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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

Lebrecht Weekly | Beethoven/Liszt and Mozart/Alkan: Piano transcriptions (BIS)

By Norman Lebrecht on 18 November 2022 Lebrecht Weekly

Beethoven/Liszt: *** Mozart/Alkan: **** Franz Liszt did more to spread music appreciation than the entire education apparatus of his time. Hearing a piece he admired, Liszt would make a piano transcription. He got most applause for new Italian arias by Bellini and Donizetti but Liszt always had missionary zeal so he introduced complete symphonies by Beethoven to small towns where no professional orchestra ever played. His score of Beethoven’s Eroica is at once inspiring and bemusing, a faithful representation of Beethoven’s themes without the subtleties of texture. Not many pianists bring it off without the listener feeling short-changed. Paul Wee,…

Gilbert Patenaude (1947 – 2022)

By La Scena Musicale Team on 14 November 2022 Choral, Classical Music, Daily News Roundup, La Scena Online

Laval, November 14, 2022 – The wife and children of Gilbert Patenaude regret to announce his death on November 13, 2022 at the Cité de la santé de Laval. Born in Montreal in the Rosemont district, he grew up in Outremont where he learned music as a soprano with the Clerics of Saint-Viateur, then piano and organ at the Vincent-d’Indy School. He then pursued most of his musical training at the Conservatoire de musique du Québec in Montreal. On the recommendation of Raymond Daveluy, he became the first lay musical director of the Petits Chanteurs du Mont-Royal, a position that…

Vadym Kholodenko. Photo: Jean-Baptiste Millot

Lebrecht Weekly | Frederic Rzewski: The People United Will Never Be Defeated (Quartz Music)

By Norman Lebrecht on 11 November 2022 Lebrecht Weekly

The American composer, living in Italy until his death last year, was prompted by the 1973 overthrown of Chilean president Salvador Allende to compose 36 variations on the fallen regime’s populist campaign song, El pueblo unido jamas sera vencido. Despite lasting almost an hour and containing episodes of atonal fury, the piece was quickly and frequently recorded, first in 1976 by its dedicatee Ursula Oppens and latterly by the German pianist Igor Levit. In all, there are a dozen recordings. None has captured my attention so compellingly as this new release, by the 2013 Van Cliburn winner, the Ukrainian pianist…

Ensemble Silakbo. Photo: Sofia Nathanlshar

Concert review | The Silakbo Ensemble: Merging cultures together

By Justin Bernard on 5 November 2022 Chamber Music, Concert Reviews, Contemporary, World Music

On November 2, the Silakbo Ensemble launched its Canadian tour with a first stop in Montreal, at Jeunesses Musicales Canada’s Joseph-Rouleau Hall. Formed by three Bulgarian musicians (Angelina Gotcheva, clarinet, Yoanna Bozhkova, soprano, Bogdan Ivanov, piano), Portuguese violinist Edgar Gomes and Filipino American cellist Mikko Pablo, this quintet was joined exceptionally by Adam Vincent Clarke, composer and piper proud of his Nova Scotia roots. Together they presented their latest project, named Est-Ouest. More than a gathering, it is an exchange, an interconnection, between the Canadian and Bulgarian musical cultures. As part of this project, three creations commissioned by the Silakbo…

0139 - First Prize winner Karoline Podolak performing at Centre Stage: Ensemble Studio Competition, 2022. Conductor Jacques Lacombe, assistant lighting designer Sarah Mansikka. Photo: Michael Cooper

Review | Canadian Opera Company’s Ensemble Studio Competition Showcases Bright Young Talents

By Denise Lai on 5 November 2022 Concert Reviews, Opera

After a two-year hiatus, COC’s Ensemble Studio Competition made a comeback last night. The competition is the feature event of the COC gala fundraiser Centre Stage, an annual celebration of Canada’s best young opera artists. From a pool of over 100 applicants from across the country, seven finalists—three sopranos, two tenors, one baritone and one bass– were chosen to perform in front of a live audience, accompanied by the full force of the COC orchestra. The competition jury comprised COC General Director Perryn Leech and Director of Artistic Planning Roberto Mauro; renowned Canadian soprano Adrianne Pieczonka; and mezzo J’Nai Bridges,…

Lebrecht Weekly | Szymanowski: Stabat Mater (Orfeo), Piano works (DG)

By Norman Lebrecht on 4 November 2022 Lebrecht Weekly

Stabat Mater: **** Piano works: ***** While Karol Szymanowski is unlikely ever to be voted into the Classic FM Hall of Fame, his stock has risen steadily in the present century, so much so that he can almost be counted now as mainstream. This was never the case in his lifetime, when he suffered the dual disability for a composer of being Polish and gay. On the first count he was compared unfavourably to Chopin, on the second disparagingly to Tchaikovsky. Always his own man, Szymanowski (1882-1937) sounds like no other maker of musical language – as even a cursory…

Review | Toronto Mendelssohn Choir Opens New Season in Grand Style with Mendelssohn’s Elijah

By Joseph So on 3 November 2022 Concert Reviews, La Scena Online

Mendelssohn: Elijah / Russell Braun, baritone; TMC Soloists; Toronto Mendelssohn Choir; University of Toronto MacMillan Singers; Toronto Symphony Orchestra, Jean Sébastien Vallée, conductor. Roy Thomson Hall, November 2, 2022. Following the intimate, a cappella opening show given by the Toronto Mendelssohn Singers in Trinity St. Paul’s Centre a month ago, the full Toronto Mendelssohn Choir launched its new season in grand style last evening, with an old favourite – Mendelssohn’s Elijah. Together with the University of Toronto’s MacMillan Singers and the chamber version of the Toronto Symphony Orchestra, there were well over 160 musicians on the Roy Thomson Hall stage…

Review | Honens Piano Competition 2022 Report No. 4: Ukrainian Illia Ovcharenko Wins

By Paul E. Robinson on 29 October 2022 Classical Music, Concert Reviews

UKRAINIAN PIANIST ILLIA OVCHARENKO WINS THE 2022 HONENS PIANO COMPETITION IN CALGARY On the basis of what I heard in the Finals I concert 2 nights ago there was no doubt in my mind who should win this competition: 21-year-old Illia Ovcharenko. His playing in music by Mozart and Schubert was clearly head and shoulders above the work of his competitors. In the Finals II concert last night the venue was moved from Mount Royal University downtown to the Jack Singer Concert Hall, home of the Calgary Philharmonic. For this concert each of the contestants was required to play a…

Photo: Monique de St. Croix

Review | Honens Piano Competition 2022 Report No. 3: Finals Begin

By Paul E. Robinson on 28 October 2022 Classical Music, Concert Reviews

MOZART AND SCHUBERT LEAD OFF THE HONENS FINALS IN CALGARY: ILLIA OVCHARENKO PLAYS SUPERBLY There were ten semi-finalists and then three finalists at the Honens Piano Competition in Calgary. Last night, in the Bella Concert Hall at the Taylor Centre for the Performing Arts, Mount Royal University, the three surviving contestants played Mozart and Schubert in the first of two evenings to decide the winner. Each pianist was required to play one of the lesser Mozart concertos with a string quintet, then accompany a singer in a set of three Schubert Lieder. Tonight, in the concluding concert they will each…

Finnish composer Jean Sibelius, photographed at Ainola, his home outside Helsinki, in the 1940s. Santeri Levas/Finnish Museum of Photography

Lebrecht Weekly | Sibelius: Symphonies 3&5 (Alpha-Classics)

By Norman Lebrecht on 28 October 2022 Lebrecht Weekly

Before the great Mahler inundation of the 1980s, every aspirational conductor was expected to know the seven Sibelius symphonies backwards and to perform them on demand. Leonard Bernstein claimed to have taught them to the Vienna Philharmonic; in fact, his compatriot Lorin Maazel got in there first, recording them a decade earlier. Karajan embedded Sibelius in Berlin. Philadelphia and Boston performed him as standard. London’s Royal Festival Hall was known to some of us as Finlandia-on-Thames. The train that linked Finland to Russia was named ‘the Sibelius’. And then the wave receded. A line of Finnish conductors led by Esa-Pekka…

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