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

Photo: Irene Zandel

Lebrecht Weekly | Glenn Gould: String quartet, opus 1 (CPO)

By Norman Lebrecht on 14 April 2023 Classical Music, Lebrecht Weekly, Strings

You mean Glenn Gould, the composer? Well, he was always too big a personality to fit in a pair of pianist socks. In his teens the Canadian genius tried his hand at various small scores, none of them satisfying his restless self. The first composition to warrant an opus number was a half-hour string quartet, finished in 1955 when he was 23 and premiered the following year in Montreal. Gould, by now, was a soaring star and four members of the Cleveland Orchestra hastened to record the single-movement quartet for CBS Records, which forgot to promote it. Gould, in later…

Review | Met Live in HD: Verdi Falstaff Staging a Travesty

By Paul E. Robinson on 7 April 2023 Concert Reviews, Opera

Verdi’s opera Falstaff is an amazing achievement for a man nearly 80 years old. It is also remarkable for being Verdi’s first comic opera, and for being like Otello, the opera which preceded it, a through-composed opera lacking set piece arias and ensembles. Even in his 70s, and the most celebrated opera composer of his time, Verdi was experimenting with new ways to write an opera. Unfortunately, modern producers and directors can’t leave well enough alone and let a Verdi masterpiece speak for itself in all its magic and beauty. Gripes In this case, producer Robert Carsen has decided that…

Photo: Mat Hennek

Lebrecht Weekly | Valentin Silvestrov: Silent Songs (DG)

By Norman Lebrecht on 7 April 2023 Lebrecht Weekly

I know it’s barely April but I’ve shortlisted this album as one of my records of the year ad don’t expect it to get easily displaced. The project came about the wrong way round. Instead of a singer approaching a label with a cycle he or she wants to record, in this case the French pianist Hélène Grimaud carried the cycle in her heart for twenty years waiting for the right vocalist. The one she found is a young German-Romanian baritone, Konstantin Krimmel. When they came together in Berlin last summer, they were joined unexpectedly by the composer, an 85…

Lebrecht Weekly | Missy Mazzoli: Dark with excessive bright (BIS)

By Norman Lebrecht on 31 March 2023 CD and Book Reviews, Lebrecht Weekly

Given the composer’s decade-long success and her emergence as the first woman to clutch a Metropolitan Opera commission, it is vaguely surprising to find that Missy Mazzoli’s only recordings until now have been on a non-export hometown label, New Amsterdam Records. In a potential breakthrough, the Swedish boutique label Bis has gone where majors fear to tread and given her music a Baltic footprint. One does fear, however, for the survival of the music industry if a talent of this order is ignored for so long by its dominant corporations. Mazzoli, 42, made her name with an operatic adaptation of…

AirPods Pro resting on sheet music (Photo by Zenith Wolfe)

Review | Apple Music Classical: A New App for Classical Music

By Zenith Wolfe on 29 March 2023 Classical Music, La Scena Online, Technology

The new Apple Music Classical (AMC) app is out, and it’s already making a big impression. Launched on March 28, Apple Music Classical is a companion app offered only to paying Apple Music subscribers. The new software pulls from the same database of music, but it claims to provide better audio quality and a more intuitive user interface (UI) than its competitors. Why is a separate app necessary? According to Jessie Char, a classically trained cellist, former Apple employee, and career UI designer, it would be a lot more difficult to incorporate all the classical music categorization options into the…

Photo: Taylor Long

Review | Toronto Mendelssohn Choir’s B Minor Mass a Fine Performance of a Great Work

By Joseph So on 29 March 2023 Choral, Concert Reviews, Toronto, Vocal

Soloists: Jacob Abrahamse, Neil Aronoff, Julia Barber, Lesley Emma Bouza, Rebecca Claborn, Simon Honeyman, Kieran Kane, Rebecca McKay, Nicholas Nicolaidis, and Sinéad White; Toronto Mendelssohn Choir; Baroque Orchestra, Jean-Sébastien Vallée, conductor. Koerner Hall, March 28, 2023. With Easter just around the corner, we are at the height of the oratorio season. Toronto Mendelssohn Choir’s offering this year was Bach’s great B Minor Mass. It was a large and enthusiastic audience gathered last evening at Koerner Hall, where they were treated to a superlative performance from the 100+ voices and baroque orchestra, under the assured and knowing baton of its Maestro,…

Newswire | National Arts Centre Mourns the Loss of Jocelyn Morlock (1969-2023)

By Newswire on 29 March 2023 Classical Music, Newswire, Obituaries

MARCH 28, 2023 – OTTAWA (Canada) – Canada’s National Arts Centre is mourning the loss of Jocelyn Morlock, a remarkably gifted Canadian composer and a bright light for contemporary music in Canada. Her work was celebrated by many, including the National Arts Centre Orchestra, who commissioned her JUNO Award-winning work My Name is Amanda Todd as part of the landmark multimedia commission Life Reflected. My Name is Amanda Todd premiered on May 19, 2016. It was performed at the Luminato Festival Toronto in 2017 and in performance halls across Western Canada during the Orchestra’s Canada 150 Tour. In 2018, it…

Takács Quartet, photo: Amanda Tipton Photography

Review | Takács Quartet Performance with Insight and Passion

By Paul E. Robinson on 25 March 2023 Chamber Music, Concert Reviews, Piano, Strings, Toronto

Takács Quartet with Jeremy Denk. Music by Haydn, Fanny Mendelssohn and Schumann. Koerner Hall, Toronto. March 23, 2023. Rating: ***** Bringing together thoughtful and talented musicians for a concert nearly always guarantees time well spent, and the experience might even be revelatory. That was certainly the case on March 23, 2023 at Koerner Hall in Toronto when the Takács Quartet led by Edward Dusinberre and American pianist Jeremy Denk took the stage. The Takács Quartet has been around since 1975 and Edward Dusinberre has been its first violinist since 1993. Dusinberre is a wonderful violinist and leader but he is…

Lebrecht Weekly | Beethoven/Ravel: Concertos (Avanticlassic)

By Norman Lebrecht on 24 March 2023 Contemporary, Lebrecht Weekly, Orchestral, Piano, Romantic

Did anyone know that Pablo Casals had a kid brother who wrote him a concerto? Enrique Casals, 16 years younger, was a violinist and conductor. His cello concerto came to light three years ago and the enterprising Jan Vogler has made a captivating world premiere recording of it on Sony. It was sitting on my deck destined to be named album of the week when, as so often happens, an unforeseen astonishment dropped through the letterbox and took pride of place. Let’s not get all wokey and egalitarian about this: the best is, always and forever, the enemy of even the…

Review | Rarities Galore Grace TSO’s Buffet of Cultural Delights

By Andrea Rush on 24 March 2023 Concert Reviews, Orchestral, Romantic, Strings, Toronto

Brian Harman : Madrigal – Celebration Prelude – premiere, commissioned by the TSO As the TSO celebrates its 100th anniversary, the premiere commissioned from Canadian Brian Harman provided a fitting regal tone to open the evening. The joyful fanfare of this tonal, contemporary work is light and uplifting. Harman counts among his influences Prof. Brian Cherney, of McGill, with whom he studied during his PhD degree in composition. The hall bubbled with enthusiasm as Harman took a bow on stage following the TSO performance. Jean-Guihen Queyras: cellist As an additional, rare treat, solo cellist Jean-Guihen Queyras performed two concerti. The…

Previous 1 … 53 54 55 56 57 … 172 Next

Browsing: La Scena Online

Current Issue