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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

Louis Lortie at Bourgie Hall. Photos: Claudine Jacques

Review | Louis Lortie Plays Crystal Clear Ravel

By Heather Weinreb on 6 February 2025 Classical Music, Concert Reviews, Montreal, Piano

It is a rare and special concert when one senses that not only the performer, but the composer, is on stage. On February 4 at Bourgie Hall, Louis Lortie played a wealth of Ravel’s piano works, from the iconic Pavane pour une infante défunte to the highly intricate Gaspard de la nuit. He played each piece with such stunning clarity it seemed as though Ravel himself was onstage with Lortie, calmly listening to his own pieces being played just as he would have wanted them to be. What you missed: Lortie’s playing is particularly striking in its attention to the…

Olga Kudriakova (piano) with the Orchestre symphonique de Laval. Photo: Gabriel Fournier

Review | Orchestre symphonique de Laval and the Idea of North

By Jan Krejcar on 3 February 2025 Classical Music, Concert Reviews, Orchestral, Piano, Strings

Winter has been in full swing this past week and with it, the fourth edition of Orchestre symphonique de Laval (OSL)’s Festival classique hivernal. The festival’s aptly titled second concert, Nordic Mosaic, consisted entirely of music composed north of latitude 45 (Feb. 1 at Salle André Mathieu). The program followed a standard format, with the commanding Jean-Marie Zeitouni at the helm delivering a shorter symphonic work (Jacques Hétu’s Legendes, op. 76), and a concerto (Edward Grieg’s famous one for piano and orchestra op. 16). The second half was dedicated to Jean Sibelius’ Symphony, No. 5 in E-flat Major, op. 82.…

Kirsten MacKinnon as Christine in COC's La Reine-garçon. Photo: Michael Cooper

Review | Outsider as symbol in under-characterized COC La Reine-garçon

By Gianmarco Segato on 2 February 2025 City, Classical Music, Concert Reviews, La Scena Online, Opera, Toronto, Vocal

Composer Julien Bilodeau and librettist Michel Marc Bouchard’s La Reine-garçon represents a milestone as the first co-production of a new “mainstage” opera between two of Canada’s major opera companies. Premiered at Opéra de Montréal almost exactly one year ago, it made its Canadian Opera Company debut on Jan. 31st. Taking iconoclast 17th-century monarch Queen Christine of Sweden as its subject, the new work ambitiously grapples with big topics like the emergence of free will, the rationalist philosophy of René Descartes, religious freedom and unconventional sexual desire. With an evocative score and poetic libretto, La Reine-garçon succeeds on many levels, but…

Lebrecht Weekly | Fatma Said’s New Album of Lieder Everyone Will Rave About

By Norman Lebrecht on 31 January 2025 Lebrecht Weekly

The Egyptian soprano, based in London and Berlin, had a mix of western and Arabic classical songs on her debut album, illustrating musical connections around the Mediterranean. Her ease in both ethnicities was enviable. To change tracks from microtonal maqam precision to the lushness of Ravel’s Shéhérazade was a hair-raising act of cultural transcendence, achieved without a hair out of place. Fatma Said’s new album is pure German: Schubert, Mendelssohn, Schumann and Brahms. Hard to tell which she adores most. The opening track, ‘Ständchen’, has an arresting liquidity, only to be outshone by ‘Auf dem Wasser zu Singen’. Felix Mendelssohn’s…

Bourgie Hall. Photo: Julia Marois.

Jazz: Bourgie Hall

By Félix-Antoine Hamel on 31 January 2025 City, Jazz, La Scena Online, Montreal, Scena Jazz

A Chick Corea Rarity Since its opening in 2011, Bourgie Hall has become an indispensable venue for Montreal concertgoers. Situated within the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts, the concert hall—a beautiful, converted 19th-century Romanesque Revival-style church—has presented, within its walls, such renowned performers as Víkingur Ólafsson, Alexandre Tharaud, The Tallis Scholars and Andreas Scholl. While such a setting is ideal for chamber music and singers, jazz also plays a growing part in the hall’s programming. In the 2024-25 season, no fewer than nine jazz concerts are featured. For Olivier Godin, the venue’s artistic director for three seasons, the hall’s added…

The Sun Ra Arkestra. Photo: Ben Houdijk.

The Sun Ra Arkestra: Space-Age Jazz Returns

By Félix-Antoine Hamel on 31 January 2025 CD and Book Reviews, La Scena Online, Scena Jazz

As the joke goes, symphony orchestras are mostly 19th-century cover bands. In jazz, the big bands provide that link to the past, with “ghost bands” surviving the disappearance of their leaders for many decades—yes, it is still possible to see a version of the Glenn Miller Orchestra live in 2025! However, if the Sun Ra Arkestra fits that description, it is indeed quite an unusual “ghost band.” This writer vividly recalls the sight of a dozen or so gentlemen (some quite elderly) dressed in colourful, shimmering robes, playing old swing charts and free-form freak-outs. From Morton Street in Philadelphia (Arkestra…

New Releases (Feb 2025)

By La Scena Musicale Team on 31 January 2025 Classical Music, Concert Reviews

This section is an advertising supplement. To announce here, contact [email protected]. Golden Duets Daria Fedorova & Ilya Takser (piano duo) GENUIN Classics, GEN 24894d Release: September 2024 The internationally acclaimed Fedorova & Takser Piano Duo revitalizes the grand tradition of the piano duet on their new GENUIN album. The music spans from Romantic salon pieces to grand concert hall works by Debussy, Bach, and Brahms, along with exciting discoveries by David L. McIntyre and Edward McDowell. Known for their elegant and multifaceted performances, the duo includes two of their original transcriptions—a tribute to the piano duet’s history, shaped by transcriptions…

Credit: Vancouver Sun

Remembering Kazuyoshi Akiyama (1941-2025)

By Madeline Boldt on 29 January 2025 Arts Industry, Canadian Music, Classical, Classical Music, Obituaries, Orchestral, Toronto, Vancouver

Legendary Japanese conductor Kazuyoshi Akiyama has passed away at the age of 84. A cornerstone of Vancouver’s classical music scene, Akiyama led the Vancouver Symphony Orchestra for over 13 years. Under his leadership from 1972 to 1985, the VSO transitioned from the Queen Elizabeth Theatre to the Orpheum, marking a new era of growth, increased ticket sales, and a revitalized sound. Early Life and Career Born in Japan in 1941, he launched into the world of classical music in 1964 when he made his debut with the Tokyo Symphony Orchestra. His immediate success earned him the roles of both Music…

Lebrecht Weekly | The More Satisfying Mahler Seventh on Record

By Norman Lebrecht on 24 January 2025 Lebrecht Weekly

The seventh was the least understood of Mahler’s symphonies and the last to get recorded. Bruno Walter, Mahler’s closest apostle, never performed it. Otto Klemperer, next in line, distended it to twenty minutes over its regular length. At 75 minutes, it can tax an audience’s patience. The symphony has five movements, two of them designated ‘Night Music’, though not in the Mozart sense. The score requires a tenor horn, cowbells, guitar and mandolin. Arnold Schoenberg grasped these Klimt-like colours as the foundational palette of modernism and used the last two in his turning-point Serenade, opus 24. Hermann Scherchen, who made…

Lebrecht Weekly | Reynaldo Hahn and Hans Gal Chamber Musics

By Norman Lebrecht on 17 January 2025 Chamber Music, Lebrecht Weekly

If you are about to step into a warm bath, put one of these on the player and submerse your January body in a fantasy world that never changes. What Hahn and Gal have in common, other than a one-syllable name, is a reluctance ever to be tempted beyond the musical language they were born into youth. Hahn, Venezuelan-born lover of Marcel Proust, composes remembrances of those lost times before the First World War. The string quartet and piano quintet on this album, each composed directly after a world war, might easily be mistaken for Fauré or Saint Saens, masquerading as Vinteuil…

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