On March 20, 2024, at 7:30 p.m., La Nef presents an evening of medieval music inspired by courtly love at Notre-Dame-de-Bon-Secours Chapel.
When tackling the Goldberg Variations, it’s hard to take a path that hasn’t been trodden 100 times before. Víkingur Ólafsson’s vision of the work last Wednesday evening at Salle Bourgie, however, had a singular freshness that made the audience momentarily forget all the times they’d heard it before. The Icelandic pianist’s interpretation is a blend of elements and practices that at first seem contradictory. He demonstrates an immense respect for this immortal opus and, at the same time, a malicious interest in challenging the status quo. An old-fashioned approach to the keyboard and, at the same time, a consummate…
The Sinfonia de l’Ouest will present its second concert of the 2023-2024 Season at 7:30 p.m. on Saturday, December 9th with guest artist soprano Aline Kutan.
Ricercari are most often solo instrumental pieces dating from the early baroque period, which are similar in character to Bach’s better-known preludes for solo cello.
Monteverdi Choir and English Baroque Soloists are making their Canadian debut in Ottawa on October 28 with Bach’s Mass in B Minor.
Concerto Antico: à travers un miroir fumé Jaap Nico Hamburger, composer; Orchestre classique de Montréal; Ensemble Caprice Leaf Music, April 2023 Jaap Nico Hamburger brilliantly explores centuries of musical history in a powerful 11 minutes on Concerto Antico. Hamburger suggests in the album’s booklet that just as Nostradamus “stared into a smoke covered mirror to look at the future,” Hamburger himself is “star(ing) into the mirror of our times to look at the past.” Split into five concise tracks, Concerto Antico addresses modern, romantic, baroque, and classical eras through a variety of styles. An airy flute conjures the image of…
The Toronto Mendelssohn Choir opened their 2023/24 season with “In Time,” a program that combined baroque music and contemporary dance. The choir collaborated with dancers from Compagnie de la Citadelle to create an amalgamation of old and new that was both captivating and eye-catching. Dance was incorporated into Bach’s Christ lag in Todesbanden (Christ lays in the snares of Death) and Handel’s Dixit Dominus. Considering the popularity of dance in the baroque period, it is not surprising that this music would be well-suited to accompanying dance. The Bach featured a solo dancer that acted out the German text in a…
Orchestre Symphonique de Montréal (OSM) Led by conductor Rafael Payare, the OSM celebrates the orchestra’s 90th anniversary this season, along with the 10th anniversary of the Grand Orgue Pierre-Béique. The orchestra will start the year with an electric performance of Stravinsky’s The Rite of Spring (Sept. 12-14). Payare and OSM concertmaster Andrew Wan will later take the stage to interpret Beethoven’s Violin Concerto. Webern’s Passacaglia, and Mozart’s “Haffner’’ Symphony (Oct. 25, 26). Come November, Christoph Eschenbach will conduct Alban Berg’s Concerto “To the Memory of an Angel” and Beethoven’s Symphony No.7 (Nov. 8, 9). The orchestra will get in the…
Tendres Échos Anne Thivierge, flute; Mélisande Corriveau, viola da gamba; Eric Milnes, harpsichord Atma Classique, August 2023 In this collection of French baroque flute works, baroque flute specialist Anne Thivierge, multi-instrumentalist Mélisande Corriveau (here playing viola da gamba), and harpsichordist Eric Milnes join forces to present canonical French baroque flute pieces, using historically informed performance techniques and instruments. Thivierge’s tone is sweet and fluid; she expertly showcases the difference between the 17th-century German flute and the Boehm model used beginning in the Romantic era. Her musicality and inflection is extremely well-suited to the dance styles of many of the sonata’s…
Claire Gignac, artistic and general director of La Nef, says that its repertoire is defined by “a mosaic of musical colours,” the result “of all sorts of artists, disciplines, types of music, repertoires and resonances coming together.” The 2023-24 season will offer four engaging concerts reflecting this range of musical approaches. To open the new season Oct. 18 at Centre St-Jax, the show Tant que vivray will feature Vincent Lauzer on recorder and Sylvain Bergeron on lute. Dedicated to baroque music, the concert will present an instrumental repertoire from France, Spain and England from the 16th and 17th centuries. Soprano…
