Toronto Mendelssohn Choir under Jean-Sébastien Vallée delivered a hugely affecting Verdi Requiem at George Weston Recital Hall.
In the more sentimental pieces of the Prokofiev set on this new album, Bezhod Abduraimov melts the listener’s heart like spring snows.
On Jan. 16, the Montreal Symphony Orchestra delivered a sumptuous performance of Szymanowsky’s Violin Concerto n.1 op.35 and Mahler’s Symphony n7 in E minor.
Pro Musica presents a recital by virtuoso pianist Fazil Say as the headliner of its first concert in the Cartes Blanches series, January 21 at Salle Pierre-Mercure.
Replacing Michael Tilson Thomas this week was American conductor David Robertson, who made his Toronto Symphony Orchestra debut.
Reading Jonas Gardell’s novel N’essuie jamais de larmes sans gants, set in Sweden at the start of the HIV/AIDS epidemic, appealed to Alexandre Fecteau, who has now become a recognized director.
Composer Gregg Kallor’s new opera, Frankenstein, premieres at Arizona Opera on Friday the 13th…. Kallor has rightly been commended for his fusion of classical gestures and jazz inflections in works that range from solo piano outings to highly accessible art songs to chamber music to full orchestral works. He also has a strong affinity for literature –notably but far from exclusively for works that smack of the gothic. Kallor is the creator, for instance, of a tour de force one-woman setting of Poe’s “The Tell-Tale Heart” (check Poe’s story — the gender of his psychopathic protagonist is indeterminate), scored for…
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…
Paris 1790: The Music of Monsieur Vidal Pascal Valois and Jean-Guy Côté, baroque guitar; Jacques-André Houle and Olivier Brault, violin; Amanda Keesmaat, cello; Jessy Dubé, alto Analekta, September 2023 Seeing a new release by Pascal Valois is enough to make a classical-guitar fan giddy; his elegant fingerpicking is a beautiful sound to behold. Paris 1790, featuring compositions by Monsieur Vidal —a baroque composer with no known last name—offers great additions to the modern maestro’s solo repertoire, and proves him to be a highly skilled accompanist. The album opens with the first guitar concerto ever composed, an immediate burst of energy.…
Moongate Victor Anastacio, guitar; Philippe Charbonneau, bass; Colleen Leslie, flute Self-published, 2023 Moongate, the debut album by composer and acoustic guitarist Victor Anastacio, is a hidden gem. The work sounds deceptively simple at first. The titular Moongate, as well as Amethyst Sky and Northern Lights, are easy to digest: light and peaceful, with an emphasis on the play between Leslie’s disjunct flute melodies and Anastacio’s fingerpicking. Gathering Wind’s more staccato performance breathes energy into the album before the deep, slow notes of Charbonneau’s bass rein in the two treble instruments for a few compositions, creating a more melancholic experience. The…
