Les Violons du Roy: Striking the balance between tradition and modernity

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On March 20, Les Violons du Roy unveiled their 42nd season. Between October 2025 and May 2026, they will present concerts in both Quebec City and Montreal, as is their tradition. The season includes great choral works, more intimate pieces, thematic events as well as more contemporary repertoire. In Montreal, the chamber orchestra will perform three times at Maison symphonique and seven times at Bourgie Hall. At Palais Montcalm in Quebec City, 11 evening concerts, six afternoon concerts and, in its smaller hall, four aperitif concerts are scheduled.

“There’s a certain craze for afternoon concerts on Thursdays. More and more people, whether retired or with atypical working hours, prefer to go out at this time rather than in the evening. It also allows people from out of town—from Saint-Hyacinthe, Thetford Mines or the Saguenay—to leave in the morning, attend the concerts and leave again afterwards,” says Les Violons du Roy’s Co-General Manager and Artistic Director Laurent Patenaude.

Point of departure

In general, the orchestra’s programming continues to be based in the 18th-century repertoire that has made them such a success. “For example, we’ll be reviving Vivaldi’s L’Estro armonico, a collection of 12 concertos for one, two or four violins, featuring all our Les Violons du Roy musicians as soloists, conducted by Jonathan Cohen.” (Nov. 19 & 22).

The group’s British music director will open the 2025-26 season with an orchestral suite from Lully’s Bourgeois gentilhomme, combined for the occasion with a suite by Bach (Oct. 9 & 10). The latter will also be featured in a concert including one of his keyboard concertos, performed by American musicologist Robert Levin (Nov. 6 & 7). “We’ll be doing a pre-concert interview with (Levin), and perhaps a master class, too,” says Patenaude.

An eminent Mozart specialist, Levin is particularly known for his completion of that composer’s Requiem. It sets the standard, so much so that Les Violons’ former director, Bernard Labadie, has made it his choice for more than 20 years. This masterpiece of the repertoire will make its grand return to Les Violons du Roy’s repertory after a few years absence, conducted by Labadie himself (March 26, 27 & 28).

Other major works next season include a choral concert based on Handel’s Dixit Dominus (April 29, 30 7 May 3).

Three debuts

This season marks the company debut of three prominent young Canadian singers: Rose Naggar-Tremblay, Elisabeth St-Gelais and Sarah Dufresne. “Ms. Dufresne will give a concert devoted to Mozart with Les Violons du Roy and the Orchestre de l’Agora, led by Nicolas Ellis,” says Patenaude. “Her second prize at the (2022) Montreal International Music Competition certainly caught our attention, but was not directly related to it. Nicolas also wanted to work with her. Never short of ideas, he’s very dynamic when it comes to designing programs. Usually, it’s for concerts that he himself conducts as principal guest conductor, but sometimes he brings ideas that we adapt to other circumstances. This will be an interesting concert, as we’ll be presenting Mozart arias thought up and composed for each of the three Weber sisters, Aloysia, Constance and Josepha (Feb. 12 and 14).”

The event is part of a series of themed concerts that Les Violons likes to offer its audiences. Another, for example, will blend the eras with both baroque and 20th-century music written by composers from Rome or inspired by Rome, from Corelli to Nino Rota via Respighi (June 4 & 5).

Striking a balance

“We have a loyal core following at every concert,” notes Patenaude. “Many people are attached to the baroque and classical repertoires, while others are more cautious about modern or ‘daring’ repertoire. So we try to strike a balance. The big difference is that (audiences) are subscribing less than they used to. Subscriptions allowed them to take more chances on lesser-known repertoire, as they opted for a series of four or five concerts. With à la carte, listeners tend to choose what they are generally familiar with, giving them greater flexibility. From an artistic point of view, we now have to temper our audacity.”

It is with this concern for balance in mind that Les Violons du Roy will perform two new works in dialogue with works from the Romantic repertoire, which Patenaude considers “mainstream.” François Dompierre’s Violin Concerto, composed especially for Kerson Leong and Les Violons du Roy, will be paired with an orchestral version of Dvořák’s Quartet No. 12 in F major, the “American” (April 16 & 17). On the other hand, a Flute Concerto by First Nations composer Barbara Assiginaak will be paired with Tchaikovsky’s Memories of Florence, conducted by Andrei Feher (May 14 & 15).