World Premiere Recording of André Mathieu: Concerto No. 3 features JoAnn Falletta and the Buffalo Philharmonic Orchestra with Piano Soloist Alain Lefèvre
Analekta CD Celebrates the 150th Anniversary of Canada
and the 75th Anniversary of Mathieu’s Composition
A world premiere recording of André Mathieu: Concerto No. 3, theConcerto de Quebec, paired with George Gershwin’s An American in Paris is now available on Analekta Records featuring acclaimed conductor JoAnn Falletta leading the Buffalo Philharmonic Orchestra with soloist Alain Lefèvre. The CD debuted as the No. 1 classical album in Canada.
Says Falletta: “The pairing of the Mathieu and Gershwin on our Analekta CD celebrates the 150th anniversary of Canada and marks the warm and long-standing friendship between our nations. Buffalo lies right on the Canadian border, and we welcome a great many Canadian citizens to our city (and to Kleinhans Music Hall) every year. Both Mathieu and Gershwin were child prodigies – pianist composers who died tragically in their 30s, and who each created a sound world completely their own – unique and inimitable.”
Mathieu, considered the “Mozart of Canada,” began writing his Concerto No. 3in the autumn of 1942, 75 years ago, when he was just 13 years old and at the peak of his glory. Canadian pianist Alain Lefèvre, is a dedicated champion of the
music of Andre Mathieu, and worked for the past three years with Jacques Marchand and George Nicholson to restore the concerto, the original of which had been thought lost, following its arrangement and adaption for the film Whispering City in 1947, to its original form. Lefèvre performed the world premiere of the reconstructed concerto at Kleinhans Music Hall in Buffalo with JoAnn Falletta and the Buffalo Philharmonic, where it was recorded live. For Lefèvre, the rediscovery of the Piano Concerto No. 3 is a triumph, the culmination of almost 40 years of work on Mathieu. “I started with Mathieu when I was 15 and I didn’t stop working,” he says. “As we’re talking today there is a lot of excitement around Mathieu, and not just in Canada.”
In an early review, Musical Toronto calls Mathieu’s Concerto No. 3 “very much a showpiece for a virtuoso pianist. One can only imagine what the 14-year-old Mathieu would have done with his own music but in Lefèvre he has a worthy champion. The Québécois pianist tears out of the gate at the beginning of the first movement like a man possessed. It is an exciting opening and when the orchestra makes its first entry a little later the excitement builds even further to some glorious climaxes.”
A leading artist of the Analekta record label, Alain Lefèvre enjoys a brilliant international career, having played in over 40 countries, and performs regularly on the world’s most prestigious stages with great orchestras and prominent conductors. JoAnn Falletta, who is internationally celebrated for discovering and recording unjustly forgotten gems of classical music, has previously collaborated with Alain Lefèvre in presenting works by Mathieu, including a highly acclaimed performance in New York’s Carnegie Hall in 2013.
JoAnn Falletta is the Music Director of the Buffalo Philharmonic Orchestra and the Virginia Symphony Orchestra and Principal Guest Conductor of the Brevard Music Center. A leading recording artist for Naxos, her discs have won two Grammy Awards and ten Grammy nominations. Her recent work with the Buffalo Philharmonic includes the January 2017 Naxos release ofRichard Strauss – Ariadne auf Naxos, which the Buffalo News calls a “formidable recording,” and the March release ofMusic of Vitezslav Novak, which Classical CD Review praised as “excellent, well-recorded performances with the remarkable JoAnn Falletta and her Buffalo Orchestra.” This season, Falletta recorded two CDs for Naxos with the Buffalo Philharmonic, music of Kodaly and Wagner, Music from the Ring, a recording of music of Franz Schleker with the Berlin Radio Symphony Orchestra and in August will record her fifth world premiere recording of music of Kenneth Fuchs with the London Symphony.
Click on CD to listen to a sound sample of Mathieu: Concerto No.3:
http://www.joannfalletta.com/discography.html
For review or airplay copies, or to arrange for an interview
with JoAnn Falletta, please contact
Genevieve Spielberg at [email protected]
or 908-608-1325
To learn more about JoAnn Falletta, visit
www.joannfalletta.com
