Baroque and Early - my/maSCENA

Vincent Lauzer – A Recorder Player with Wind in His Sails

By Benjamin Goron on 30 October 2018 Baroque and Early

In 2012 the young recorder player Vincent Lauzer won first prize in the Canadian Music Competition’s Stepping Stone division, trouncing pianists, singers and violinists. Who is this phenomenon who has confounded expectations and found a place among the greatest musicians of his generation? As the Révélation Radio-Canada in 2013-2014, artistic director of the Lamèque International Baroque Music Festival, recipient of the Fernand Lindsay career grant in 2015, Lauzer has many feathers in his cap. Most recent was his recording last month with the Arion Baroque Orchestra, playing Vivaldi flute concertos. This won a Diapason d’or awarded by the prestigious French…

Flûte Alors! Albums, Tours, Concerts

By Benjamin Goron on 30 October 2018 Baroque and Early

Flûte Alors! was born in 1999, the fruit of a student exchange with some Berlin musicians, organized by recorder players Matthias Maute and Sophie Larivière. It underwent various transformations over the years, gradually becoming more and more professional, before ending up as the present quartet of Vincent Lauzer, Marie-Laurence Primeau, Alexa Raine-Wright and Caroline Tremblay. In 2011, the quartet issued their first album, Kaléidoscope, comprising Baroque and contemporary works. It set out their mission, which is to make the recorder better known through concerts covering medieval, Baroque, Renaissance and contemporary music – as well as jazz, which was the subject…

The audience playing the part of “The Water” at Festival O18’s Queens of the Night: Dito and Aeneas at the Theatre of Living Arts; photo by Steven Pisano

Opera Philadelphia’s Festival O18: The Whirlwind That Was

By Charles Geyer on 29 October 2018 Baroque and Early, Choral, Classical, Concert Reviews, La Scena Online, La Scena Spotlight, Multimedia, Musical Theatre, Opera, Orchestral, Theatre, Visual Arts

REVIEW: of Opera Philadelphia’s “Festival O18” (September 20-30, 2018) – a new production of Lucia di Lammermoor, composed by Gaetano Donizetti with libretto by Salvadore Cammarano; the world premiere of Sky on Swings, composed by Lembit Beecher with libretto by Hannah Moscovitch; the premiere of Ne quittez pas (a “reimagined” La voix humaine of Francis Poulenc, with a new prologue featuring numerous of the composer’s art songs); the premiere of Glass Handel, an immersive concert experience featuring countertenor Anthony Roth Costanzo performing music by George Frideric Handel and Philip Glass; and Queens of the Night: Blythely After Hours, an opera/rock…

Chansons d’amour d’Acadie et de France – Atma Classique, 2018

By Benjamin Goron on 2 October 2018 Baroque and Early, CD and Book Reviews, Chamber Music, Choral

Chansons d’amour d’Acadie et de France – Chœur Louisbourg, dir. Monique Richard ; Skye Consort This album offers a happy musical reflection of publications of recent decades. The Acadian folk songs are from compilations published in 1988 and 1996. Musical style range from the languor of Écrivez-moi to the light touch of Moine Simon. The Louisbourg Choir, directed by Monique Richard, lends rich tone and consistency to these songs, whose harmonies have been carefully chosen to give them a traditional sound, complemented by the instruments of the Skye Consort: recorder, chalumeau, rauschpfeife, cittern, violin, nyckelharpa and cello. Jacotin Le Bel’s songs complement a…

Early Music

By Philippe Gervais on 11 September 2018 Baroque and Early, Classical Music

French Music at Bourgie Hall Once again this year, several great names in early music will grace the stage of Bourgie Hall. French baroque repertoire at its most intimate and refined takes a place of honour. Most notable is the concert by Jordi Savall, who will recreate the original soundtrack of the film Tous les Matins du monde (Feb. 16 and 17). Unfortunately, both concerts are sold out, but those without tickets will be able to attend a free screening of the film (Feb. 9) in which Gérard Depardieu tries his hand at the viola da gamba and the role…

Muzio Clementi: Keyboard sonatas (Naxos)

By Norman Lebrecht on 3 August 2018 Baroque and Early, Lebrecht Weekly, Piano

The problem with Clementi is that there are no standout works. Where most famous composers write a couple of pieces that are gripping enough to be an entry point to their output, the London-based Italian just wrote and wrote more and more sonatas at roughly the same level of invention, leaving the new listener no idea where to start. Opus 33, published by Longman and Broderip in 1794, is not a bad door-knocker. Clementi employs many of the same devices as Mozart – a seductive melody, a secondary detour and several strong teases before he delivers a resolution. There’s nothing…

Haydn: Cello concertos (Pentatone)

By Norman Lebrecht on 27 July 2018 Baroque and Early, Lebrecht Weekly, Strings

There’s a debate going on among agents as to whether it is better for an artist to have an exclusive record contract or to work across several labels. Alisa Weilerstein, who has made outstanding recordings of the Elgar, Dvorak and Shostakovich concertos for Decca, has now popped up on a Dutch label with the two Haydn concertos and Schoenberg’s Transfigured Night. Pentatone is a terrific label, run by former Philips professionals. This ought to be a top-drawer recommendation. Why it isn’t is a matter of some perplexity. Weilerstein dispenses with a conductor for these pieces, which is not unusual. But…

Georg Friedrich Händel: Johannes-Passion (CPO)

By Norman Lebrecht on 6 July 2018 Baroque and Early, Choral, Lebrecht Weekly

Did you know Handel wrote a St John’s Passion? Me, neither, and I’m still not convinced. This score was discovered in the Berlin Royal Library in the mid-19th century by the authoritative Friedrich Chrysander and included in the even more authoritative Halle Handel Edition. But there have always been doubts about dates and style. The credited librettist, Christian Heinrich Postel, died of consumption in Hamburg in 1705, when Handel was 20. Handel knew Postel’s work and may have asked for a text, but Postel worked mostly for Telemann and if he found time at all for Handel it would have…

Bach violin concertos (Deutsche Grammophon)

By Norman Lebrecht on 15 June 2018 Baroque and Early, Lebrecht Weekly, Violin

Averse as I am to teenage prodigies, I heard Daniel Lozakovich in a Berlin nightclub this week and had no doubt from the first touch of bow on string that he is the genuine article. Sixteen years old, raised in Stockholm by Kazak-Russian parents, he gives the impression of belonging nowhere but some deep place inside himself. Fresh from a sleepless night on a bench in Tokyo airport where his flight had been cancelled, he draws energy – as the great ones do – from an audience. No-one breathed on the dance-floor during his Bach Partita. His DG debut recording…

John Rutter Brings his Visions to Music and Beyond

By Charles Geyer on 8 June 2018 Baroque and Early, Chamber Music, Classical Music

Earlier this year, when Ottawa’s Music and Beyond festival announced that its 2018 roster would include a concert of works written and conducted by acclaimed British composer John Rutter, ticket-buying activity exploded across North America. Within 90 seconds, a two-ticket order from British Columbia augured the continent-wide deluge to come. “We were selling tickets faster than anything else we ever released in our history,” recalls the festival’s founder and executive and artistic director, Julian Armour. “I thought, ‘we’d better see if we can offer another performance.’” Armour quickly contacted Rutter, along with the three choruses involved, and members of his…

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