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

Shawna Caspi (Photo by Roni Hoffman)

Folk singer Shawna Caspi returns to her roots

By Zenith Wolfe on 17 March 2023 Folk, La Scena Online

Over the last two decades, Shawna Caspi has grown from a local performer to an internationally touring folk musician with five albums and two award nominations. Now, the Ottawa-born singer-songwriter is coming home. She’s performing an acoustic version of her latest album, 2021’s Hurricane Coming, at Westboro Masonic Hall in Ottawa on Mar. 19. She’s accompanied by harmony singer and backup guitarist Sarah Hiltz, with an opening act from Renfrew County’s Khloe B. Caspi’s journey began in early 2000s Ottawa at renowned folk music venue Rasputin’s Folk Cafe. A dedicated singer and guitarist since her high school years, Caspi found…

Photo : Norbert Kniat

Lebrecht Weekly | Yuja Wang: The American Album (DG)

By Norman Lebrecht on 17 March 2023 Classical Music, Lebrecht Weekly

Our inbox has clogged up with readers’ demands to know what the new Yuja album is all about. So, if you insist, it’s neither one thing nor the other. It begins with Yuja playing a 4:34 minute solo by Michael Tilson Thomas, followed by a half-hour piano concerto by Teddy Abrams. Both composers are, in the main, conductors – and it shows. The MTT vignette is a jazz-club vignette. The Abrams concerto falls midway between Glenn Miller and Big Bill Broonzy with a central patch of Hollywood marshmallow. Yuja’s job involves honky-tonking around in the left hand without much glitter…

News | 2023 JUNO Award Classical & Jazz Winners Announced

By La Scena Musicale Team on 12 March 2023 Arts Industry, Classical Music, La Scena Online, Scena Jazz

The Juno Awards announced their winners in the classical and jazz categories in Edmonton, Alberta at The JUNO Opening Night Awards Presented by Music Canada on Saturday, March 11. VOCAL JAZZ ALBUM OF THE YEAR I ALBUM DE JAZZ VOCAL DE L’ANNÉE Winner: Featuring Caity Gyorgy, La Reserve*The Orchard blue Diana Panton Independent*The SRG/ILS Group Venez donc chez moi Laura Anglade and Sam Kirmayer Justin Time*F.A.B./Nettwerk Nikki By Starlight Nikki Yanofsky MNRK The Ostara Project The Ostara Project Cellar*The Orchard JAZZ ALBUM OF THE YEAR (SOLO) I ALBUM JAZZ DE L’ANNÉE (SOLO) Winner: Kinds of Love Renee Rosnes, Smoke, Sessions*The…

Lebrecht Weekly | Rachmaninov: 2nd symphony (Chandos/Vox)

By Norman Lebrecht on 10 March 2023 Lebrecht Weekly

Chandos: *** Vox: **** If you think Rachmaninov’s second symphony is easy to play, you should have heard the mush one of London’s top orchestras made of it recently under a famous conductor who has performed it all his life. There is a fine line to walk in this symphony between sentiment and passion, assertiveness and overblown bombast, explicitness and allusion. Two recordings, just landed, exemplify these contrasts. John Wilson, heading London’s finest string section, brings off the big-bash passages quite brilliantly, less so with the underlying confusions. Rachmaninov, aged 33 in 1906-7 when he wrote the symphony, was remaking…

Photo : Sim Canetty Clarke

Review | Imogen Cooper’s Solo Piano Debut captivates Koerner Hall

By Andrea Rush on 8 March 2023 Concert Reviews, Toronto

Pianist Imogen Cooper has many rare gifts. One is to convey the thoughts and emotions of others with clarity. This is a trait that is prized in all walks of life. For Dame Cooper, it has defined a legendary career as a concert pianist, recipient of many prestigious accolades in the U.K. Her influences include her music critic father, her studies in Paris and Alfred Brendel. What you missed On March 5, Cooper stopped by Koerner Hall in Toronto, to perform a program consisting of mainstream “classical” music – Liszt, Beethoven and Schubert. The acoustics of the Hall are ideal.…

Review | TSO and Kerem Hasan, Youthful Energy

By Andrea Rush on 3 March 2023 Concert Reviews, Orchestral, Toronto

This week’s program at the TSO bursts with the musical contemplation of youth– the composers and TSO guest conductor, Kerem Hasan. Britten’s Four Sea Interludes, op. 33a, were followed Missy Mazzoli’s Dark with Excessive Light, a contemporary Concerto for Contrabass and String Orchestra. Sparkling effervescence, Mozart’s Haffner Symphony opened the second half, followed by a return to more of Britten.c What you missed? Guest conductor Kerem Hasan exudes self-confidence onstage. He is the recipient of a Bachelor of Music degree from the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland and many prizes for his principal studies, piano and conducting. The TSO is well…

CREATOR: gd-jpeg v1.0 (using IJG JPEG v62), quality = 85

Lebrecht Weekly | Shostakovich: Works unveiled (BIS)

By Norman Lebrecht on 3 March 2023 Lebrecht Weekly

This album solves a mystery that goes back eight decades. Anyone immersed in the music of Gustav Mahler will have noticed that the opening of Shostakovich’s sixth symphony is identical to Mahler’s unfinished tenth. How did that happen? Mahler’s tenth was unheard outside Vienna, where a partial facsimile had been published in a few hundred copies in 1924. Shostakovich never left the Soviet Union. How could he possibly have seen a copy of Mahler’s manuscript? All, or part, can now be revealed. The French pianist Nicolas Stavy has recorded a four-hand piano arrangement by Shostakovich of one-third of the Adagio of…

Review | TSO, Davis and Lortie Provide Wonderful Evening

By Andrea Rush on 24 February 2023 Concert Reviews, Orchestral, Toronto

The style was casual elegance at Roy Thomson Hall last night, and the mood buoyant. Back from a multi-city tour through Ottawa, Montreal, New York and Chicago, the tireless TSO members were charged and ready for more stellar performances. This week’s program features Sir Andrew Davis, Conductor Laureate and Principal Conductor of the TSO from 1975-1988 and one of Canada’s foremost concert pianists, Louis Lortie. What you missed? As a pre-concert appetizer, Lortie spoke about and played Alban Berg’s Piano Sonata, Op. 1 (consisting of 1 movement). It was a teaser to the orchestral arrangement by Sir Andrew Davis that…

Lebrecht Weekly | Nannette Streicher’s Fortepiano (Gramola)

By Norman Lebrecht on 24 February 2023 Lebrecht Weekly

I can barely control my finger at the play button.This recording takes us as close to Beethoven in audible terms as it is possible to get. This is the sound that filled Beethoven’s room as he composed at least half of the 32 sonatas. Nannette Streicher was his piano maker, and much more. She took his order for a Hammerflügel in 1812. Once it was installed Nanette was in and out of his house every other day, disciplining his servants, helping with his accounts and generally doing her best to allow the most helpless of men to overcome his daily…

Review | The Piano Guys Begins Tour with Heart

By Andrea Rush on 17 February 2023 Concert Reviews, Piano

“In a world where classical music hangs in the balance”, The Piano Guys are making their way from the deserts of Palm Springs, California to Australia this week. Their style is as quizzical as their name suggests: upbeat classical music-based mashups played in front of full visuals of imaginary superheroes and travel videos, sometimes in the depth of artificial snow on stage. They espouse that classical music is the ancestor of all music. It is woven throughout their repertoire albeit in their unique sound and style. What you missed? In Palm Springs their repertoire included arrangements of Bach Suite No.…

Previous 1 … 54 55 56 57 58 … 172 Next

Browsing: La Scena Online

Current Issue