Violin - my/maSCENA

CMIM 2023: our predictions

By La Scena Musicale Team on 26 March 2023 Music Competition, Violin

by Béatrice M. Cadrin, Rasha Masalkhi and Andrea Rush Béatrice Cadrin has extensive experience as a freelance violinist with ensembles in Quebec, Germany and California. Rasha Masalkhi is a tenured violinist with the Ensemble Obiora. Andrea Rush lives in Toronto, is a former violist with Orchestra Toronto, and former violist with the Strings Attached Orchestra, both local community orchestras. This year, as with every iteration of the Concours musical international de Montréal (CMIM), La Scena Musicale has called upon a team of experts to make predictions about the candidates. The 2023 edition of the competition will be dedicated to the…

Review | TSO: Tarmo Peltokoski and Jonathan Crow Memorable

By Andrea Rush on 2 February 2023 Classical Music, Concert Reviews, Orchestral, Toronto, Violin

It was a wintery night, and the program was particularly well suited for those who braved the storm warnings. The trek to Roy Thomson Hall to hear Shostakovich 5 & Crow Plays Brahms was well rewarded. Listeners voted with their feet and the thunderous multiple standing ovations for guest conductor Tarmo Peltokoski and violinist Jonathan Crow, the TSO’s beloved concertmaster. The selection of pieces and the performances were timely and memorable. What you missed? Protégé guest conductor Peltokoski has reportedly received almost as many prizes as his age, 22. His conducting is detailed, insightful and clear and according to 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.…

Marie Nadeau-Tremblay, Violin, Opus Discovery Prize

By Marie-Claire Fafard-Blais on 2 October 2022 Classical Music, Music Competition, Strings, Violin

In the three years since graduating from McGill, Marie Nadeau-Tremblay is well on her way to success, as shown by a pair of distinctions she netted recently: first Radio-Canada’s revelations prize in 2021 and now the Opus Discovery prize. Add to these a number of prizes and bursaries previously received, and it all points to one fact: she is off to an impressive start. Music has been in her blood from the day she picked up a violin at age 4. But now she dedicates herself solely to its baroque counterpart, a switch she made upon discovering the instrument after…

Vivian Kukiel, Violin, 2022 Canadian Music Competition’s Stepping Stone

By Robert Rowat on 2 October 2022 Classical Music, Music Competition, Strings, Violin

Toronto’s Vivian Kukiel first appeared on our radar in 2018 when she won the Ilona Fehér International Violin Competition in Budapest, Hungary. Her comet re-entered our skies in June when she won the Canadian Music Competition’s Stepping Stone final—“one of the most exciting but also nerve-racking experiences of my musical journey so far,” she said. “When (executive and artistic director) Marc David announced that I had won the whole competition, I was so overjoyed I think I went into a state of shock.” One month earlier, Kukiel and the other three members of the Holt Quartet recorded Johannes Brahms’s Piano Quartet…

Sylvain Bergeron. Photo: Guillaume D. Cyr

La Nef presents Per violino e liuto and Long Way Home

By Arnaud G. Veydarier on 1 October 2022 Baroque and Early, Canadian Music, Folk, Violin, World Music

After two years of pandemic, La Nef is taking to the sea again this fall with a very eclectic program, between world and early music. Their 2022-23 season opens in October with Per violino e liuto, an intimate evening of baroque and popular repertoire from the 17th century, followed in November with a program inspired by Nordic and Middle Eastern musical traditions. For violin and lute Presented on Oct. 16 at the Maison de la culture Maisonneuve, Per violino e liuto will feature two of the city’s finest baroque music performers, multi-instrumentalist Sylvain Bergeron and rising violin star Marie Nadeau-Tremblay.…

James Ehnes (image from the James Ehnes website)

Lebrecht Weekly | Alban Berg: Violin concerto &c. (Chandos)

By Norman Lebrecht on 26 August 2022 Classical Music, Lebrecht Weekly, Violin

This is Alban Berg as you’ve never heard him before. The English conductor Sir Andrew Davis has spent lockdown time orchestrating two works that Berg never intended for orchestra. The piano sonata of 1907-08 was Berg’s first published work, written under the admonitory thumb of his teacher Arnold Schoenberg who was in the throes of embracing atonality. The Passacaglia of 1913 is another Berg stepping stone towards maturity. In Davis’s orchestration, the sonata score sounds like a missing suite from his second opera, Lulu, while the Passacaglia is steeped in its predecessor, Wozzeck. If I’d heard it in a blind…

Newswire | CMIM Violin 2023: Applications Are Open

By Newswire on 24 August 2022 Classical Music, Music Competition, Newswire, Violin

Montreal, August 25, 2022– The Concours musical international de Montréal (CMIM) announces the opening of applications for its upcoming violin edition, taking place from April 22 to May 4, 2023. Young violinists from around the world, born between January 1, 1993, and December 31, 2006, are invited to apply before November 15, 2022 on the CMIM website at concoursmontreal.ca/en/violin-2023. Eligibility criteria, terms and conditions, and the required repertoire are also available. Following the preliminary international screening on video, 24 violinists will be invited to participate in the first round in front of the public in Montreal and live online across…

CD Review | Elle (Analekta, 2022)

By Zenith Wolfe on 26 July 2022 CD and Book Reviews, Classical Music, Indigenous, Piano, Strings, Violin

Elle Angèle Dubeau, solo violin; Valérie Milot and Antoine Mallette-Chénier, harp; Lydia Etok and Nina Segalowitz, throat singing; La Pietà Analekta, 2022 Angèle Dubeau, solo violinist and conductor for the string ensemble La Pietà, has decided to use the ensemble’s 25th anniversary album, Elle, to showcase a variety of contemporary female composers. The result? A thrilling experience where the listeners never gets too comfortable with one style. Just as they come to understand the cool and brooding nature of Rebecca Dale’s Winter, for example, they’re surprised by the fiery Inuit throat singing of Katia Makdissi-Warren’s Mémoire. The album is filled with…

CD Review | Beethoven: Violin Sonatas Nos. 4, 9 & 10 (Analekta, 2021)

By Zenith Wolfe on 26 July 2022 CD and Book Reviews, Classical Music, Piano, Violin

Beethoven: Violin Sonatas Nos. 4, 9 & 10 Andrew Wan, violin; Charles Richard-Hamelin, piano Analekta, 2021 What more can be said about Beethoven’s music that hasn’t already been heard a thousand times? According to violinist Andrew Wan and pianist Charles Richard-Hamelin, quite a lot. This album is the third and final entry in the pair’s series of Beethoven violin sonatas, which began in 2018. Much like its predecessors, this album demonstrates the pair’s distinguishable technical prowess regarding the interweaving of string and piano melodies. The Allegro molto movement of Sonata No. 4 is by far the best example of this,…

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