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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 – FolksLied: Beethoven, Britten, Haydn (BR Klassik)

By Norman Lebrecht on 25 March 2016 Art Song, Classical, Contemporary, Lebrecht Weekly

Viennese masters, always short of cash, picked up commissions from rich British tourists for composing drawing-room settings of national heritage. Haydn and Beethoven filled their boots with Scottish and Welsh ballads for two ducats a song. Haydn wrote about 200, dressed up with piano, violin and cello accompaniments. Easy money. The first surprise in this absorbing recital by Christian Gerhaher is that he sings the Haydn ditties in German, in a 1920s translation. It’s disconcerting at first but gradually deepens with hints of the nearness of these simple sentiments to the core topics of German Lieder: springtime, love and loss.…

Airat Ichmouratov

This Week in Montreal (March 21–27)

By Kiersten van Vliet on 21 March 2016 Baroque and Early, Choral, Orchestral, This Week in Montreal

McGill Chamber Orchestra Montreal-based clarinettist and composer Airat Ichmouratov and the Kleztory Ensemble present Chamber Symphony No. 3, Op. 25 by the namesake composer, Clarinet Quintet in A major by Mozart, and miscellaneous klezmer repertoire. March 22, 7:30 pm. www.ocm-mco.org Caractère hébraïque et Monuments Slaves à l’OM In March, OM will taste the Slavic language and perform the powerful Glagolithic Mass by Janáček, a choral masterpiece. Christian Arming, conductor, with the great Finnish soprano Camilla Nylund, mezzo-soprano Julie Boulianne, tenor David Pomeroy, bass-baritone Andrew Foster-Williams, and the Chœur Métropolitain, celebrating 30 years this season. Symphony No. 8 by Dvořák will end the concert.…

Lebrecht Weekly – Debussy, Elgar &c: violin sonatas (Onyx)

By Norman Lebrecht on 21 March 2016 Contemporary, Lebrecht Weekly, Violin

After two years of creative trauma that silenced almost every leading composer, the latter half of the First World War yielded works of extraordinary intimacy. Claude Debussy, responding to a terminal diagnosis of rectal cancer, wrote three intense sonatas for varied instruments and piano. In the last concert of his life, in September 1917, Debussy accompanied Gaston Poulet in the violin sonata, a work of fizzing energy, utterly lacking lament or regret. Gone is Debussy’s distancing feline detachment. The sonata closes on a ‘very animated’ springlike dance, a smiling might-have-been. Debussy died in March 1918, within sound of German gunfire,…

This Week in Montreal (March 14–20)

By Kiersten van Vliet on 14 March 2016 Opera, This Week in Montreal

McGill Baroque orchestra presents Handel’s Rodelinda, conducted by Hank Knox and directed by Patrick Hansen. This opera is recognized as one of Handel’s best. Salle Pollack, March 17-19. www.music.mcgill.ca

Lebrecht Weekly – British Clarinet Concertos 2 (Chandos)

By Norman Lebrecht on 14 March 2016 Contemporary, Lebrecht Weekly, Orchestral

An unknown work by Benjamin Britten sets the pulse racing. It turns out to be fragments of a concerto he started writing for Benny Goodman in 194. What with Pearl Harbour and Peter Grimes, it got pushed to the back of the desk. Before Britten sailed home to England in March 1942, the only finished movement was seized by US Customs was seized on suspicion that it contained espionage codes. The movement did not see light of day until 1989 when it was retrieved and orchestrated by Colin Matthews, Britten’s composing assistant, and premiered by the clarinet virtuoso Michael Collins.…

This Week in Montreal (March 7–13)

By Kiersten van Vliet on 7 March 2016 Baroque and Early, Orchestral, This Week in Montreal, Violin

Return to the Violons du Roy In March Bernard Labadie will conduct the St. Matthew Passion, a major work of the Baroque and a pinnacle in western music. The score is monumental and will take 2 hours 45 minutes to perform. Soloists: John Mark Ainsley, tenor, Neal Davies, baritone, Karina Gauvin, soprano, Marie-Nicole Lemieux, contralto, Andrew Staples, tenor and Andrew Foster-Williams, bass-baritone. With the Chapelle de Québec. Maison symphonique, March 12, 7:30 pm. www.violonsduroy.com Masterpieces at Maison Symphonique In March, Montréalers have the opportunity to hear Kent Nagano and the OSM play Stravinsky’s Rite of Spring: not only one of the most…

Lebrecht Weekly – Mahler: 1st Symphony (BR Klassik)

By Norman Lebrecht on 7 March 2016 Contemporary, Lebrecht Weekly, Orchestral

Yannick Nézet-Séguin’s interpretation of Mahler’s first symphony is beautifully played by Munich’s (some say Germany’s) best orchestra and thoughtfully structured by an impressive guest conductor. I think I am safe in saying that it is conceptually different from any of the 120 Mahler Firsts on record, stretching all the way back to Dmitri Mitropolous’s towering Minnesota performance for Columbia in April 1940. And that’s no small distinction in a much-repeated piece. Where Yannick differs from all others is in atmospherics. The opening four and a half minutes of ambient sound, where the ear searches for a clue to what’s going…

"Anton Nel, winner of the first prize in the 1987 Naumburg International Piano Competition at Carnegie Hall enjoys a remarkable and multifaceted career that has taken him to North and South America, Europe, Asia, and South Africa."

Anton Nel Spectacular in Saint-Saëns Egyptian Concerto

By Paul E. Robinson on 2 March 2016 Concert Reviews, Piano, Romantic

Grantham: J’ai été au bal Saint-Saëns: Piano Concerto No. 5 in F major Op. 103 “Egyptian”* Serpa: An Invocation Copland: Rodeo (complete ballet score) Anton Nel, piano* Austin Symphony Orchestra/Peter Bay, conductor Long Center for the Performing Arts Austin, Texas Saturday, February 27, 2016 Some years ago I came across a 1993 live recording of Saint-Saëns Piano Concerto No. 5, featuring Sviatoslav Richter. I didn’t know the piece, but I figured that if a great artist like Richter thought it was worth his time to learn it, it was probably worth my time to listen to it. And what a…

This Week in Montreal (February 29–March 6)

By Kiersten van Vliet on 29 February 2016 Classical Music, This Week in Montreal, Violin

Series at the Chapelle Historique Cellist Yegor Dyachkov and pianist Jean Saulnier will play a mix of folk and “serious” music from the Romantic era. Works by Brahms, Dvořák and Janáček. March 3, 7:30 pm. www.ville.montreal.qc.ca/chapellebonpasteur OSM Musicians at the Maison de la Culture Frontenac Here’s an opportunity to hear OSM musicians in small ensemble formation. Andrew Wan and Olivier Thouin, violins; Neal Gripp, viola; Brian Manker, cello; and Todd Cope, clarinet. On the program: Trio in C minor, Op. 9, No. 3 by Beethoven and Clarinet Quintet in A major by Mozart. Edgar Fruitier will host the concert.…

Lebrecht Weekly – Rudi Stephan, Albéric Magnard (accentus)

By Norman Lebrecht on 29 February 2016 Contemporary, Lebrecht Weekly, Violin

These two composers are joined by tragic deaths on opposite sides of the First World War. Stephan, a Munich avant-gardist, was the only soldier in his German unit to die in a September 1915 battle with Russian troops for the Galician town of Stryi. Magnard, a French traditionalist, was either shot or burned to death defending his home from German troops in September 1914. Only 28 at the time of his death, Stephan was little known outside German new music circles and not well liked within them. A young man of strong opinions and no tolerance for sycophancy, he…

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