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Previews concerts (February-March 2020): Montreal

By Renée Banville on 6 February 2020 Classical Music

Autour de la flûte The flute-driven early-music series programmed by Mika Putterman offers a house concert on Feb. 5 under the title Hygge (pronounced “hoo-ga”). “This Danish concept cannot be translated into one word but encompasses a feeling of cozy contentment and well-being through enjoying the simple things in life,” the website explains. On March 31 the concept is Ivoire. Expect to hear an original 19th-century flute made entirely of ivory and a fortepiano at the Espace Knox at 6215 Godfrey Ave. www.autourdelaflute.com OSM February at the OSM begins on Feb. 5 with a visit by the American conductor James…

Julien Proulx: Un chef qui sort des sentiers battus

By Marie-Claire Fafard-Blais on 5 February 2020 Classical Music

Directeur artistique de l’Orchestre symphonique de Drummondville (OSD) depuis 2014, Julien Proulx est un chef d’orchestre et de chœur qui déborde de projets et d’ambition. Depuis son arrivée à l’OSD, il a été le vecteur de changements qui ont permis à l’orchestre de s’inscrire parmi les orchestres régionaux les plus dynamiques au Québec. En effet, l’Orchestre symphonique de Drummondville a reçu le prix Opus 2020 du Concert de l’année – régions pour son concert Prince et Tsar. Un programme audacieux, présenté le 18 avril 2019, rassemblait la cantate Alexandre Nevski de Prokofiev, Vers les astres d’Éric Champagne et Coq d’or :…

Nadia Labrie: New Recording, New Instrument

By Justin Bernard on 4 February 2020 Chamber Music, Winds

Nadia Labrie launches a new installment of her ongoing series of recordings entitled Flute Passion on Feb. 12. As a follow-up to her previous Analekta album devoted to Schubert, Labrie turns her attention to Bach, a composer she first fell in love with during her student days and whose music she wanted to dedicate a recording to someday. “I had been thinking about doing Bach for my series almost as long as I did about Schubert,” Labrie confides. “I first thought of it when I was 20, and it became an idée fixe. In my spare time, I’d go back…

IRCAM Forum in Montreal: Music meeting science

By Arnaud G. Veydarier on 4 February 2020 Contemporary

Scientific research and musical creativity will be honored at the next IRCAM Forum Hors les murs, which will be held for the first time in its history in Canada in April. Researchers, composers, performers and music lovers are invited to a series of workshops and concerts that take place in Montreal around the themes of spatialization, orchestration and perception. The forum is organized in partnership with Le Vivier, CIRMMT, the Society for Arts and Technology (SAT), McGill University and the Université de Montréal and will take place in various venues around the city. A veritable high mass of new music,…

Photo: Jean-Pierre Rousseau

Concerts aux Îles du Bic: Nineteen seasons of talent and passion

By Hassan Laghcha on 4 February 2020 Classical Music

After almost 20 years of steady work, the Concerts aux Îles du Bic can be proud of the place that this summer chamber-music festival occupies in the calendar of classical festivals in the region and beyond. For the 19th edition, the organizers have announced a program true to tradition as well as surprises and novelties that are sure to rekindle the curiosity of music lovers from across Quebec and from other regions of North America, such as Vermont. Co-artistic director Normand Forget is delighted to unveil an overview of the next edition, which will be held in historical locations on…

Tim Brady, guitar

The NEM and Tim Brady: Silence Deployed on a Grand Scale

By Arnaud G. Veydarier on 4 February 2020 Contemporary

More than 100 musicians and singers will fill the Church of the Gesù on April 26 to perform the latest symphonic work of composer and guitarist Tim Brady. Soberly titled Silence, Symphony No. 10, this new opus adds to the imposing corpus of the Montreal composer whose career spans more than four decades. Cultivating an obvious taste for large-scale music, Brady will on this occasion be accompanied by the musicians of the Nouvel Ensemble Moderne and their leader Lorraine Vaillancourt, in addition to the members of his ensemble of electric guitars, Instruments of Happiness. To these musicians will also be…

Orchestre classique de Montréal: A Viennese concert brought down to size

By Arthur Kaptainis on 4 February 2020 Chamber Music

A harmonium you only find in heaven,” Boris Brott said from his earthly lodgings in Montreal. “And even there they get tired of pumping with their feet.” The music director of the Orchestre classique de Montréal was explaining why the Viennese program of Feb. 16 in Victoria Hall in Westmount will involve that least classical of all instruments – a synthesizer. “A synthesizer that sounds like a harmonium,” he clarified. Also known as a pump organ, the harmonium is indeed in short supply, its heyday having passed about a century ago, which is approximately when Arnold Schoenberg and his acolytes…

Elias String Quartet A Big Year for Beethoven

By La Scena Musicale Team on 4 February 2020 Chamber Music

Haydn’s Op. 77 No. 1, Mendelssohn’s Op. 13, Beethoven’s Op. 131: The program is logical enough. After all, the Elias String Quartet takes its name from Mendelssohn’s oratorio Elijah – Elias being the German form. Beethoven’s String Quartet in C Sharp Minor Op. 131 is a towering masterpiece, and this is the composer’s 250th anniversary year. Mendelssohn wrote his String Quartet No. 2 in A minor in 1827, when he was 18, months after Beethoven’s death. The influence of the late string quartets of the master is quite clear in the work of his young admirer. As for Haydn’s String Quartet in G Major Op.…

Daniel Banko, Banko Media

Elisa Citterio: A New Approach to Early Music

By Arthur Kaptainis on 4 February 2020 Chamber Music, Violin

I love Wozzeck,” Elisa Citterio, 43, said in a cozy spot in Trinity-St. Paul’s, the renovated church in Toronto where Tafelmusik presents most of its concerts. “I played it twice. And Lulu.” If operas by Alban Berg seem a curious choice of favourites for the music director of the best-known baroque ensemble of English Canada, they faithfully reflect the upbringing of a violinist who grew up in Brescia, an hour from Milan, and dreamed from youth of playing in the orchestra of La Scala. Citterio realized her dream, after orthodox training as a “modern” violinist, first by serving as concertmaster…

Editorial

By Wah Keung Chan on 4 February 2020 Classical Music

Cover, February 2000 issue Twenty years ago, La Scena Musicale’s February 2000 issue featured on the cover the young and relatively unknown Montreal conductor Yannick Nézet-Séguin, who had joined the Opéra de Montréal as chorus master and assistant conductor in September 1998. Little did we know that in just months, after much intrigue, Yannick would be thrust into the artistic directorship of Montreal’s Orchestre Métropolitain, a position he has held ever since, and to which he was recently been appointed for life. And in the last 20 years, Yannick has gone from one success to another, reaching the pinnacle of…