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La Scena Online is the digital magazine of La Scene Musicale.Contents: News, Concert reviews, CD reviews, Interviews, Obituaries, etc; Editor: Wah Keung Chan; Assistant Editor: Andreanne Venne
ISSN: 1206-9973

Wilde and Weill at Shaw: An Ideal Husband and a Touch of Venus

By Paul E. Robinson on 9 October 2010 Concert Reviews, Musical Theatre

by Paul E. RobinsonSUMMER FESTIVALS SHAW FESTIVAL, Niagara-on-the-Lake, 2010Kurt Weill has always been an enigma for classical music lovers – his career started so propitiously: he studied composition first with Humperdinck, and later with Busoni; he turned out dozens of remarkably mature early works; his Symphony No. 2 was given its premiere by Bruno Walter; he made his mark in the German musical theatre too, first with The Threepenny Opera, and later with Mahagonny.Then came Hitler and the Nazis, and in 1933 Weill was forced to flee Germany. He sent his parents to Palestine and he and his wife Lotte…

Nagano, Mutter & OSM: An Evening of Uncompromising Soul-Searching

By Paul E. Robinson on 9 October 2010 Concert Reviews, Orchestral, Violin

by Paul E. Robinson Whatever else he may be as a man and a musician, Kent Nagano is insatiably curious. So far, his Montreal audiences have not only accepted, but embraced, his voyages of discovery.This week Maestro Nagano and the Orchestre symphonique de Montréal (OSM) gave Place des Arts concert-goers a feast of the familiar and the unfamiliar that was truly exceptional, and I think they liked it.The evening’s star attraction was the outstanding violinist Anne-Sophie Mutter, now a fully mature artist after years of wonder as a young prodigy encouraged by the likes of Herbert von Karajan, Andre Previn…

Nagano/OSM Week at Orford Festival 2010

By Paul E. Robinson on 10 August 2010 Concert Reviews, Orchestral

by Paul E. RobinsonThe Orchestre Symphonique de Montréal (OSM) is an orchestra without a home – at least in the summertime. For some years now, it has been trying to cobble together a summer work schedule that would satisfy its commitments to players, its financial responsibilities, and the larger Quebec area’s classical music-loving public. OSM’s latest experiment took place this past week at Festival Orford, both at Orford itself and in the nearby town of Magog, one of Quebec’s prime destinations for summer vacationers. Is this the answer for the perpetually itinerant OSM? Maybe yes, and maybe no; it is…

Verbier Festival Concert, Paul McCreesh, conductor, Sophie Koch, mezzo-soprano, Verbier Festival Chamber Orchestra. July 26, 2010. Salle des Combins.

By La Scena Musicale Team on 27 July 2010 Chamber Music, Concert Reviews, Orchestral

By Frank CadenheadThe first concert of my week at the Verbier Festival in Switzerland was, I expect, not the highlight. While the festival program correctly listed the conductor as Paul McCreesh, the Canadian star I had hoped to see, Measha Brueggergosman, had been replaced by another star, Sophie Koch. I was not too dismayed because this French mezzo is one of the great voices you are likely to hear these days. The program was also changed and Berlioz’s “La Mort de Cléopatre” was now the same composer’s song cycle, “Les Nuits d’Eté,” to the text by Théophile Gautier. I did not…

Aspen, Colorado: A Glorious Place to Make Music!

By Paul E. Robinson on 20 July 2010 Concert Reviews, Orchestral, Violin

by Paul E. RobinsonSUMMER MUSIC FESTIVALS 2010Aspen Music Festival and School After a few days in Vail enjoying the music-making of Jaap van Zweden and the Dallas Symphony at the Bravo! Vail Valley Music Festival, Marita and I drove over to Aspen, about 100 miles away through the mountains. What we found there was a much older community and a festival and school operating on an equally high artistic plane but with a more varied range of goals and activities. True, Aspen has been in the news lately for its administrative infighting which saw music director and conductor David Zinman…

Dallas Symphony Opens Extraordinary Summer of Music in Colorado!

By Paul E. Robinson on 12 July 2010 Concert Reviews, Orchestral

by Paul E. RobinsonSUMMER FESTIVALS 2010Bravo! Vail Valley Music FestivalImagine a music festival that features three of the world’s top orchestras in successive week-long residencies. Throw into the mix the likes of Yo-Yo Ma, Nadja Salerno-Sonnenberg, and Gil Shaham. Shake things up with some of the best conductors at work today: Jaap van Zweden, Alan Gilbert, Charles Dutoit, and Marin Alsop. And don’t forget to add lots of chamber music. Set all this talent up in one of the most spectacular mountain locations you can think of – say, Vail, Colorado – and run your festival for about six weeks.…

This Week in Montreal: July 11 – 17

By La Scena Musicale Team on 9 July 2010 Classical Music, This Week in Montreal

LA ROULOTTE AU PAYS DU MAGICIEN D’OZ THÉÂTRE LA ROULOTTEDU 30 JUIN AU 24 AOÛT Saviez-vous que le Théâtre La Roulotte a été fondé en 1953 par Paul Buissonneau, à la demande de la Ville de Montréal, dans l’objectif d’initier les jeunes aux joies du théâtre à la belle saison et dans les parcs de la ville? Devenue une tradition respectée, la Roulotte offre de plus aux ﬁnissants de l’École nationale de théâtre – comédiens, décorateurs ou professionnels de la production – l’occasion de se mesurer une première fois au milieu professionnel. Il faut surtout savoir que le Théâtre La…

Wagner at the Welsh National Opera

By La Scena Musicale Team on 7 July 2010 Concert Reviews, Opera, Romantic

By Frank Cadenhead Wagner as compelling dramatist? Who knew? The wordy, inflated and repetitive tales we are so accustomed to were nowhere to be seen in the new and revelatory production by Richard Jones of Wagner’s Die Meistersinger von Nürenburg with Cardiff’s Welsh National Opera. This Meistersinger boasted an enjoyable cast that would be envied in Vienna, New York, Berlin, London or Paris, led by the grand Welsh baritone Bryn Terfel as Hans Sachs. Terfel only seems to grow as an artist. After his definitive Don Giovanni at the Verbier Festival last July, his Hans Sachs could be a model…

Round Top, Texas: The Impossible Dream?

By Paul E. Robinson on 5 July 2010 Concert Reviews, Orchestral

by Paul E. RobinsonSummer FestivalsRound Top Festival Institute, 2010Never underestimate the dreams of a concert pianist – especially those of an adopted son of Texas! Van Cliburn, you say? Yes, he had an impossible dream and realized it when he won the Tchaikovsky International Piano Competition in Moscow in 1958, but there is another, lesser-known, Texas pianist who dreamed big and succeeded; James Dick, who was born in Hutchinson, Kansas, attended the University of Texas, and has lived in Texas ever since, built his own concert hall and music festival, in one of the least likely places – Round Top,…

Yannick Nézet-Séguin Chosen to Head the Philadelphia Orchestra

By Paul E. Robinson on 15 June 2010 Arts Industry, La Scena Spotlight

If classical music had a more honoured place in our culture, Yannick Nézet-Séguin’s appointment to head the Philadelphia Orchestra would have been front page news in every newspaper in the country. Get a life, people, this is an historic event! Never mind that Canadian conductors have long since gotten used to doors being shut in their faces in their own country. It is by now a cliché to say that Canadians have to go elsewhere to find success. But YNS has not only found success abroad, he has climbed Mt. Everest. Two years ago he was conducting opera with Rolando…

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