Contemporary - my/maSCENA

Elizabeth Futral as Alice B. Toklas with Theo Lebow, Tobias Greenhalgh, and Daniel Brevik as paintings in Opera Theatre of Saint Louis’ 2014 production of “27.” Photo by Ken Howard.

Gertrude Stein is at Home! You are Cordially Invited

By Charles Geyer on 18 October 2016 Concert Reviews, Contemporary, Interviews, Opera

An Advance Profile of Ricky Ian Gordon’s 27, an opera about Gertrude Stein, with libretto by Royce Vavrek, to be presented at New York’s City Center, October 20 and 21, 2016. “Knock, knock” was no joke at chez Gertrude Stein in early 20th-century Paris. Rather, a knock at the private side entrance of one cramped room in Stein’s small apartment at 27 rue de Fleurus cued the commencement of serious and exciting business on any given Saturday evening. That was when the likes of Matisse and Picasso, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Hemingway, Man Ray, and other artists, writers, and avant-garde headliners of…

Daily News Roundup: 14 October 2016

By Nicole Yeba on 14 October 2016 Contemporary, Daily News Roundup, Literature, Orchestral, Popular Music

American singer Bob Dylan, 75, won the Nobel Prize in literature for “creating new poetic expression within the great American song tradition.” (Saria Darnius, general secretary of Nobel) He is the first musician to win a prize in the 115 years of existence of Nobel Prizes. Jonathan Cohen will be the new Music Director of Les Violons du Roy starting in the 2018-2019 season. The Orchestre Métropolitain will hold a benefit concert for the Kidney Foundation of Canada with Marie-Josée Lord on November 11, 2016. Nicolas Fortin, a collaborator of the Conseil québécois de la musique et…

Lebrecht Weekly – Arnold Schoenberg: Gurre-Lieder (Chandos)

By Norman Lebrecht on 7 October 2016 Art Song, Contemporary, Lebrecht Weekly, Orchestral

It is so rare to hear the Gurre Lieder live that most of us are acquainted with it only on record – in memorable interpretations by Rafael Kubelik, Pierre Boulez, Riccardo Chailly, Claudio Abbado and others. The work employs a vast orchestra and chorus for an unbroken duration of ninety minutes, much of which occupies a zone of uncertainty as to whether what we are hearing is ancient or modern. Schoenberg began composing the cycle in Wagnerian modalities in 1900, abandoned it three years later, finished it in 1911 as a provocative atonalist, and achieved the greatest triumph of his…

Wlad Marhulets

Rising Stars – Wlad Marhulets: Azrieli Prize for Jewish Music

By An-Laurence Higgins on 1 October 2016 Contemporary, La Scena Spotlight

Born in 1986 in Belarus, Wlad Marhulets is a young Polish-American composer and the winner of the inaugural Azrieli Prize for Jewish Music with his Klezmer Clarinet Concerto. He started his music studies rather late at the age of 16, when he first heard a recording of klezmer clarinetist David Krakauer. He was drawn so much to this music that he started studying the clarinet and composition. A few years later he began studying at Julliard in composition under a full scholarship with Oscar and Pulitzer Prize winner John Corigliano. Marhulets says that the klezmer recording of Krakauer changed his…

Suor Angelica, Photo: Tam Lan Truong

Quebec Previews: October 2016

By Kiersten van Vliet on 1 October 2016 Baroque and Early, Chamber Music, Contemporary, La Scena Spotlight, Opera, Strings

Les Caprices de la Nuit with Les Violons du Roy On October 13, join violinist and conductor Anthony Marwood and Les Violons du Roy for an evening of exceptional chamber music for strings. The concert includes the String Sextet from Richard Strauss’s final opera Capriccio, Mozart’s charming String Quintet in G minor, and Schoenberg’s late-Romantic Verklärte Nacht. October 13, 8PM, Salle Raoul-Jobin, Palais Montcalm. www.violonsduroy.com James Ehnes @ 40 Continue the celebration of James Ehnes’s 40th birthday as he stops in Quebec City on his way across Canada. With longtime collaborator Andrew Armstrong, Ehnes will play chamber music by Handel,…

Robert Normandeau, Photo: Bernard Préfontaine

Robert Normandeau: Metro Music

By Caroline Rodgers on 1 October 2016 Contemporary, Interviews, Quebec Music

For the first time in its history, the Orchestre symphonique de Montréal will showcase a piece in which the musicians won’t play a single note. Tunnel Azur is an acousmatic composition created by Robert Normandeau on commission by the OSM and the STM. The ten minute long Tunnel Azur celebrates, and is entirely inspired by, the 50-year history of the Montréal metro. “With permission from the STM, I had the privilege to go and record the sounds of the metro at night, afterhours. It is a universe that nobody knows, because the metro is closed at night,” says Normandeau. “I…

Brian Current

Brian Current: The Keys to Creativity

By Caroline Rodgers on 1 October 2016 Canadian Music, Choral, Contemporary, Interviews, La Scena Spotlight, Orchestral

This month, Brian Current will experience something many composers would envy: the premiere and recording of one of his major works by the Montreal Symphony Orchestra. The $50,000 Azrieli Prize enabled him to compose The Seven Heavenly Halls for solo tenor, choir and orchestra. The composer talked to La Scena Musicale about this work and his career. Like many musicians, Brian Current first learned piano as a child. “I was lucky my parents were so persistent and constantly got me to practice, even when I didn’t want to,” he says. “My parents weren’t musicians by profession, but they sang in…

Matt Poon, Photo: Emily Ding

Rising Stars – Matt Poon: Eckhardt-Gramatté Competition (E-Gré)

By An-Laurence Higgins on 1 October 2016 Contemporary, La Scena Spotlight, Piano

The Eckhardt-Gramatté Competition (E-Gré) is a unique competition in which contemporary music is highly promoted. The Final was held this past spring at Brandon University and pianist Matt Poon won the first place as well as the prize for the best performance of the commissioned work. He received almost $17,000 including a $10,000 cash prize, a residency of three weeks, and a debut recital at the Casalmaggiore International Music Festival in Italy, as well as the Cross-Canada Winner’s Tour in November 2016. Poon began his undergraduate studies in Piano Performance in Music at the University of Toronto and moved to…

Review – Après un Rêve: Fauré, Debussy, Ravel (BIS)

By Kiersten van Vliet on 1 October 2016 CD and Book Reviews, Contemporary, Romantic, Violin

Après un Rêve: Fauré, Debussy, Ravel Christian Svarfvar, violin; Roland Pöntinen, piano BIS 2016. 2183. 61 min 8 s. French music has long held an essential position in a violinist’s repertoire, but with this new release by Swede Christian Svarfvar, the links between French melody and the French operatic tradition of the 19th century are brought into clear focus. The tool used is, of course, the violin, with its latent potential to mimic the expressiveness of the human voice. The disc runs in roughly chronological order, or rather, the way we like to think of the French compositional lineage: Fauré…

Review – György Kurtág: Complete String Quartets (ATMA)

By Kiersten van Vliet on 1 October 2016 CD and Book Reviews, Contemporary, Strings

György Kurtág: Complete String Quartets Quatuor Molinari: Olga Ranzenhofer, violin; Frédéric Bednarz, violin; Frédéric Lambert, viola; Pierre-Alain Bouvrette, cello ATMA 2016. ACD2 2705. 60 min 38 s. Quatuor Molinari has become Canada’s champion for 20th and 21st-century composition, including recordings of Canadian R. Murray Schafer’s String Quartets, and, more recently, the premiere of his Alzheimer’s Masterpiece (String Quartet No. 13), a moving tribute to the ailing composer. Following the fine recording of quartets by fellow Canadian Petros Shoujounian (Noravank, April 2016) to commemorate the 100th anniversary of the Armenian genocide, with this release Quatuor Molinari has once again proven its…

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