Browsing: Art Song

Schubert: Winterreise (Harmonia Mundi) Mark Padmore, tenor Kristian Bezuidenhout, piano At the 15th song of the Winter’s Journey, a piano melody that seems to come from the nursery turns into a bleak anticipation of death. ‘The crow has come with me…. Flying ceaselessly above my head.’ Anyone listening will know that Franz Schubert will be dead within a year. But Schubert does not know he is going to die. He is thirty years old and feeling a bit low from various ailments, but he has no idea that he is writing his own requiem. Our knowing against his unknowing heightens the…

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Ralph Vaughan Williams: Songs of Travel (Chandos) James Gilchrist, tenor; Anna Tilbrook, piano; Philip Dukes, viola At the turn of the 20th century, the world was wide open to young men of means. Ships were getting faster, trains more frequent and motor cars were appearing on the roads. Faced with these exciting possibilities, the English composer Ralph Vaughan Williams decided to stay home, collecting the remains of a musical civilisation that was being trampled by the march of technology. Together with his pal Gustav Holst, Vaughan Williams recorded people singing in pubs and fields. Then he wrote Songs of Travel. The…

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Montreal’s second orchestra, Orchestre Métropolitain de Montréal, got positive press for their concert at the Elbe Philharmonic Hall (Elbphilharmonie) last Friday (December 1, 2017). Joachim Mischke, Hamburg’s leading and most knowledgeable music critic, wrote a comprehensive and inspiring review about the event (Hamburg Abendblatt, December 4). Conductor Yannick Nézet-Séguin was described as a bundle of energy who got the ball rolling in Pierre Mercure’s Kaléidoscope, demonstrating in detail the orchestra’s collective articulation accuracy. “Berlioz’s orchestral songs cycle Les nuits d’été became the finest moment, as the orchestra conjured nuances and played enchantingly discreet. But above all, contralto Marie-Nicole Lemieux savored…

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I will begin this short article on basses and baritones with eighty-eight-year-old Joseph Rouleau, our elder born in Matane, Quebec, in 1929. Joseph Rouleau left his mark on vocal arts through his great talent and artistic personality, as well as his dedication to classical music education, especially by training youth. This was evident in his 25 years at the helm of the Jeunesses Musicales Canada. Rouleau has had a distinguished international career. Of his accomplishments overseas, he was the leading bass at the Royal Opera House in London’s Covent Garden for more than twenty years. In addition, he toured the…

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Eva Gauthier spent the summers of 1922 and 1923 in Europe, studying voice with Anna Schoen-René in Berlin, renewing her acquaintance with composers and colleagues in Paris and London, and replenishing her library with new scores. When she prepared her annual New York recital for the fall of 1923, she chose an eclectic program which not only ran the gamut of styles from Purcell and Bellini to Schoenberg and Milhaud (with several first performances included), but also featured the first appearance of popular American songs in a recital program. To accompany her in this last group she engaged the 25-year-old…

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PARIS – Ever seen a conductor cry on stage? I mean, other than Leonard Bernstein? We can add to this exclusive list the name of Yannick Nézet-Séguin, who was seen wiping his eyes discreetly on Sunday after Elgar’s Enigma Variations, a performance that marked the official conclusion of a six-city, seven-concert European tour by the Orchestre Métropolitain. There would be an encore: Ravel’s Pavane pour une infante défunte, done in the supplest tones imaginable. We must resist the temptation to deem the last thing heard as the best. But goodness, what a sound. And what an ovation from the Parisians, who packed…

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HAMBURG – “Suche Karte.” Seeking ticket. This is always a good sign, quite literally, in German-speaking lands, where it is common to advertise your unhappy condition with two words writ large on a piece of cardboard. Sure enough, a visit to the box office of the Elbphilharmonie confirmed that the fifth installment  of the Orchestre Métropolitain’s tour of Europe was quite sold out. Eight thousand requests, 2,100 seats. Suche Karte. The huge demand cannot be reconciled with the usual explanations. Soloists Marie-Nicole Lemieux and Jean-Guihen Queyras are reputable enough, but hardly the stuff of a sellout. Yannick Nézet-Séguin is recognized everywhere.…

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If I look back on what they now call “the roaring Twenties”, it is like looking at a rich tapestry of almost blinding color. So much happened in those years which were marked by abundant prosperity in America and a cultural liveliness which was breathtaking. Music of our time all of a sudden became a matter of interest, and everybody felt like jumping on the bandwagon. So wrote Canadian mezzo-soprano Eva Gauthier, an artist ideally suited to a ­period that invariably attracted the ­sophisticated, the exotic, the adventurous and the new. She had already sung Satie’s music-hall tunes, was familiar…

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Born at Lac-Saint-Jean in northern Quebec, mezzo-soprano Julie Boulianne has forged an acclaimed international opera career. This month she returns to her ­operatic “home”, Opéra de Montréal, for her first Quebec performances of a favourite role — the lead in Rossini’s Cinderella opera, La Cenerentola. Interviewed on the eve of the production’s first rehearsal, Boulianne is ­palpably buoyed by anticipation. “It’s very exciting,” she says. “It’s a role I’ve loved, and finally I get to do it at home. I think of it as a big gift.” The excitement also carries certain responsibilities. In February, Boulianne received an Opus Prize,…

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We cannot speak of our mezzo-sopranos and contraltos without starting with Maureen Forrester, considered to be one of the 20th century’s greatest contraltos. Born in 1930 in Montreal and deceased in 2010 in Toronto, she starred on the world’s most famous stages. She was well known to the Canadian public, since there was once a time when our national radio and television paid attention to our classical artists. As the story goes, she first met Bruno Walter in 1956, launching between the lyrical artist and the conductor one of the century’s most famous relationships. Maureen Forrester’s voice was a rare…

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