Orchestral - my/maSCENA

Newswire | Sinfonia Toronto Announces Environmental Policy

By Newswire on 27 January 2023 Newswire, Orchestral

Sinfonia Toronto is starting the New Year with the announcement of a formal environmental policy. The orchestra’s board of directors has approved a set of guidelines, stating, “Our goal is to offer a rich musical experience with a low carbon footprint. We are taking purposeful steps to reduce the climate and environmental impact of our events. We are working to make our policy inclusive of all stakeholders: our musicians, our patrons, our board and volunteers, and our sponsors and other partners.” In hailing this development the orchestra’s music director Nurhan Arman noted, “since our founding days we have been environmentally…

Newswire | New music from here and abroad with the theme Music and spirituality

By Newswire on 26 January 2023 Canadian Music, Contemporary, Orchestral

Montreal, January 26, 2023 – The Société de musique contemporaine du Québec (SMCQ) resents the complete program of the Montreal/New Musics international festival (MNM). This 11th edition will take place from February 23 to March 5, 2023, with the theme “Music and Spirituality”. The public is invited to hear the musical creations of some of the most innovative and passionate composers and performers on the local, national and international scenes. SMCQ Artistic Director Ana Sokolović notes, “Since the dawn of humanity, music has accompanied spirituality, which is addressed in our festival in a broad and open way by evoking the…

Review | Toronto Symphony Orchestra Celebrates Mozart’s Birthday with A Superb Requiem

By Joseph So on 12 January 2023 Choral, Concert Reviews, La Scena Online, Orchestral, Toronto

Jane Archibald, sop., Susan Platts, mezz., Isaiah Bell, ten., Kevin Deas, bbar., Toronto Mendelssohn Choir, Toronto Symphony Orchestra, Michael Francis, cond., Roy Thomson Hall, Jan. 11, 2023. Photos: Jag Gundu January is Mozart Month at the Toronto Symphony Orchestra. To mark the 267th anniversary of the birthday of the great Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (Jan 27, 1756 – Dec. 5, 1791), the TSO is giving four performances of his incomparable Requiem Mass. The story behind its genesis is very well known, thanks to the hugely successful 1984 movie Amadeus. Mozart died before the completion of the work, and it was left…

Lebrecht Weekly | Dmitri Shostakovich: Chamber symphonies (SWR Music)

By Norman Lebrecht on 30 December 2022 Contemporary, Orchestral

During gaps between COVID shutdowns, when small performances were possible, musicians turned with much ingenuity to chamber symphonies, a neglected genre midway between a Brahms sextet and a Strauss tone poem. Shostakovich, in point of fact, never wrote a chamber symphony; but the violist and conductor Rudolf Barshai expanded some of his string quartets for his Moscow Chamber Orchestra, and the first piano concerto is essentially conceived in miniature, for string orchestra, piano and trumpet. The intense performances on this album took place in a Saarbrücken studio amid full COVID precautions. The eighth quartet opens at a sepulchral pace, so…

The Parkdale United Church Orchestra prepares for the second half of their “A Night at the Movies” concert on Nov. 19. Photo: Zenith Wolfe.

Review | Parkdale United Church Orchestra Impresses with Movie Theme

By Zenith Wolfe on 21 November 2022 Classical Music, Concert Reviews, Film, Orchestral

Ottawa’s Parkdale United Church Orchestra, led by new music director and conductor John Kraus, knocked it out of the park on Nov. 19 with their most ambitious concert since the start of the pandemic. What you missed? Under the theme of A Night at the Movies, the orchestra immediately commanded the audience’s attention with the bellowing timpani from Richard Strauss’s Also sprach Zarathustra, popularized by its use in the film 2001: A Space Odyssey. After a fantastic rendition of Salute to the Cinema, arranged by Carl Strommen, the program featured dynamic suites that transported listeners into the cinematic worlds of…

Francis Choinière: Thinking Big

By Justin Bernard on 4 November 2022 Orchestral, Vocal

Francis Choinière has an appetite for great musical projects. When we interviewed Choinière in early October, he was in Toronto assisting Maestro Jacques Lacombe for a number of weeks, conducting rehearsals for Georges Bizet’s Carmen, the second production of the Canadian Opera Company (COC) season. “I already had familiarity with Carmen,” he said. “When I was a child, I sang excerpts from Carmen in school. When I became a conductor many years later, I had the opportunity to conduct choirs and get more familiar with Carmen. This is the first time I have worked on such an ambitious production in…

Bach and Labadie: A Love Story

By Marie-Claire Fafard-Blais on 4 November 2022 Choral, Classical Music, Orchestral, Vocal

The Chapelle de Québec and Les Violons du Roy, under the direction of Bernard Labadie, will present the concert Bach, que ma joie demeure (may my joy remain) this December in Quebec City and Montreal. The program, consisting of Bach’s cantatas Ich glaube, lieber Herr (BWV 109), Wachet auf, ruft uns die Stimme (BWV 140) and Herz und Mund und Tat und Leben (BWV 147), was conceived by the maestro who is particularly fond of this repertoire.”Bach is the composer who compelled me to become a musician; he is the one to blame,” he confides with a smile. “And his…

photo: Kevin Lloyd

Violinissimo: Esprit Orchestra Aims High

By Eva Stone-Barney on 4 November 2022 Classical Music, Contemporary, Orchestral, Violin

At first glance, the premise may sound simple: one concert, four violin concertos. The seasoned classical concert-goer, however, will understand just how ambitious an endeavour this is, and that this sort of programming is practically unheard of. Who would do such a thing? Alex Pauk, of course—the same person who was told that a full-sized orchestra devoted to the performance of contemporary music was never going to survive for longer than a year, and who has been conducting that very orchestra for 40. On Nov. 27, Esprit Orchestra will present its second concert of the ambitious 40th anniversary season, Violinissimo.…

Review | Does Art Trump Bad Behaviour? TÁR Film Explores the Issue

By Paul E. Robinson on 24 October 2022 Concert Reviews, Film, Orchestral

It has long been a familiar topic for discussion in ethics and aesthetics: does great art and artistry excuse bad behaviour? The question was often raised about Wagner and came to the fore again in evaluating conductors like Furtwängler and Karajan in the post World War II period. In our own time leading conductors of the stature of James Levine, Charles Dutoit and Daniele Gatti were removed from their posts for alleged sexual harassment. In the new film Tár the matter is worked over once again, but with a different twist: this time the artist under scrutiny is a female…

Esprit Orchestra @40 : Standing Tall

By Eva Stone-Barney on 4 October 2022 Canadian Music, Orchestral

In 1982, composer and conductor Alex Pauk identified a gap in the Canadian music scene. Although he had already founded smaller musical organizations (ARRAY Music, and Days Months and Years to Come) in the hopes of creating environments in which composers—often his friends—could hear their music played by high-calibre musicians, the lack of such opportunities in larger, orchestral contexts, led to the conception of Esprit. His goal with the orchestra was to champion new works by Canadian composers, and to provide orchestral musicians the opportunity to immerse themselves in the process of preparing new music, by always guaranteeing sufficient (and…

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