La Scena Online - my/maSCENA

Browsing: La Scena Online

La Scena Online is the digital magazine of La Scene Musicale.Contents: News, Concert reviews, CD reviews, Interviews, Obituaries, etc; Editor: Wah Keung Chan; Assistant Editor: Andreanne Venne
ISSN: 1206-9973

Lebrecht Weekly | Gypsy Melodies (La dolce volta)

By Norman Lebrecht on 15 August 2025 Lebrecht Weekly

I am not sure if the title of this album is even legal in Britain and the US. These days we refer to a particular ethnicity as ‘Roma’ or ‘travelling people’. But this recording was made in the Czech Republic, where social tensions run high and the terminology can be a bit behind the times. What we have here is a riveting selection of itinerant melodies set by composers in that part of the world and involving string quartet with occasional cimbalom and double-bass. The Talich Quartet are world class. The way they play is almost too polished for these…

Photo: Angie Kremer Photography

Lebrecht Weekly | Gidon Kremer and the Kremerata Baltica: Viktor Kalabis’ Chamber music (Hyperion)

By Norman Lebrecht on 8 August 2025 Lebrecht Weekly

When the great conductor Rafael Kubelik returned to Prague in 1990 after 42 years in exile, the first people he sought out were composers who had been muted by the Communist regime. Among them was Viktor Kalabis, an old friend who had kept under the radar, writing intimate chamber music, five symphonies and a piano concerto for his wife, the harpsichordist Zuzana Ruzickova. I remember the electrifying awe that descended when Kubelik entered a church in the Maly Strana to hear a lunchtime performance of music by the suppressed composers. Kalabis is not easy to classify. His music owes something…

Lebrecht Weekly | Silvestrov: …flowering over Lethe… & Violin Concerto

By Norman Lebrecht on 1 August 2025 Lebrecht Weekly

The leading Ukrainian composer, living in German exile since 2022, defies categorisation. Under Soviet rule, Valentin Silvestrov maintained an aloofness from imposed styles, ignoring political and national pressures. He was twice expelled from the Composers Union and carried on composing in his own stubborn way, mining elements of the past to relate to the unhappy present. Under Ukrainian independence he saw no reason to change. The piano pieces played by Alexei Lyubimov on ECM, belong to the opening years of the 21st century. Some are dedicated to kindred composers Arvo Pärt, Alexander Knaifel, Leonid Hrabovsky – others refer to Glinka,…

Franco Fagioli performs at Toronto Summer Music. Photo: Lucky Tang

Review | Franco Fagioli Dazzles Toronto Summer Music With The Last Castrato

By Joseph So on 31 July 2025 Classical Music, Concert Reviews, Opera, Toronto, Vocal

At the relatively young age of 44—still considered youthful for an opera singer—Franco Fagioli is decidedly on top of the countertenor world. Since winning the Neue Stimmen Competition in 2003, Fagioli has graced many concert stages and opera houses in Europe and South America—Paris, Vienna, Zurich, Bonn, Karlsruhe, Genoa—not to mention the venerable Teatro Colon in Buenos Aires, Argentina, his home country. How many countertenors can claim to have sung in, of all places, Bayreuth, that bastion of all things Wagnerian? No, Fagioli wasn’t trying out the Heldentenor repertoire! He gave a concert there in 2021 at the stunning 18th-century…

Photo: Royal Danish Library

Lebrecht Weekly | The Best Record to Venture Into Nielsen if You Haven’t Before

By Norman Lebrecht on 25 July 2025 Lebrecht Weekly

At the risk of being sent as a Nielsen missionary to Patagonia, I will try to explain why the music of this island-hopping Dane can be trusted to bring comfort to troubled minds in our times. Raised in stark poverty on Hans Christian Andersen’s fairytale archipelago, Nielsen would return to his home environment whenever inspiration or happiness deserted him. After the First World War, his long marriage ended by a legal separation order, Nielsen spent time on Jutland, trying to make sense of his world. The fifth symphony alternates sounds of battle – snare drums and woodwind shrieks – with…

Marion Newman (Dr. Wilson) with the cast in Toronto Summer Music's MISSING. Photo: Lucky Tang

Review | MISSING Makes A Belated, Powerful Toronto Debut

By John Gilks on 25 July 2025 Concert Reviews, Opera, Orchestral, Toronto, Vocal

MISSING, with music by Brian Current and libretto by Marie Clements, got its Eastern Canadian premiere at Koerner Hall on July 24th as part of Toronto Summer Music. I reviewed the CD recording of this work by essentially the same cast in these pages a few weeks ago so it seems redundant to repeat what I said there. Instead, I’ll focus on how the work came over at Koerner and any differences of emphasis noticeable in a live performance. The presentation was billed as a concert performance, but it was probably closer to “semi-staged” (or some version of that ambiguous…

Jaeden Izik-Dzurko performs at Toronto Summer Music. Photo: Lucky Tang

Review | Jaeden Izik-Dzurko’s Self-effacing Poetry Charms Toronto Audience

By Michelle Assay on 25 July 2025 Classical Music, Concert Reviews, Piano, Toronto

For the past decade or so, Canadian pianists have been punching above their weight in major international piano competitions: from Charles Richard-Hamelin’s second prize at the 2015 Chopin Competition, to Bruce Liu’s first prize the next time round, to Jaeden Izik-Dzurko’s victory at last year’s Leeds Piano Competition, from which he also took away the Dame Fanny Waterman Gold medal. To say that there is a certain Canadian piano school emerging would be misleading, however. These pianists are radically different in temperament, artistry and even technique, and this year’s Toronto Summer Music gave us the rare chance to compare two…

George Li performs at Toronto Summer Music. Photo: Lucky Tang

Review | Virtuosity Beyond Virtuosity: George Li at Toronto Summer Music

By Michelle Assay on 22 July 2025 Classical Music, Concert Reviews, Piano, Toronto

For its 20th anniversary, Toronto Summer Music is offering a parade of competition-winning pianists, from Canadians Jaeden Izik-Dzurko (last year’s Leeds gold medallist) to Charles Richard-Hamelin (silver at the 2015 Chopin) and first up, American George Li. Born in Boston to Chinese parents, Li shared the 2015 Tchaikovsky Competition’s silver medal. Since then, the now 29-year-old has completed the Harvard University and New England Conservatory dual degree in English Literature and Music and has received the latter’s prestigious Artist Diploma. When last year I reviewed his Warner disc, entitled Movements, I dubbed his particular brand of pianism “virtuosity beyond virtuosity,”…

A scene from Carmen de Montréal at FestivalOpéra de Saint-Eustache. Photo: André Chevrier

FestivalOpéra de Saint-Eustache: When the Lights Went Out, the Voices Didn’t

By Adrian Rodriguez on 22 July 2025 Classical Music, Concert Reviews, Opera, Piano, Vocal

For its 16th edition, FestivalOpéra de Saint-Eustache proved that all you need is a voice, a piano, and an audience willing to listen. Over three nights, the festival delivered music that was as honest as it was ambitious. The festival opened with pianist Serhiy Salov, whose Chopin-focused recital was no small gesture. In a modest room, in a modest town, Salov played as though the music were being broadcast from Carnegie Hall. And in a way, it was. His emotional commitment gave the concert a kind of gravity that made the walls seem larger. The music felt like it mattered…

Photo: miroslavbeinhauer.com

Lebrecht Weekly | Pianist Miroslav Beinhauer Turns Alois Hába’s Music Into Good Fun

By Norman Lebrecht on 18 July 2025 Lebrecht Weekly

Around the time Arnold Schoenberg got fed up with atonality and moved to serialism, a Czech composer of no renown decided that the future lay in microtones, A soldier in the Austrian army in the first world war, Alois Hába tried his luck with three fugues for two pianos, tuned a quarter-tone apart. Hardly anyone could hear the difference from ‘normal’ music and the world continued to revolve on its axis. Hába joined the Communist party, palled up with Hanns Eisler and was encouraged to compose in one-sixth of a tone by the ever-curious Ferruccio Busoni. Hába composed string quartets,…

Previous 1 … 12 13 14 15 16 … 172 Next

Current Issue

PDF HTML

Next Issue : September

Ad Deadline : Aug. 21, 2026

Past Issues, Subscriptions, Advertising