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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

Romanian pianist Alexandra Dariescu, Photo by Nick Rutter

Lebrecht Weekly | A Tale of Two Piano Concertos

By Norman Lebrecht on 19 July 2024 La Scena Online, Lebrecht Weekly

In the early days of long-playing records, a man in a suit at EMI realised that the Grieg and Schumann concertos were half an hour long, in the same key of A minor and would fit on either side of a plate of shellac without requiring fillers.

Photo by Gabriel Fournier

Review | Brunch, Lavande, Tango !!!: An Open-Air Concert

By Amanda Wong on 17 July 2024 Concert Reviews, La Scena Online, Montreal

Picture this: a cool summer breeze carrying the soothing scent of lavender through the air, warm sunlight sinking into your skin, and the captivating sounds of Argentinian tango performed by a cello and guitar duo.

Photo by Lucky Tang

Review | A breakdancing Fairy Queen opens Toronto Summer Music

By Gianmarco Segato on 15 July 2024 Concert Reviews, La Scena Online, Toronto

Toronto Summer Music opened its 2024 festival in the most grand, celebratory manner possible with the local premiere of Les Arts Florissants’ production of Henry Purcell’s The Fairy Queen.

Lebrecht Weekly | Yundi Gives Mozart a Makeover

By Norman Lebrecht on 12 July 2024 Classical Music, La Scena Online, Lebrecht Weekly

Unlike elements in Beijing who had him arrested on phony morals charges, I have never wavered in my belief that Yundi Li is the most interesting and original pianist to emerge from China.

Pianist Jonathan Biss and violist/composer Brett Dean

Lebrecht Weekly | Is it worth messing with Beethoven? Brett Dean and Jonathan Biss find out

By Norman Lebrecht on 5 July 2024 Lebrecht Weekly

Composers have learned not to mess with Beethoven. Fewer variations have been written on themes by Beethoven than on any other master’s work.

Lebrecht Weekly | Mieczyslaw Weinberg: String quartets 6, 13, 15 (Chandos)

By Norman Lebrecht on 28 June 2024 Lebrecht Weekly

What small labels do best is backing the owner’s hunches. BIS in Stockholm produced symphonies by Alfred Schnittke when he was unheard outside Russia. Hyperion in south London resurrected 19th century piano concertos. Cedille in Chicago backs off-beat US composers. Manfred Eicher’s ECM in Munich is the engine behind Arvo Pärt, Giya Kancheli and Chick Corea. These labels are often thelion kings of classical recording. We owe the rediscovery of Mieczyslaw Weinberg, a Polish refugee in Soviet Russia, to a father-son team in Colchester, England, operating from a mobile recording unit. Their company, Chandos, released its first Weinberg recording around…

Photography By: Sven Arnstein and Gerard Collett. Courtesy of claire-booth.com.

Lebrecht Weekly | Arnold Schoenberg’s “Expressionist Music” (Orchid)

By Norman Lebrecht on 21 June 2024 Lebrecht Weekly

I have no problems with impressionism. It’s what French artists do off the cuff when they can’t be bothered with sketches, what French composers do in a wishy-washy mood. So Debussy, so easily recognised. Expressionism is another matter. A parallel 1900s movement of poets and painters who liked to let it all hang out, it was associated in music chiefly with Schoenberg and his disciples, three of the most buttoned-up composers you could ever wish to avoid. It is supposed to convey ‘powerful feelings’, as if Bach and Handel hadn’t done it better. Schoenberg’s paintings were also deemed ‘expressionist’. The…

SATE (Portia Soul) in Canadian Opera Company’s Aportia Chryptych: A Black Opera for Portia White. Photo: Michael Cooper

Review | COC Presents World Premiere of Aportia Chryptich: A Black Opera for Portia White

By Denise Lai on 17 June 2024 Concert Reviews, La Scena Online, Opera, Toronto, Vocal

It is not everyday that Toronto experiences the world premiere of a new opera. What makes Aportia Chryptich even more special is its quintessential Canadian connection.

Lukas Foss onstage at Second Festival of the Arts in Buffalo in March, 1968. Photo credit: Jim Tuttle\UB Music Library.

Lebrecht Weekly | The Buffalo Philharmonic Releases a Fine Tribute Album to Lukas Foss

By Norman Lebrecht on 14 June 2024 Classical Music, Lebrecht Weekly

Lukas Foss was a classmate of Leonard Bernstein’s at the Curtis Institute and a lifelong friend, though never an equal. While Bernstein blazed to national glory in his annus mirabilis of 1944, Foss was quietly composing his first symphony in the bucolic tranquility of the MacDowell Colony. His Curtis teacher Fritz Reiner premiered the symphony in Pittsburgh a year later but without wider acclaim. Foss’s Americana style sounded both dated and derivative. Aaron Copland did this stuff so much better, and a decade sooner. Foss also composed three ballets that year, but he lacked Bernstein’s On the Town recklessness and…

Randall Goosby and Gustavo Gimeno. Photo: Allan Cabral/TSO

Concert Review | Invigorating Bartók in a disconnected TSO program

By Gianmarco Segato on 7 June 2024 Classical Music, Concert Reviews, La Scena Online, Orchestral, Région, Toronto

The Toronto Symphony Orchestra’s (TSO) eclectic June 6 program pulled together a disparate selection of works by Canadian, German, Hungarian and Austrian composers ranging over four centuries. If it was difficult to ascertain a dramaturgical connection between them, individually, they each had something to offer. TSO CAMH Art of Healing To start, TSO CEO Mark Williams took the stage alongside President & CEO of the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health (CAMH) Sarah Downey to speak about their Art of Healing program, in collaboration with Shkaabe Makwa—the Centre for First Nations, Inuit, and Métis Wellness. Art of Healing brings together…

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