Baroque and Early - my/maSCENA

Photo: Marc Giguère

Upcoming concerts (November-January): Montreal

By Justin Bernard on 14 November 2021 Baroque and Early, Canadian Music, Indigenous, Opera, Orchestral, Piano

27th JAL Gala After the 2020 edition was cancelled because of the pandemic, the 27th Jeunes Ambassadeurs Lyriques Gala is back in full force this year with no less than 30 singers. For the occasion, two dancers will accompany them in arias and ensemble numbers from the great operatic repertoire. Among the works on the programme, the public will find excerpts from Mozart’s Don Giovanni, Puccini’s La Bohème, Rossini’s La Cenerentola and Verdi’s La Traviata and Rigoletto. In order to reach a larger audience, ticket prices have been reduced compared to previous editions ($12 for students and $35 for the…

Emanuel Ax: Just Call Him “Manny”

By Lucie Renaud on 12 November 2021 Baroque and Early, Piano

A version of this article appeared in 2011. An enthralling wealth of sound that serves Brahms beautifully, a crystalline touch that conveys Mozart as if improvising, a virtuosity that remains subservient to the intelligence of musical speech: Emanuel Ax enchants audiences and critics alike. Whether performing with an orchestra or his long-time chamber music companions, including Yo-Yo Ma and Itzhak Perlman; or in tandem with his fellow pianist Yefim Bronfman; or solo, as he will on Dec. 7 for the Montreal Chamber Music Festival; he succeeds in surprising. Whether you hear him for the first time or discovered him years…

Bach Festival: An oratorio, just in time for Christmas

By Arthur Kaptainis on 12 November 2021 Baroque and Early, Orchestral

The Nov. 21 performance of Bach’s Christmas Oratorio in the Maison symphonique is not a Montreal premiere. The series of six cantatas – written to be performed in as many services from Christmas to Epiphany – has been given repeatedly in the 21st century, sometimes complete, sometimes in a package of three or four. It is no coincidence that Alexandra Scheibler, artistic and general director of the Festival Bach Montréal, moved from Germany to Canada in 2001. Nice town, she thought, but where is the Christmas Oratorio? “You have plenty in Hamburg,” the musicologist and violist told the Montreal Gazette…

Bach Festival back, live and sitting

By Arthur Kaptainis on 12 November 2021 Baroque and Early, Chamber Music, Orchestral

Forewarned is forearmed. “There will be no interval,” reads the audience advisory for the Festival Bach Montréal presentation in Bourgie Hall of The Art of Fugue.   Montrealers, of course, are now accustomed to pandemic protocols that require sitting for 80 minutes without a break. But sitting through the 14 movements (each known formidably as a “contrapunctus”) of Bach’s valedictory composition is a special kind of sitting, even when the performers on Nov. 25 are Les Violons du Roy under their founding conductor Bernard Labadie, who supplies the arrangement. “No doubt a rigorous work, but also one equally touching and…

Photo: Michel Pineault

La Nef: 30th anniversary

By Justin Bernard on 2 November 2021 Baroque and Early, Folk, Interviews

No fewer than three events are on the horizon between now and February. The musicians of La Nef will first present a concert on Nov. 11, another on Dec. 14 and, finally, a new album, which is due early in the new year. This is how the 30th-anniversary celebrations of this cultural organization unfold. In an interview, La Nef artistic director and co-founder Sylvain Bergeron shared some of his most vivid memories of the adventure: “Our first trips took us to Spain in the days of Jeanne la Folle, to the Cathars of southern France and even to the Middle…

Photo: Antoine Saito

Fifth edition of the CIOC: October is organ month

By Justin Bernard on 8 October 2021 Arts Industry, Baroque and Early

It is comeback time for the Canadian International Organ Competition (CIOC). Scheduled for last year, this event, which takes place every three years in October, had to be postponed because of the pandemic. After 2008, 2011, 2014 and 2017, we will be hearing the fifth edition of the CIOC and the first with Jean-Willy Kunz as artistic director. Officially appointed in 2018, this organist has known the competition since its inception, when he was still a student of CIOC co-founder John Grew. Sixteen quarter-finalists among some 60 candidates participated in pre-recorded quarter-finals. A jury convened in June 2021 to…

Photo: Hugo B. Lefort

26th season of Les Boréades: an inspired return to normal (or almost)

By Hassan Laghcha on 8 October 2021 Baroque and Early, Chamber Music

Les Boréades de Montréal will return to normal – or almost – with a season of four programs. One is based on Mozart’s youthful opera arias, another on Bach brevis masses. There are two intimate concerts: flute duets traversing the classical period and works of French chamber music from the end of the reign of Louis XIV. “We are making our comeback with the same excitement and inventiveness,” says Francis Colpron, founder and artistic director of the ensemble. He hopes that the public will be at the Église Saint-Laurent on Oct. 29 to savour the opera arias of Mozart’s youth.…

New Releases (October 2021)

By La Scena Musicale Team on 6 October 2021 Baroque and Early, Chamber Music, Contemporary, Daily News Roundup

This section is an advertising supplement. To announce here, contact [email protected] Sound Visionaries Claude Debussy, Olivier Messiaen, Pierre Boulez Christina Petrowska Quilico, piano Navona Records, NV6358 Release Date: July 9, 2021 Claude Debussy, Olivier Messiaen, and Pierre Boulez are stunningly reconciled in Christina Petrowska Quilico’s Navona Records release Sound Visionaries. Boasting a track record of over 50 recorded albums and having recently been named to the Order of Canada, the veteran pianist proves that despite all difficulties, finding common ground between these three composers can be done spectacularly. The works in question are cleverly chosen: Debussy’s ethereal Preludes, Book Two is…

Ensemble Caprice. Photo: Antoine Saito

Upcoming concerts (October-November 2021)

By La Scena Musicale Team on 6 October 2021 Baroque and Early, Chamber Music, Opera

New edition of the CIOC… at last! The Canadian International Organ Competition is making a comeback after more than four years. Scheduled for last year, the event, which takes place every three years in October, had to be postponed because of the pandemic. After 2008, 2011, 2014 and 2017, this is therefore the fifth edition of the CIOC and the first with Jean-Willy Kunz as artistic director. More than a competition, this is a real festival that extends throughout the month. There will be concerts by some members of the jury from Oct. 13, the day before the first semi-final…

Bourgie Hall: the beginnings

By Justin Bernard on 10 September 2021 Baroque and Early, Chamber Music, Classical

Well established today in the cultural landscape of Montreal, Bourgie Hall was not always a setting for concerts and music making. Since its inauguration in September 2011, recitals, chamber music, vocal music or world music concerts, jazz evenings and even crossover events – many in connection with the collections and exhibitions of the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts – have taken place in the former Erskine and American United Church. Through its evolution and transformations, this place bears invaluable witness to the fate of the various anglophone Protestant communities that were established in downtown Montreal, in the district known as…

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