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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

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Tributes, premieres and great discoveries mark the third week at Festival de Lanaudière

By Newswire on 9 July 2019 La Scena Online

A piano concerto will be given its first performance in Quebec Joliette, July 09, 2019 – Among other offerings, the third week at the 42nd Festival de Lanaudière features Canadian, American and Dutch ensembles, a tribute to two legends and a work that has never been performed in our province Viennese Classics The Gryphon Trio, one of the most renowned Canadian chamber music ensembles, will perform at Église de Saint-Alphonse-Rodriguez on Tuesday, July 16 in a programme of great Viennese classical works. Audiences will hear Haydn’s Trio in G minor, Brahms’ Trio in C major and Beethoven’s Trio in B-flat…

Nikos Skalkottas: Piano works (Bis)

By Norman Lebrecht on 5 July 2019 Lebrecht Weekly

The Greek composer Skalkottas died of a ruptured hernia in 1949, shortly after the birth of his second son. He was 45 and completely unknown, his health broken by internment in a camp during the German occupation. Possessed of a questing mind, Skalkottas enrolled in Arnold Schoenberg’s Berlin class from 1927 to 1932, learning how to write ultra-modern serialism and balancing it with his own instinct forMediterranean melody. This collection of piano pieces by the Greek scholar Lorenda Ramou contains three world premieres, all of considerable curiosity. If you’re into 20th century piano music, this should be high on your…

Photo: Jean-François Pagé

A series of free outdoor concerts at the foot of Mount Royal to the sound of the flute

By Newswire on 4 July 2019 La Scena Online

The mountain goes vintage on summer Thursdays Montreal, July 4, 2019 –The flute will take the spotlight on July 11, with a captivating program that will charm everyone. The performance will take place at the Mordecai Richler gazebo on Park Avenue, a stone’s throw from the Sir George-Étienne-Cartier monument. In the tradition of popular summer concerts in public parks at the beginning of the 20th century,Harmonie Laval and it’s various ensembles will offer free performances at 7 p.m. Music lovers will be transported back to a time when people gathered for evening concerts under the summer sky, rain or shine…

Photo: Gilles Proulx

Espace 67 Mostly a Success

By Charlotte Paillas on 30 June 2019 Concert Reviews, Orchestral

After two years of planning and enhancement, the Société du parc Jean-Drapeau (SPJD) and the Metropolitan Orchestra organized a free concert for the inauguration of the Espace 67, preserving the symbol of community and sharing from the 1967 International and Universal Exposition. Created for people-gathering activities, the new Espace 67 is now ready to accommodate 65,000 people in a charming and welcoming site along the Saint-Laurent, facing the city of Montreal. The vast site accommodates several sitting areas for possible picnics, including food trucks, and other outdoors activities. To celebrate the new site, 77 musicians from the Metropolitan Orchestra performed…

Beethoven: Christ on the Mount of Olives (Naxos)

By Norman Lebrecht on 28 June 2019 Lebrecht Weekly

Never one to leave his audience short of music, Beethoven wrote this oratorio for an 1803 Vienna concert that already consisted of his first two symphonies and his third piano concerto. Since he only finished the oratorio on the morning of the concert, rehearsals were scratchy and the musicians bad-tempered. Even at this distance of time, it is hard to tell how they made any sense of this episodic work, which veers from flights of inspiration to pedestrian note-filling. At its most sublime – the orchestral introduction and the tenor aria ‘my soul trembles’, we hear Beethoven finding raw materials…

Photo: Harmonie Laval

Big Band Intersection launches a series of free outdoor concerts at the foot of Mount Royal

By Newswire on 27 June 2019 La Scena Online

The mountain goes vintage on five summer Thursdays Montreal, June 27, 2019 –The Beatles will take the spotlight as the jazz group Big Band Intersection will launch a series of five free concerts on July 4. The concerts will take place at the Mordecai Richler gazebo on Park Avenue, a stone’s throw away from the Sir George-Étienne-Cartier monument. In the tradition of popular summer concerts held in public parks at the beginning of the 20th century, Harmonie Laval and various ensembles will offer five free performances at 7 p.m. on Thursdays, July 4, 11 and 18 and August 1 and…

Il Cortegiano : Festival Montréal Baroque with the participation of Jardins Chorégraphiques, Ensemble Alkemia, Flûte Alors! and Les Voix Humaines. Photo : Guillaume Lamothe.

Some serious fun at the Montreal Baroque Festival

By Arthur Kaptainis on 26 June 2019 Baroque and Early, Concert Reviews

The governing theme of the Montreal Baroque Festival this year was sprezzatura, an Italian word defined as nicely-calibrated nonchalance by Baldassare Castiglione in his Book of the Courtier (1528). The choice allowed for a preponderance of Italian repertoire, a concentration on venues in Little Italy, a philosophical attitude toward late starts and, on Sunday, the spectacle of co-artistic directors Susie Napper and Matthias Maute locking arms on the stage of the Théâtre Le Chateau, each with a glass of wine, and thanking the various collaborators who made the 17th edition possible. “Concert” would not quite do justice to the show,…

Schubert: Die schöne Müllerin (Chandos)

By Norman Lebrecht on 21 June 2019 Lebrecht Weekly

One of the marvels of English music-making in the past couple of years has been the emergence of Roderick Williams in mid-career as one of the most pleasing lieder baritones of our time. Williams, who is 54, has sung Billy Budd and Don Giovanni among other operatic roles. He is also a composer. But it is in Lieder that he has found a true vocation and his performance of Schubert’s love-struck cycle captures all the colours of a bucolic landscape and the clouds of an unattainable desire. What I particularly like is that, unlike Fischer-Dieskau for instance, he neither hardens…

Mendelssohn in Birmingham, vol. 5 (Chandos)

By Norman Lebrecht on 14 June 2019 Lebrecht Weekly

This really useful series has reached a clutch of shorter pieces, all of them offering fresh insights into the life and mind of the travelling composer-conductor. In the overture to St Paul, Mendelssohn plays parlour games with the founder of his faith. The trumpet overture, opus 101, is quite literally a blast and the overture to Athalie has real novelty value. The truth is that, two centuries on, we still have no idea who Mendelssohn was. He is so adept at presenting ideas in a patina of respectability that we are left wondering if this man knew any passion in…

Lise Davidsen/Renee Fleming (Decca)

By Norman Lebrecht on 7 June 2019 CD and Book Reviews, Lebrecht Weekly

A soprano at the start of her journey cuts a debut album as another reaches what must be the end. The contrasts are simply too compelling to ignore. Lise Davidsen, a Norwegian, came to attention in the Kathleen Ferrier competition four years ago, though her voice is more Flagstad than Ferrier. This is a genuine Wagnerian instrument, fully formed at 32 years old and equal to a massive orchestra. Two Tannhäuser arias are surmounted here with what sounds like nonchalance, a walk in the Bayreuth park in a really pleasant breeze. The shortcomings are exposed in a set of Richard…

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