REVIEW | Tenor Spyres flies high at Lanaudière despite the downpour
Notre critique Arthur Kaptainis s'est laissé charmer par la voix du ténor américain Michael Spyres au Festival de Lanaudière hier soir.
REVIEW | War Requiem a victory for the Conservatoire
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.
REVIEW | Wan, Nagano, OSM: Seldom-heard Ginastera is a tour de force
What to do on a Saturday night? For many Montrealers, the answer appears to be: hear the OSM under Kent Nagano.
REVIEW | A truly modern start to Montréal/Nouvelles Musiques
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.
REVIEW | OSM: Buchbinder’s Beethoven is pure poetry
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.
REVIEW | Film or no film, the OSM in Brahms sounds fine
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.
REVIEW | Mahler a welcome gift from Yannick and the OM
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.
REVIEW | Bernstein’s Age of Anxiety has aged well
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.
INTERVIEW | Jean-Philippe Tremblay: Singing the praises of smaller Mahler
When I spoke to Jean-Philippe Tremblay a few weeks ago, there were 20 tickets left for Le Fantôme de l’Opéra.