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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

Victoires de la Musique Classique in France

By La Scena Musicale Team on 16 February 2011 La Scena Spotlight, Orchestral

By Frank Cadenhead The prime-time live telecast Monday night, February 14, of the French show Victoires de la Musique Classique was already good news. This is the top awards show for classical music in France, comparable to America’s Grammy awards, and it focuses mainly on French artists. But in competition with other shows on the major channels, its traditionally weak ratings always cause talk of taping it and showing it on off hours. This year, from the convention center in the city of Nantes, it headlined the Orchestre National des Pays de la Loire and their engaging young American conductor, John…

Festival of Renaissance Music – Conspirare’s Contemporary Twist

By Paul E. Robinson on 31 January 2011 Concert Reviews, Opera

by Paul E. RobinsonCraig Hella Johnson never ceases to amaze us. Just when you think his exceptional musical imagination has surely outdone itself, he comes up with something even more remarkable. His latest achievement was a festival given at St. Martin’s Lutheran Church in Austin and called Renaissance & Response: Polyphony Then and Now. Sound like an article in an academic journal? Perhaps, but that didn’t stop his many followers from selling out four concerts in one weekend and to judge by the concert I attended, enjoying every moment of it.The basic concept of the festival was to combine music…

This Week in Montreal / Cette semaine à Montréal – Jan. 31 – Feb. 6

By La Scena Musicale Team on 27 January 2011 Opera, This Week in Montreal, Violin

Werther @ The Montreal Opera: two shows left on Jan. 31 and Feb. 3It’s your last chance to catch the beloved Massenet adaptation of Goethe’s Sturm und Drang masterpiece. A success since its 1892 premiere, Werther is one of the staples of the operatic repertoire. The Montreal Opera’s production is a rare treat to sample the rare baritone scoring for the lead role, which Massenet wrote himself for Mattia Battistini in 1902. It transfers the action from late 18th-century Germany to 1920s America, in a move which the Gazette’s Arthur Kapatainis suggests alludes to a Gatsby-Daisy relationship between the troubled…

Austin Symphony’s New World “Beyond the Score”

By Paul E. Robinson on 23 January 2011 Concert Reviews, Orchestral

By Paul E. Robinson It is always a difficult business to “educate” the classical music audience without talking down to them on the one hand or talking over their heads on the other, and while some subscribers welcome non-musical elements in a concert, others hate them.The Austin Symphony and conductor Peter Bay deserve full marks for making a valiant effort to both educate and entertain at their Long Center concert last week.In the first half of the concert, we were given some background on the piece courtesy of the Chicago Symphony’s (CSO) Beyond the Score series, a multi-media production incorporating…

Jaap van Zweden Masterly in Shostakovich Eighth

By Paul E. Robinson on 8 November 2010 Concert Reviews, Contemporary, Orchestral, Romantic

by Paul E. RobinsonClassical TravelsMeyerson Symphony CentreDallas, TexasOctober 22, 2010Mendelssohn: Violin ConcertoShostakovich: Symphony No. 8Nicola Benedetti, violinDallas Symphony Orchestra/Jaap van ZwedenJaap van Zweden took most of the summer off to nurse a sore shoulder. The recuperation seems to have been successful and he is back in town leading the Dallas Symphony Orchestra (DSO) with even more energy than before. Among his specialties are the symphonies of Bruckner and Mahler and Shostakovich is not far behind. Last season in Dallas he conducted a stunning performance of the Symphony No. 7 and this season he followed it up with an equally fine…

Eschenbach Era Begins in Washington

By Paul E. Robinson on 29 October 2010 Arts Industry, Concert Reviews, Contemporary, Orchestral

by Paul E. RobinsonCLASSICAL TRAVELSConcert Hall, the Kennedy CenterWashington, D.C.October 16, 2010Mozart: Symphony No. 34 in C major K. 338Mahler: Symphony No. 5National Symphony Orchestra/Christoph EschenbachWho can explain the chemistry, or lack thereof, between a conductor and an orchestra? Sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn’t. At the moment, it is definitely working and working splendidly between Christoph Eschenbach and the National Symphony (NSO) in Washington, D.C; over the past four weeks they have been making music together and nearly everyone you talk to agrees that this partnership is something special. I went to hear for myself and was duly…

Sararste Returns to Toronto Symphony with Stunning Shostakovich

By Paul E. Robinson on 26 October 2010 Concert Reviews, Contemporary, Orchestral

By Paul E. RobinsonClassical TravelsRoy Thomson Hall, TorontoOctober, 2010Stravinsky: FireworksSibelius: Violin ConcertoShostakovich: Symphony No. 4Henning Kraggerud, violinToronto Symphony Orchestra/Jukka-Pekka SarasteThe Toronto Symphony (TSO) has the good fortune to enjoy good relations with several of its former music directors. While current music director Peter Oundjian is now well-established, conductor laureate Andrew Davis is a frequent and welcome guest conductor, and less often, maestro Jukka-Pekka Saraste. Saraste, who was music director of the TSO from 1994 to 2001, recently succeeded Semyon Bychkov as conductor of the WDR Radio Orchestra in Cologne.Solid Sibelius Follows Less than Stellar StravinskyOn this occasion, Saraste’s partnership with…

Cette semaine à Montréal / This Week in Montréal 18-24 oct

By La Scena Musicale Team on 15 October 2010 Chamber Music, Orchestral, This Week in Montreal

MCGILL CHAMBER ORCHESTRAOn October 18th, Montreal’s oldest chamber orchestra presents two great romantic double concertos, featuring Swiss violinist and Université de Montréal professor Laurence Kayaleh as well as Stéphane Lemelin, a Québécois pianist with an international career. Works presented are Mendelssohn’s Double Concerto and Chausson’s Concert. Salle Claude Champagne. 514-487-5190, www.ocm-mco.orgMAISON DE LA CULTURE CÔTE-DES-NEIGESLe concert commenté Pléiades présente un panorama du répertoire contemporain pour ensemble à percussions. Dans une mise en scène de Michel G. Barette, au moyen de quatre œuvres, dont trois écrites par des compositeurs québécois, Sixtrum se propose d’initier le public aux grandes familles d’instruments à…

Wilde and Weill at Shaw: An Ideal Husband and a Touch of Venus

By Paul E. Robinson on 9 October 2010 Concert Reviews, Musical Theatre

by Paul E. RobinsonSUMMER FESTIVALS SHAW FESTIVAL, Niagara-on-the-Lake, 2010Kurt Weill has always been an enigma for classical music lovers – his career started so propitiously: he studied composition first with Humperdinck, and later with Busoni; he turned out dozens of remarkably mature early works; his Symphony No. 2 was given its premiere by Bruno Walter; he made his mark in the German musical theatre too, first with The Threepenny Opera, and later with Mahagonny.Then came Hitler and the Nazis, and in 1933 Weill was forced to flee Germany. He sent his parents to Palestine and he and his wife Lotte…

Nagano, Mutter & OSM: An Evening of Uncompromising Soul-Searching

By Paul E. Robinson on 9 October 2010 Concert Reviews, Orchestral, Violin

by Paul E. Robinson Whatever else he may be as a man and a musician, Kent Nagano is insatiably curious. So far, his Montreal audiences have not only accepted, but embraced, his voyages of discovery.This week Maestro Nagano and the Orchestre symphonique de Montréal (OSM) gave Place des Arts concert-goers a feast of the familiar and the unfamiliar that was truly exceptional, and I think they liked it.The evening’s star attraction was the outstanding violinist Anne-Sophie Mutter, now a fully mature artist after years of wonder as a young prodigy encouraged by the likes of Herbert von Karajan, Andre Previn…

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