1846, when Felix Mendelssohn conducted the commissioned premiere of his oratorio Elijah for the Birmingham Festival he presided over an orchestra of one hundred and twenty five musicians, ten soloists, and a chorus of four hundred singers. Mendelssohn was in his mid thirties. Fast-forward one hundred and seventy years, and another conductor in his mid- thirties will direct one of the most popular oratorios of the choral repertoire. On March 9, for the 45th anniversary of the St. Lawrence Choir, its Artistic Director Philippe Bourque will debut his first Elijah. “This work is intensely personal for me,” says Bourque.…

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“The great problem of the concert hall is that the shoebox is the ideal shape for acoustics, but no architect worth their name wants to build a shoebox.” Fortunately for classical concertgoers, this ­remark from Harvard professor of architecture Rem Koolhaas was made tongue-in-cheek. This is particularly fortunate for the Orchestre symphonique de Laval (OSL), whose principal performance venue was successfully renovated in 2016. Originally opened in 1979, Salle André-Mathieu, located within walking distance of Laval’s Montmorency metro station, now boasts excellent acoustics for symphonic music. In recent years, the hall’s managers, patrons and performing organizations lobbied for an array…

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“The cynical and tender spirit, a modern and unique thought, a characteristically Quebecois music, the star of this popular concert of the Orchestre symphonique de Montréal, Robert Charlebois.” These are the words of Roger Bouchard, television host, in 1971. It happened 46 years ago at Montreal’s Place des Arts. At just 27 years old, the young Robert Charlebois, dressed in an original and colourful shirt – typical of the 1970s – was going to live the experience of the symphony orchestra. Today, he admits that he has never refused the opportunity to play with an orchestra. Probably one of the…

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When listening to or performing music, many people have experienced the “oceanic feeling,” variously described as an altered state of consciousness, a sensation of limitlessness, an experience of eternity, oneness with the universe, an ideal dream where you are held in a weightless reverie and lose the boundaries of your self. French writer Romain Rolland (who coined the term) noted the presence of “le sentiment océanique” in mystics of all religious traditions. He believed that this feeling was the source of all religious energy, and that one may call oneself religious on the basis of this feeling alone, regardless of…

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Dang Thai Son is a man of discriminating taste. After a swirl and a sniff and a sip, he sent back a glass of red from Burgenland at a midtown Montreal bistro. “It’s quite light,” he said in his soft and gently accented English. “Maybe something richer.” This Hanoi-born pianist and long-time Montrealer is in the business of ­making fine distinctions. Recently recognized with an Opus Prize for a 2016 recital of Chopin and Schumann at Bourgie Hall, Son is perhaps even better known as high-end consultant to young pianists from around the world and a judge on the competition…

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When we think of opera, cities like Vienna, Milan, Paris or New York spring to mind, rather than Jerusalem. But the holy city has been expending considerable energy these last few years to create an operatic scene worthy of the name. The Jerusalem Opera Festival, in its third edition this summer, is the result of these efforts to bring an artistic dream to fruition. To publicize the festival, in June 2016 Israel’s Department of Tourism invited around 40 journalists from all over the world to cover the event. Top of the bill was Verdi’s Rigoletto, with a cast of singers…

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We celebrate the 150th anniversary of Italian conductor Arturo Toscanini’s birth and the 60th anniversary of his death in 2017. He had an epic start to his conducting career when, at 19 years of age, he replaced the conductor for a performance of Verdi’s Aida in Rio de Janeiro at the last minute and conducted the work by memory. He shaped the musical world and much more with his personality and convictions. Some of Toscanini’s major career highlights include conductor in residence at Teatro alla Scala in Milan between 1898 and 1908 and musical director at the same opera house…

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