“Kent Nagano and the OSM will run off and join the circus, at least on Aug. 29, when the orchestra teams up with Cirque Éloize at Olympic Park for an audio-visual presentation of Rimsky-Korsakov’s Scheherazade,” writes Arthur Kaptainis in Saturday’s (5/26) Gazette (Montreal, Canada). “Rimsky’s 45-minute symphonic suite will be fleshed out with instrumental elements from Ravel’s Shéhérazade…. The annual free show [is followed by the] indoor three-day Classical Spree … on Aug. 31 in and around [Place des Arts].… Spree concerts [include] a pair of Verdi-Wagner choral blowouts and performances of Tchaikovsky’s inevitable Piano Concerto No. 1 (with the Russian Alexei Volodin) and Bartók’s Violin Concerto No. 1 (Moldovan-born Patricia Kopatchinskaja). Electric guitarist Steve Hill reprises John Anthony Lennon’s Electric Candlelight Concerto…. Kopatchinskaja … will also perform the vocal part in Schoenberg’s otherworldly 1912 melodrama Pierrot Lunaire…. Other concerts, all brief and reasonably priced, involve Alexandru Sura on the cimbalom; a trio [performing] Classical Music of the Middle East; and OSM tuba principal Austin Howle in a recital…. There are free events in and around the concourse of Place des Arts. Complexe Desjardins will be the venue for a performance by the Classical Spree Symphony, a gathering of amateur musicians from across Quebec.”
Posted May 29, 2018
