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La Scena Online is the digital magazine of La Scene Musicale.Contents: News, Concert reviews, CD reviews, Interviews, Obituaries, etcEditor: Wah Keung ChanAssistant Editor: Andreanne VenneISSN: 1206-9973

Barbara Hannigan and Bertrand Chamayou. Photo: Luciano Romano

Review | Barbara Hannigan Pulls Out All the Stops at Toronto’s Koerner Hall

By Gianmarco Segato on 29 November 2024 Classical Music, Concert Reviews, Piano, Toronto, Vocal

Canadian soprano and 20/21st-century specialist extraordinaire, Barbara Hannigan, appeared at Toronto’s Koerner Hall on Nov. 28 with French pianist Bertrand Chamayou in a program they are currently touring across North America. This uncompromising, tightly-constructed 70 minute recital demonstrated why Hannigan is the current queen of ‘non-traditional’ vocal repertoire. The evening opened with French composer Olivier Messiaen’s song cycle, Chants de terre et de ciel (1938). The text is the composer’s own and is his customary mix of fervent Catholicism combined with love for family. The opening song, “Bail avec Mi (pour ma femme),” celebrates the contract between husband and wife.…

Michael Bridge (accordion) with Esprit Orchestra. Photo: Karen Reeves

Review | Accordion Virtuoso Michael Bridge Opens Esprit Orchestra Season

By John Gilks on 29 November 2024 Concert Reviews, Contemporary, Toronto

Esprit Orchestra, conducted by Alex Pauk, presented three works at Toronto’s Koerner Hall on Nov. 24th. The first was Gabriella Smith’s f(x)=sin^2x-i/x. This follows the shape of the function dynamically for x=0 to x=2; so there’s a smallish crescendo, a quieter passage and then a big finish. The first part, using extended strings, winds and percussion, sounds rather like a train accelerating (to its doom?). The piece then goes much quieter and more melodic before the final build up with an almost Brahmsian quality in the brass leading to a very loud, cacophonic finish. Then silence! Bent Sørensen’s It is…

Lebrecht Weekly | Kurt Weill: Symphonies, Seven Deadly Sins (DG)

By Norman Lebrecht on 29 November 2024 Lebrecht Weekly

The sound of Berlin in the Weimar years is defined by Kurt Weill. More than any other composer, his music for the Bertolt Brecht shows conjured the jittery, reckless, hopeful, resigned and inventive carousel of a society in perpetual crisis. Weill, son of a Jewish cantor from provincial Dessau, cracked the capital’s musical codes and perpetuated them in songs for his cracked-voice wife, Lotte Lenya. There were also two symphonies, but we don’t talk about those, do we? The first was shunned in 1921 by Weill’s teacher Ferruccio Busoni as excessively expressionist. It is also indebted to Gustav Mahler, especially…

Photo: Tam Photography

Review | Gala Talent: In Search of Vocal Treasures

By La Scena Musicale Team on 27 November 2024 Concert Reviews, Opera

On Wednesday December 20, Opéra de Montréal presented its Talent Gala, featuring 11 finalists in the company’s annual Atelier lyrique entrance competition. Adrian Rodriguez, Justin Bernard and Wah Keung Chan attended this decisive final for the future careers of these young artists. Here are their impressions. Heidi Duncan, soprano AR: A great all-around talent with a beautiful mastery of her middle voice. – Adrian JB: Solid technique, but lacking the vocal personality that makes her stand out. – Justin Tessa Fackelmann, mezzo-soprano Ready to embark on a full-on operatic career. Her large lyric mezzo voice effortlessly filled the acoustically challenging…

Kateřina Kněžíková (Vixen) National Theatre Brno’s The Cunning Little Vixen. Photo: Marek Olbrzymek

Review | An Over Full Cunning Little Vixen at Janáček Brno Festival

By Gianmarco Segato on 26 November 2024 Concert Reviews, Opera

The 2024 Janáček Brno Festival closed on Nov. 24 with a revival of National Theatre Brno’s 2018 production of Janáček’s 1924 opera, The Cunning Little Vixen. Set in Brno’s historic Dagmar Children’s Home for abandoned children, company artistic director Jiří Heřman’s vision is inventive, but insufficiently focused. Too many competing visual and dramaturgical elements distract from the original story’s life-affirming message. At the start, we see period photos of the original care home’s functionalist edifice which are echoed in the clean lines and round window of the set. Children are everywhere, running on and off stage pushing wooden animal toys…

Eliška Gattringerová (Foreign Princess) & Jana Šrejma Kačírková (Rusalka) in Rusalka at Janáček Brno Festival

Review | Rusalka on the verge at Janáček Brno Festival

By Gianmarco Segato on 25 November 2024 Concert Reviews, Opera

Years that end in a four have a special significance in the Czech Republic as a cause to celebrate their national musical heritage with a ‘year of Czech music’. The Janáček Brno Festival therefore extended its umbrella this year to include works by other Czech greats like Antonín Dvořák. His opera Rusalka was seen on Nov. 23 in a production by David Radok that premiered earlier this year at the festival’s hometown National Theatre of Brno. This deeply psychological interpretation exchanged the opera’s traditional, fairy tale associations for an adult story centred around problematic relationships. Czech director Radok, who also…

Kremerata Baltica. Photo: Angie Kremer

Lebrecht Weekly | Lebrecht Album of the Year for 2024

By Norman Lebrecht on 22 November 2024 Lebrecht Weekly

2024 has been a flat year for major labels and an unsettled one for minors. Four independent outfits sold out – Hyperion to Universal, Bis to Apple, Chandos to Klaus Heymann, Divine Art to Rosebrook – the biggest shakeout in decades, leaving us wondering how much of their stubborn individuality might survive in the decade ahead. In choosing the album of the year, I look for projects that define the era and will pass the test of time. Janine Jansens’ recording of the Sibelius and first Prokofiev concertos on Decca is one that bears comparison with the legends. Yundi Li’s…

Sarah Dufresne (Ophélie). Photo: Vivien Gaumand

Review | Opéra de Montréal: Hamlet or Ophélie’s Triumph

By Justin Bernard on 21 November 2024 Concert Reviews, Opera, Romantic

On Nov. 16, Opéra de Montréal (OdeM) took up the challenge of presenting a little-known work from the French repertoire for the first time in its recent history. Of the entire production, conductor Jacques Lacombe was the only one to have performed it before. It sure speaks for the rarity of this Hamlet by Ambroise Thomas. But what a discovery, what an abundance of musical themes, what genius of orchestration! Without analysing the score in detail, we can legitimately be enthusiastic about the saxophone solo at the start of Act II, Scene 2, a gesture as astonishing as it is…

Barbora Perná in the title role of Jenůfa at Janáček Brno Festival. Photo: Marek Olbrzymek

Review | A Divisive Jenůfa at Janáček Brno Festival

By Gianmarco Segato on 21 November 2024 Concert Reviews, Opera

Janáček Brno Festival presented a new staging of Janáček’s Jenůfa on Nov. 20 in a co-production with the Moravian Theatre Olomouc where it had its premiere on Nov. 15. Director Veronika Kos Loulová offers a radical take that includes spoken text as well as some surprising tinkering with the score. The result was both stimulating and provocative, raising the ire of audience members who vocalised their disapproval. Ultimately, Loulová and her all-woman team have created a Jenůfa for today that questions tropes around motherhood and familial relationships. The creative team worked in conjunction with the organisation Úsměv mámy (A Mother’s…

Dorothea Röschmann as Emilia Marty in Staatsoper Berlin's The Makropulos Case at Janáček Brno Festival. Photo: Marek Olbrzymek

Review | Berlin Staatsoper’s fragmented The Makropulos Case at Janáček Brno Festival

By Gianmarco Segato on 19 November 2024 Concert Reviews, Opera

Leoš Janáček’s penultimate opera, The Makropulos Case returned to Brno, where it premiered in 1926, in Claus Guth’s 2022 production from Berlin’s Staatsoper Unter den Linden. This was the company’s first appearance at the bi-annual Janáček Brno Festival where it presented two performances (seen Nov. 18) of the opera based on Karel Čapek’s 1922 “comedy” dealing with the complex emotional baggage associated with immortality. Guth, along with set designer Étienne Plus and costume designer Ursula Kudrna, have chosen a “period” 1920s Art Deco setting that includes a troupe of dancers/movement artists who cater to opera singer Emilia Marty. From the…

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