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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

Calidore Quartet Photo: Marco Borggreve

Lebrecht Weekly | American Tapestry (Signum)

By Norman Lebrecht on 23 January 2026 Jazz, Lebrecht Weekly

At the end of a week of abusive American power, the last thing I wanted to hear was sentimental Americana squeezed out by a string quartet based in Delaware. There’s a reason companies list in Delaware. It has 2 percent tax, business-friendly courts and no questions asked. Unreal. Still, you never know what a recording will reveal. This one plays out four unrelated styles. Samuel Barber’s first string quartet is known for its mournful middle movement, Barber’s Adagio. The outer movements are rich in tunes. Every American composer envied Uncle Sam Barber’s gift for melody. Jazzman Wynton Marsalis raids New…

Lebrecht Weekly | Schubert: Impromptus; Brahms: Late piano works (Warner Classics)

By Norman Lebrecht on 16 January 2026 Lebrecht Weekly

Some people love cheese, others turn green at the sniff of it. We are talking here of matters of taste and discrimination. Several people whose judgement I respect have responded with great enthusiasm to Eric Lu’s twin sets of Schubert Impromptus on the Warner label. Lu, 28, is the American who won last year’s Chopin Competition in Warsaw and the Leeds in 2018. Regardless of how one views those results he is a competent, dedicated and experienced pianist who will enjoy a long career. That said, I practically threw up at the opening note of the opus 90 impromptus, and…

Lebrecht Weekly | Soulima Stravinsky (Nimbus)

By Norman Lebrecht on 9 January 2026 Lebrecht Weekly

Igor Stravinsky was too much of an egotist to be a good parent. He was a brute to his first wife, Yekaterina, who was also his first cousin, obliging her to pay a monthly stipend to his mistress, Vera Sudeikina. Relations with his children atrophied in the course of these humiliations. Soulima, his third child, never stood much of a chance to find an independent existence. Tutored by his father’s acolyte Nadia Boulanger, he augmented his attempts at being a composer with playing his father’s fairly undemanding piano pieces. In 1939, when Igor and Vera moved to the US, Soulima…

Snow Bai (erhu) with Toronto Festival Orchestra conducted by Yong-yan Hu

Review | Li Delun Music Foundation Celebrates East-Meets-West

By Amanda Wong on 6 January 2026 Classical Music, Concert Reviews, Orchestral, Piano, Strings, Toronto, Vocal, World Music

With the new year comes a host of celebrations, and the Li Delun Music Foundation’s East-Meets-West New Year’s Concert is no exception. An impressive and relatively ad hoc Toronto Festival Orchestra gathered to play a program of—you guessed it—both Eastern (primarily Chinese) and Western music to ring in the new year. Named for Li Delun (1917-2001), the pioneering Chinese conductor, the foundation carries forward his lifelong mission to make classical music universally accessible, without age or socioeconomic discrimination. Throughout the latter half of the 20th century, Li helped bridge Eastern and Western classical traditions—a legacy the foundation honours through its…

A scene from Teatro alla Scala's Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk. Photo: Brescia/Amisano

Review | Holiday Delights in Milan and Piacenza: Lady Macbeth, Sleeping Beauty, Stiffelio

By Ossama el Naggar on 6 January 2026 Concert Reviews, Opera, Vocal

For many, Germany is the European country that comes to mind when it comes to Christmas, with its festive markets and overall celebratory ambiance. However, as a music lover, I find the second week of December in Milan to be especially enticing, as the 7th of December (San Ambrosio’s Day) marks the opening of the season at La Scala. This year opened unpredictably, with Shostakovich’s Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk, a twentieth-century Russian opera, instead of the expected Italian masterwork. Following the season premiere, the rest of the season was unveiled, replete with recitals, ballet, chamber music and orchestral fare. With…

Left: Hugo Alfvén. Right: Einojuhani Rautavaara @Jiry Valkama

Lebrecht Weekly | Einojuhani Rautavaara: Cantus arcticus/Hugo Alfven: Gustav II Adolf (Chandos)

By Norman Lebrecht on 2 January 2026 Lebrecht Weekly

Cold enough for you? Pull on another layer and listen to the Arctic concerto by a Finnish composer whose music has rather subsided since his death ten years ago. Rautavaara belonged to a generation that had to break free from the shadow of Sibelius and find a different way of expressing bleak environmental beauty. For this extraordinary work, the composer integrated tape recordings of wild cranes, larks and swans into an orchestral landscape of compelling attraction. Cantus is, in effect, a concerto for birds and orchestra and I much prefer it to Beethoven’s Pastoral imitations and Messiaen’s overrated Oiseaux exotiques.…

Scott Rumble (Edwin), Joseph Ernst (Feri), Sebastien Belcourt (Boni) & Maeve Palmer (Sylvia) in TOT's The Czardas Princess. Photo: Gary Beechey

Review | The Czardas Princess kicks up her heels for Toronto Operetta Theatre

By Gianmarco Segato on 31 December 2025 Classical Music, Concert Reviews, La Scena Online, Opera, Région, Toronto, Vocal

Toronto Operetta Theatre’s annual holiday production offers local audiences the all-too-rare chance to experience golden age operetta. This delightful corner of the lyric repertoire, full of soaring melodies and lively dance rhythms, is all but otherwise ignored on the national scene. Imre Kálmán’s The Czardas Princess returned to the Jane Mallet Theatre stage on Dec. 30, bursting with Hungarian spice and toe-tapping Viennese waltzes, showcasing a superb, young Canadian cast. Kalman’s piece has remained popular since its 1915 Viennese premiere, never far out of the repertory in Hungary, Austria and Germany. Outside of those borders, The Czardas Princess has been…

Lebrecht Weekly | Mendelssohn, Enescu: Octets (Erato)

By Norman Lebrecht on 26 December 2025 Lebrecht Weekly

What happens when you put the two finest living string quartets in a room and press ‘record’? Not a punch-up, obviously. These players need to protect their hands. The outcome, let me reveal, is a cross between a pub quiz with two teams of Nobel prize-winners and a fight for the lower bench in a Finnish sauna. Steamy, competitive and sharp as scalpels. The Belcea Quartet was founded in London 30 years ago, the Ebène came to attention in France a decade later. When they join up in the Mendelssohn Octet there is an edge of we-can-play-faster-than-you versus we’re-more-experienced-and-much-lovelier. I…

Photo: Ashley Gattey

Review | A Cozy and Unconventional Christmas with Chor Leoni

By Kaitlyn Chan on 22 December 2025 Choral, Concert Reviews, Contemporary, Vancouver, Vocal, West

Dec. 18 marked the opening night of Chor Leoni’s annual Christmas concert. Lit with bright red, blue and magenta hues, the inside of St. Andrew’s-Wesley United Church continues to be a magical venue. After attending last year, I was drawn to return, hoping to surround myself with holiday joy. The lights dimmed so that only blue lighting remained as the members of the choir emerged carrying lit candles. The opening song, “Wonder Nouvelet” was the first of five world premieres promised for the night. Chor Leoni’s guest instrumentalists quickly established themselves as the bright shining stars of the event. Almost…

Lebrecht Weekly | Ida Haendel: Concertos (ICA Classics)

By Norman Lebrecht on 21 December 2025 Lebrecht Weekly

It would have been Ida Haendel’s birthday this week. The prodigious violinist showed me three different birth certificates but all agreed on December 15, and we think she would have turned 100 last year. No-one alive today plays like her. Raised in Warsaw Ida studied in London and settled in Montreal and Miami. Among fellow-violinists, she revered Jascha Heifetz and adopted his signature concertos – Sibelius and Walton – albeit with very different interpretations. There was a warmth, and wit, in Ida that Heifetz could never attain. The double-album under review contains four of her warhorse concertos performed with the…

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