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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 : John Hryniuk

Toronto Mendelssohn Choir celebrates its 125th Anniversary with Singing Through Centuries

By Denise Lai on 22 October 2019 Choral, Concert Reviews

Oct 21, 2019, Toronto — Canada’s oldest choir celebrated its 125th birthday with a gala concert at Koerner Hall yesterday afternoon. Interim artistic director David Fallis put together a diverse program that featured works from each of the three centuries in which the choir has performed. Among the many alumni and friends in attendance was Elizabeth Dowdeswell, Lieutenant Governor of Ontario. What you missed The concert opened with two acappella works of the choir’s namesake composer, which aptly showcased the choir’s agility in producing balanced, pure sounds and lush harmonies. It was one of the most memorable moments of the…

Beethoven: Piano concerto 0 (Deutschlandfunk/Oehms)

By Norman Lebrecht on 18 October 2019 Lebrecht Weekly

**/*** Two recordings arrive, both claiming to be Beethoven world premieres. At issue is a piano concerto the great man wrote in 1784 at the age of 13 or 14 and, after copious revisions, apparently forgot about. The autograph manuscript sits in the Berlin State Library and two pianists have had recourse to it, with a quick trip to the photocopier. First things first: is the concerto a significant work? Not in the sense that it reveals much we did not already know about Beethoven, music or humanity. The opening theme does not grip the ear and the development is…

Sondra Radvanovsky as Rusalka (centre). Photo: Michael Cooper

Old-fashioned Rusalka is a COC semi-success

By Arthur Kaptainis on 17 October 2019 Concert Reviews

The Canadian Opera Company has cultivated an up-to-date image over the past decade through a marked preference for radical productions. Dvořák’s Rusalka as staged by the British director Sir David McVicar demonstrates how a more conservative approach can generate comparable frustrations for the viewer. Subsequent performances at the Four Seasons Centre are recommended for the vocal casting. Styled by the composer as “a lyric fairy tale,” this story of a mermaid who purchases a chance at human love by sacrificing her voice can be a rich visual experience. Alas, the tangled forest of Act 1 as rendered by designer John Macfarlane looked…

by Ida Kar, 2 1/4 inch square film negative, 1959

Shostakovich plays Shostakovich (Melodiya)

By Norman Lebrecht on 11 October 2019 Lebrecht Weekly

****** (6 stars out of 5) Most records are disposable. A few are memorable, a small handful are treasurable and every now and then now one comes along that is indelible. This box is something else. I think this is the first time I have ever described a record set as indispensable. The five CDs collect all the Russian state recordings of Dmitri Shostakovich playing his own music. The composer was a terrific pianist and the interpretations can be regarded as authoritative – a reference point for all future performances. But the recordings are imbued by place and time –…

Felix and Fanny Mendelssohn at the piano. Photo: Getty

Felix and Fanny Mendelssohn: Cello-piano works (Pentatone)

By Norman Lebrecht on 5 October 2019 Chamber Music, Lebrecht Weekly, Romantic

The near-symbiotic relationship between Mendelssohn and his older sister, examined in my forthcoming book Genius and Anxiety, was so central to both musicians’ lives that Felix was felled by a stroke on hearing of Fanny’s death and died before the year was out. Fanny, the first to evince musical talent, was silenced by their father as she neared puberty in order not to deflect attention from her genius kid brother. In her 30s she found a publisher and began – to Felix’s chagrin – to produce chamber music. His anger abated on finding that the music was of high quality.…

Critiques de Concert Reviews

By La Scena Musicale Team on 4 October 2019 Concert Reviews

Opéra de Montréal Tchaikovsky: Eugene Onegin What you missed One of the best-cast and least-tampered-with Opéra de Montréal presentations in recent memory. Australian soprano Nicole Car was admirable in every way as Tatyana. It said something about the intensity of her tone and truth of her acting style that we forgot during the Letter Scene that we were in big, cavernous Salle Wilfrid Pelletier of Place des Arts. Canadian baritone Etienne Dupuis applied a virile and vibrant tone to all of Onegin’s music. Fans of mezzo-sopranos had an array of firm sonorities to choose from in Christianne Bélanger as Larina,…

(l-r) Joseph Hu as Bill/Pong, Sergey Skorokhodov as Calaf, Julius Ahn as Bob/Pang, Adrian Timpau as Jim/Ping in the Canadian Opera Company’s production of Turandot, 2019, photo: Michael Cooper

Ping, Pang and Pong ousted from Toronto Turandot

By Arthur Kaptainis on 3 October 2019 Concert Reviews, Opera, Romantic

The Canadian Opera Company has opened its season in Toronto with the North American premiere of Robert Wilson’s production of Turandot – and the world premiere appearances in this Puccini opera of Jim, Bob and Bill. Opera fans who do not recognize these roles might be more familiar with Ping, Pang and Pong, the court bureaucrats who add comic relief to the tale of love and death in ancient Beijing. Their names were judged potentially hurtful by the COC’s Equity, Diversity, and Inclusivity Committee, and particularly committee member Richard Lee, who is named in the credits as a production consultant. “This act…

Beethoven: piano concertos 1-5 (DG)

By Norman Lebrecht on 27 September 2019 Lebrecht Weekly

Sometimes the best records get made with no foresight whatsoever. As part of his label switch from Sony Classical it had been planned that Murray Perahia would record the five concertos for the Beethoven year, live in Berlin where he had concerts scheduled with the visiting Academy of St Martin in the Fields. Then Perahia suffered a recurrent hand injury and had to be replaced by the Canadian Jan Lisiecki. The DG team were already booked for the recording so they went ahead, And, what do you know, the results were better than expected. Much better. Lisiecki, 24, has been…

Dmitri Shostakovich: 2 sonatas and 24 preludes (Hyperion)

By Norman Lebrecht on 20 September 2019 Lebrecht Weekly

If I listen one more time to Andrey Gugnin playing DSCH I shall probably be locked up for my own safety, at least until after Brexit. But it’s going to happen. Like Brexit, I can’t stop it. The music on this compelling album comes from recesses of the composer’s soul, written at times when he was more troubled by personal issues than political. Aged 21, his percussive first piano sonata of 1927 runs alongside his second symphony and has much in common with Bartok’s sonata of 1926, though also with Alban Berg’s. The second sonata, written in the middle of…

Alexander Vinogradov, OSM, Choeur OSM. Photo : Antoine Saito

Nagano and the OSM get to the heart of Shostakovich

By Arthur Kaptainis on 18 September 2019 Concert Reviews, Contemporary, Orchestral

Shostakovich’s Symphony No. 13 “Babi Yar” is a brave choice for an OSM season opener. Cast in five movements, it runs the gamut from sorrowful to scornful, confines itself vocally to males and makes many of its musical points at a sustained fortissimo. The Yevgeny Yevtushenko text refers to a Nazi massacre. The hourlong-plus experience can be onerous for a gala crowd, unless the performance is as inspired as it was under Kent Nagano Tuesday night in the Maison symphonique. It is hard to describe in words the mix of horror, irony and humanity that the composer calibrates so exactly…

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