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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

Photo: Patrick Beaudry

Le Fantôme de l’Opéra Opening Night Team Review

By La Scena Musicale Team on 15 January 2020 Concert Reviews, Opera, Vocal

La Scena’s team attended the opening night of Fantôme de l’Opéra at Théâtre St-Denis last Wednesday. Here is what we thought. Team average on 10: Singing: 7.5 Orchestra: 8.5 Staging: 8 Overall rating: 8 What you missed The two main roles performed by Hugo Laporte and Anne-Marine Suire were wonderfully played. As The Phantom, Hugo Laporte stood out, with his thunderous voice. Everytime he sang, the room shook. His strong high notes made us wonder if we will ever hear him sing the title role in Verdi’s Otello in the future. As Christine, Anne-Marine Suire also shone, skillfully rendering her…

Shostakovich: 13th symphony ‘Babi Yar’ (CSO.Resound)

By Norman Lebrecht on 10 January 2020 Classical Music, Lebrecht Weekly

Half a century ago, in January 1970, the young Riccardo Muti gave this symphony its western Europe premiere in Rome with the RAI orchestra and the wondeful bass Ruggiero Raimondi. The performance was semi-samizdat. A score had been smuggled out of Russia, where the work was suppressed for its denunciation of Soviet antisemitism, and Yevgeny Yevtushenko’s text was unofficially translated into Italian. Muti, who never forgot the occasion, revisited it 16 months ago with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra. Although unversed in Russian ironies, his interpretation has the authority of a leader who lived through the late-Soviet era and observed the…

The Red Army Choir in Montreal : A Highly Professional Concert Charged with Emotion

By Pierre Chénier on 6 January 2020 Concert Reviews

As part of an international tour celebrating its 90th anniversary the Red Army Choir, under the direction of its artistic director Gennadiy Sachenyuk, gave seven performances at the Maison symphonique de Montréal from December 26 to 30. For just over two hours the 75 singers and musicians, accompanied by Quebec songstress Isabelle Boulay for four songs, offered a program mainly composed of traditional Russian songs and Christmas tunes. Towards the concert’s end, in a beautiful and highly significant gesture, Isabelle Boulay interpreted L’Hymne à la beauté du monde (Hymn to the Beauty of the World) by Luc Plamondon, popularized by…

Poulenc/Koechlin: Piano and orchestra (Odradek)

By Norman Lebrecht on 3 January 2020 Lebrecht Weekly

****/** No happier way to start a year than Francis Poulenc, few grimmer than Charles Koechlin. This album opens with the little-played Poulenc Sinfonietta, originally intended as a string quartet and allegedly thrown in a Paris gutter when it did not work out. First heard in London in 1948, it’s a Mozart-meets-Stravinsky score, and none the worse for that. Even at his most neo-classical, Igor never got this light. The captivating Poulenc piano concerto was premiered by the composer himself in 1950. The Boston audience snubbed it as second-rate Rachmaninov, but Poulenc has much more joie-de-vivre and wears what he…

Shostakovich: The Bedbug (Naxos)

By Norman Lebrecht on 20 December 2019 Lebrecht Weekly

Whenever I hear music by the young Dmitri Shostakovich I am astonished all over again by his up-yours raw humour and ribaldry. This is a dazzling talent strutting his stuff in the first decade of a revolution when all seemed possible and available – jobs for all, free meals at work, free love. None foresaw that Stalin would soon crush the spark and the spirit out of the cultural side of the revolution. The two unexpected world premieres on this release are compelling. The Bedbug was a comedy written by the poet Vladimir Mayakovsky, for which Shostakovich wrote incidental music…

Photo: Bruce Zinger Photography

Toronto Consort uncovers early Christmas treasures

By Arthur Kaptainis on 17 December 2019 Concert Reviews

The towering masterpieces of the late baroque tend to block our view of worthy earlier scores. One such is the Christmas Story of Heinrich Schütz, a 40-minute oratorio published in 1664 that focuses squarely on the Biblical account and deploys both voices and instruments in creative ways. The Toronto Consort under the supervision of former artistic director David Fallis gave it an intriguing airing on Dec. 14 (the second of three performances) in the Trinity-St. Paul’s Centre. By far the biggest job is that of the Evangelist, whose recitatives sometimes run longer than two minutes. One might argue that Bach,…

Beethoven: For 4-hand piano (Delphian)

By Norman Lebrecht on 13 December 2019 Lebrecht Weekly

I’m guessing not many readers are familiar with Beethoven’s Sonata in D, opus 6. Published in 1797, though possibly dating from the composer’s teens, it begins with the unmistakable opening phrase of the Fifth Symphony. Seriously? That work that did not achieve fruition for another decade. Like me, you may have trouble believing your ears at the arresting confidence of this two-movement piece. It’s unremarkable in most other ideas except for the ta-ta-ta-taaa and the Beethoven signature that pulses through every second. The British pianists Peter Hill and Benjamin Frith have teamed up here to take us into some wholly…

Mieczyslaw Weinberg: Chamber works (Sony, Genuin, Naxos)

By Norman Lebrecht on 5 December 2019 Lebrecht Weekly

****/** The 2019 centenary of the composer’s birth has exhumed several dozen unknown works on record, enabling us to form a broader understanding of his preoccupations. The essential works in this present batch date from the Second World War. The piano quintet of 1944, fervently played by Olga Scheps and the Kuss Quartet, calls to mind Shostakovich’s stupendous quintet, dated 1940. Of the two, the Russian composer sounds more Jewish than the Polish Jew, such was his alarm at genocidal antisemitism. Weinberg’s quintet, premiered by Emil Gilels and a Bolshoi quartet, is less emphatic, though also highly strung and with…

Photo: Jag Gundu

Toronto Symphony’s Tchaikovsky Program Appeals to the Audience

By Denise Lai on 5 December 2019 Concert Reviews

Toronto, November 30, 2019 — The Toronto Symphony Orchestra presented an all-Tchaikovsky concert, conducted by RBC Resident Conductor Simon Rivard. The rarely-performed Symphony No. 1 in G Minor, Op. 13 entitled “Winter Dreams”, is an idyllic piece full of rich melodies, some drawn from Russian folk songs, and performed by a smaller orchestra. Composed when he was 26, this piece caused Tchaikovsky more pain and anguish than any other work, and brought him close to a nervous breakdown. What you missed The first two movements Allegro and Adagio evoked an ominous and enigmatic feeling of the coming of winter, whereas…

Photo: Antoine Saito

Bigger Bruckner is Not Necessarily Better

By Arthur Kaptainis on 29 November 2019 Concert Reviews, Orchestral

Comparisons might be invidious but they are sometimes essential. Or unavoidable. It would take quite an act of inner denial to discuss the OSM performance of Bruckner’s Fourth Symphony as led on the morning of Nov. 28 by Kent Nagano with no reference to the pair given over the weekend in New York and Philadelphia by the Orchestre Métropolitain under Yannick Nézet-Séguin. Possibly some in the Maison symphonique for the OSM also heard the OM in pre-tour launch mode on Nov. 16, although just who goes to which orchestra in this town remains a puzzle I expect never to solve.…

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