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For their 60th anniversary, Les Petits Violons will be doing what they do best: putting on concerts. This February, the student orchestra of Les Petits Violons will perform a diverse repertoire of folk music, opera excerpts and orchestral classics alongside the Juno-nominated musicians of Collectif9. In March, students of Les Petits Violons will present a concert of chamber music, which includes the illustrious Mendelssohn Octet.
“As this is an anniversary year, I wanted the programs to be explosive,” says Artistic Director Marie-Claire Cousineau. As Les Petits Violons is a strings school mainly for youth, Cousineau was careful to select repertoire that is not only enjoyable for the audience but provides a fun and enriching playing experience for her students. For the end-of-year concert in May, Cousineau is even inviting Les Petits Violons alumni to bring their instruments and join the students in playing Le Petit Poulet.
Les Petits Violons, Photo: Laurent Malo
Le Petit Poulet is somewhat of an anthem for Les Petits Violons, not least because it was composed by founder Jean Cousineau. This tuneful piece, written for beginners, is emblematic of the inclusive spirit that animates Les Petits Violons. In the school’s orchestra, beginners play certain pieces alongside their more advanced peers. Not only does this provide the younger players with a thrilling and highly educative concert experience, but it also provides the older, more advanced players with a renewed awareness of the path they have taken to get where they are. “The more advanced students remember very well when they joined and they were the ones who were lost because they didn’t count their rest measures properly,” says Cousineau.
Les Petits Violons in the 1970s
Counting measures is one very important skill for orchestral/group playing. At Les Petits Violons, students get a lot of practice playing with one another. The program is designed with orchestral playing at its core. While there are no solo recitals, students will sometimes play their solo repertoire in groups. At a recent Christmas concert, five students played the solo of Fritz Kreisler’s Danse Espagnole together with orchestra. Beginner students will join the orchestra to play one or two concerts a year, while advanced students play five concerts a year. When the beginners join the orchestra, the more advanced students are happy for the chance to rework less difficult pieces they enjoyed playing in previous years, explains Cousineau.
Whether working on solo repertoire in a group, chamber music or orchestral pieces, Les Petits Violons students are just happy to keep playing together. “If you have the opportunity to play in a group with friends and colleagues, play five concerts a year and always learn new repertoire, that is what’s interesting,” says Cousineau.
Les Petits Violons present Harmonies Collectives on Feb. 16 and Charme Romantique on March 23. Artistic Director Marie-Claire Cousineau extends a special invitation to alumni to bring their instruments and join in the music-making at the 60th-anniversary concert on May 4. www.lespetitsviolons.com
This page is also available in / Cette page est également disponible en:
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Heather Weinreb is a writer and violin teacher from Montreal, Quebec. She completed a Bachelor of Music at McGill in 2018, where she minored in Baroque Performance. Most recently, she completed an MFA in Creative Writing at the University of Saint Thomas, Houston. Aside from her music reviews and journalism with La Scena Musicale, Heather's essays and children's poems have been published in Dappled Things and The Dirigible Ballon.
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