Notre critique Arthur Kaptainis s'est laissé charmer par la voix du ténor américain Michael Spyres au Festival de Lanaudière hier soir.

Montreal, city of orchestras. We hear about the professional ensembles but must not forget the schools that supply them, including the Conservatoire de musique de Montréal, which on Wednesday night assembled 100 instrumentalists and 350 choristers in the Maison symphonique for a concert intended to extend the celebration last year of the 75th anniversary of the institution.

What to do on a Saturday night? For many Montrealers, the answer appears to be: hear the OSM under Kent Nagano.

Say this for Walter Boudreau: the longtime artistic director of SMCQ keeps the society true to its modernist principles. The Montréal/Nouvelles Musiques festival opened Thursday in the Église Saint-Jean-Baptiste with a fiercely experimental concert. Crossover sissies need not apply.

OK, je le prends. Despite my initial skepticism over the concept driving the OSM’s four-day “Brahms and the Art of Film” (Le 7e Art et Brahms) cycle at the Maison symphonique, I could accept the final instalment as a pleasant sampler on a Sunday afternoon. Tenuous connections are connections just the same.

Take it or leave it: these are the possible ways of reacting to the philosophy behind the “Brahms and the Art of Film” (Le 7e Art et Brahms) series presented in the Maison symphonique by the OSM under Kent Nagano.

Add this to the list of honours earned lately by the Orchestre Métropolitain: The Ebenezer Scrooge Award for the least Christmassy concert ever given by a symphony orchestra four days before Christmas.

Celebrating the centenary of the birth of Leonard Bernstein is compulsory in the United States, optional elsewhere. I confess to approaching the penultimate concert of the 2018 Lanaudière Festival on Saturday night with a touch of oh-please-not-him-again skepticism. I left with my respect for Bernstein the composer renewed.

When I spoke to Jean-Philippe Tremblay a few weeks ago, there were 20 tickets left for Le Fantôme de l’Opéra.

C'est avec tristesse que nous avons appris ce matin le décès du grand compositeur et chef d'orchestre polonais Krzysztof Penderecki, qui vient de nous quitter à l'âge de 86 ans. En 2018, notre collaborateur, Arthur Kaptainis, le rencontrait à Cracovie pour un entretien passionnant.