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

Yannick Nézet-Séguin

Highlights | 2023-2024 concert seasons begin, Nézet-Séguin coaches Bradley Cooper

By Zenith Wolfe on 29 September 2023 Arts Industry, Highlights, Obituaries

Welcome to La Scena Musicale’s weekly Highlights, a roundup of classical music news from Canada and beyond. It’s the time for new music seasons, and that means many inaugural concerts are underway! 2023-2024 Season Updates For their first concert of the 2023-2024 season, Violons du Roy presented La Seine en fête (La Presse) at Palais Montcalm, which was originally on their 2020 schedule but delayed for three years due to the pandemic. The ensemble has since recruited a flute quartet, two oboists, a bassoonist, and a guitarist. Nouvel Ensemble Moderne announced the start of its 35th season with a performance…

Concert Review | Toronto Mendelssohn Choir’s splendid modernization of baroque music

By Kristen Whittle on 27 September 2023 Baroque and Early, CD and Book Reviews, Concert Reviews, Contemporary, Dance, Toronto

The Toronto Mendelssohn Choir opened their 2023/24 season with “In Time,” a program that combined baroque music and contemporary dance. The choir collaborated with dancers from Compagnie de la Citadelle to create an amalgamation of old and new that was both captivating and eye-catching. Dance was incorporated into Bach’s Christ lag in Todesbanden (Christ lays in the snares of Death) and Handel’s Dixit Dominus. Considering the popularity of dance in the baroque period, it is not surprising that this music would be well-suited to accompanying dance. The Bach featured a solo dancer that acted out the German text in a…

Protestors from Erin Craig's September 16 rally (Photo by erincraig11 on Instagram)

Edmonton singer protests choir, cites gender-based discrimination

By Zenith Wolfe on 26 September 2023 Arts Industry, Choral, La Scena Online

In September 2023, the Professional Chamber Choir in Edmonton, AB, fired singer Erin Craig. The board for the choir, also known as Pro Coro, says it’s an issue with their contracting process. But Craig, who went on to protest outside the choir’s first concert of the 2023-2024 season on September 16, believes they were released on the basis of gender discrimination. It’s a controversy that started back in mid-July, when artistic director Michael Zaugg invited Craig to a coffee shop for a private meeting. Though neither Craig nor the board were available to comment on the nature of the meeting,…

Lebrecht Weekly | Joseph Haydn: Symphonies 93-95 (Naxos)

By Norman Lebrecht on 22 September 2023 Lebrecht Weekly

The 12 symphonies that Haydn composed on visits to London in 1791-92 and 1794-95 belong to a world that was already gone. Mozart, who died soon after Haydn left Vienna for the first time, led his symphonies into darker, dangerous tonal territory. Beethoven, whom Haydn taught on his return, was ready to leapfrog into a new century of revolutionary ferment. The Haydn London symphonies belong mostly to a decadent age of domestic amusements on noble country estates. In some ways, though, Haydn was transformed by London. In his early sixties, he was treated for the first time in his life…

Photo: Gerard RICHARDSON

Review | TSO Concert: Lili Boulanger, Gershwin and Stravinsky

By Paul E. Robinson on 21 September 2023 Concert Reviews, Orchestral, Toronto

This week, the Toronto Symphony opened its 101st season with celebrated pianist Jean-Yves Thibaudet as soloist. While Thibaudet played brilliantly, it was the orchestra and its masterful conductor who stole the show. In the second half of the concert, the orchestra’s interpretation of Stravinsky’s Le sacre du printemps practically blew the roof off. The piece’s famously generated confusion and outrage at its 1913 premiere in Paris, when the ballet’s performance, with choreography by Diaghilev, almost caused a riot. The audience reaction was quite different, though, on September 20 2023, when the performance was met with cheers from a crowd who…

Photo: Austin Gibson

Breaking News | Kitchener Waterloo Symphony Orchestra Cancels 23/24 Season

By Eva Stone-Barney on 18 September 2023 La Scena Online, Newswire, Toronto

Sept. 18, 2023 – The Kitchener Waterloo Symphony Orchestra, Ontario’s third largest orchestra, announced this morning that the organization has canceled “scheduled concerts and all other activities for the 2023/24 season,” effective immediately. This shocking news comes days before the season was supposed to begin, and just two days before its 54 musicians were set to come back to work. With the KWSO being the largest employer of artists and cultural workers in the region, the implications of this decision are significant. The KWSO has cited financial challenges as the reason for this abrupt cancellation. According to its CRA charity…

Photo: Danylo Bobyk

New Azrieli Music, Arts and Culture Centre (AMACC) Expands Support for the Arts

By Viktor Lazarov on 15 September 2023 Classical Music, La Scena Online

On Thursday, September 14, 2023, the Azrieli Foundation announced the launch of the Azrieli Music, Arts and Culture Centre (AMACC). The Centre aims to support and promote artistic excellence in Canada by combining the Foundation’s grant-making division, sectoral collaborations, strategic initiatives, and the Azrieli Music Prizes under one umbrella. AMACC will operate out of the Foundation’s main headquarters. In the words of soprano, board member of the Azrieli Foundation, and Chair of the AMACC Advisory Council, Dr. Sharon Azrieli, the Foundation hopes “to create an impact that is greater than the sum of its parts, ensuring […] Canadians of all…

Lebrecht Weekly | Mieczyslaw Weinberg: 12th symphony/Dawn (Chandos)

By Norman Lebrecht on 15 September 2023 La Scena Online, Lebrecht Weekly

In Dmitri Shostakovich’s last years, Mieczyslaw Weinberg stopped writing symphonies. After his 51th in 1970, nothing more stirred in him until, in December 1975, four months after his friend’s passing, he began a memorial symphony. The 12th did not go well. The influential conductor Kirill Kondrashin rejected the overlong opening movement and the hourlong score did not get a hearing until Maxim Shostakovich, son of the dedicatee, conducted a Soviet radio broadcast in October 1979. Soon after, Maxim fled to the West and the symphony was left to gather dust. What we hear is a chronicle of gratitude and ambivalence, a tapestry…

Rafael Payare dirige l'OSM dans les "Carmina Burana" de Carl Orff. Photo: Antoine Saito.

Opening concert: After the Virée classique, the OSM returns to the choral repertoire

By Justin Bernard on 12 September 2023 Choral, Orchestral, This Week in Montreal

On Tuesday, September 12, the Orchestre symphonique de Montréal (OSM) launches its 90th season with two musical masterpieces of the 20th century. Kicking off his 3rd season at the helm of the OSM, Rafael Payare conducts Janáček’s Glagolitic Mass and Stravinsky’s The Rite of Spring. The programme highlights the Maison symphonique’s great Pierre-Béique, which is celebrating its 10th anniversary this year. The first work on the program features an entire movement for solo organ. OSM organist-in-residence Jean-Willy Kunz brings his virtuosity to the fore on the high notes, while soprano Camilla Tilling, alto Rose Naggar-Tremblay, tenor Ladislav Elgr and bass…

Preview | SMCQ présents : Amitiés et étrangeté

By Viktor Lazarov on 12 September 2023 Contemporary, La Scena Online, Montreal, This Week in Montreal

On September 24, 2023, the Société de musique contemporaine du Québec (SMCQ) will present the fourth concert in their Hommage 2023-2024 series, dedicated to composer Sandeep Bhagwati. Organized in collaboration with the Vietnamese Cultural Centre of Canada, the multimedia event will involve music, text and images, centered around such themes as proximity, distance, estrangement and familiarity. Titled Amitiés et étrangeté, the program focuses on a single work by Bhagwati, Exercices d’étrangeté 1, inspired by a verse by Vietnamese poet Nguyễn Duy, about Vietnamese diasporic communities. The idea of encountering the unknown is embodied by the musical collaboration that will bring…

Previous 1 … 48 49 50 51 52 … 172 Next

Current Issue

PDF HTML

Next Issue : September

Ad Deadline : Aug. 21, 2026

Past Issues, Subscriptions, Advertising