Rafael Payare, who accustomed us to great symphonies at the opening of the OSM season with Mahler’s Second last year and Shostakovich’s Fifth in 2021, now comes to us with… a ballet and a mass! But not just any. The Venezuelan conductor will begin the evenings of September 12 to 14 with the monumental and rare – in Montreal anyway – Glagolitic Mass by Janáček, a lush Czech choral fresco recorded 30 years ago with Charles Dutoit. Then it will be the Stravinsky shock, with the dazzling Rite of Spring. We won’t want to miss this!
The Opéra de Montréal’s advertisement for its new production of Mozart’s Marriage of Figaro (September 23 to October 1) caused a lot of reaction on social networks. It remains to be seen if the show will have that much pizzazz. Originally scheduled for May 2020, it retains more or less the same line-up, composed mainly of young Canadian singers (except the Croatian Leon Košavić in the title role), many of whom come from the Atelier lyrique. We will go to hear the debut in the OdM pit of Nicolas Ellis and gauge the production of this “crazy day” imported from the United States.
He took our breath away during his concert at Bourgie Hall in the fall of 2021, making us write that “the quartets who play these days with such technical quality can be counted on the fingers of one hand.” The Dover Quartet, formed in 2008 at the Curtis Institute in Philadelphia, where it is now in residence, is back on September 27, this time with the honor of inaugurating the organization’s new season. He will perform not a German romantic program like last time, but works by Haydn, Shostakovich and Price.
Among our recent discographic recommendations are an excellent first disc by the Quebec pianist Élisabeth Pion, but also a complete solo piano works by the fascinating French composer Hélène de Montgeroult (1764-1836). The path of the two musicians will converge from October 6 to 8 at Bourgie Hall in complicity with Arion Orchester Baroque and its conductor Mathieu Lussier. The latter had the good idea of combining the music of Montgeroult with that of his illustrious contemporary Mozart. We will hear from each a symphonic work and a piano concerto (including the moving Concerto no 24 in C minor of the second).
A name particularly deserves to be retained in the program of the Grand Organ Festival 2023 organized by the Canadian International Organ Competition from September 30 to October 29: that of the United States Nathan Laube. At 35, the professor at the Eastman School of Music in Rochester is one of the most important talents in the world of the organ, combining unfailing virtuosity with authentic poetry of expression. On October 22, the artist will perform a selection of mainly German Baroque works (Bach, Buxtehude, Bruhns, in addition to Vivaldi and Hindemith) on Wilhelm’s splendid three-manual organ in St. Matthias’ Anglican Church in Westmount.
Shostakovich’s 5, 8 and 10 symphonies have been heard more than once in recent years, but his great Seventh, written in 1941 in St. Petersburg under German fire (hence its Soviet nickname “Leningrad”) of the city), is becoming rarer on the programs of our orchestras. Yannick Nézet-Séguin and the Orchester Métropolitain perform it again on November 17 and 18, five years after performing it in triumph at the Festival de Lanaudière. In the first part, the Spanish violinist Maria Dueñas, new darling of Deutsche Grammophon at only 20 years old, will play the Violin Concerto by the Norwegian Johan Halvorsen, recently found more than a century after its creation.
Messiaen’s Turangalîla-Symphonie: This is one of the milestones of the 20th century symphonic repertoire, and Montreal had the chance to hear it twice during the Nagano era, when it was the repertoire of choice. It will be all the more interesting to hear his successor Rafael Payare, of whom we did not suspect any particular affinity with the French composer, present his conception of the work on December 5 and 6. French pianist Jean-Yves Thibaudet will hold the important piano part in this stellar score full of beauty.
