Orford artists worth the journey
EASTERN TOWNSHIPS FESTIVAL kicks off a summer music schedule laden with concerts and variety
Something was strange here. Beethoven to start, Klezmer to finish. In between: Shakespeare in French. All in the opening concert, Saturday night, at the Orford Arts Centre in the Eastern Townships.
“I like the pleasure that comes from the clash,” Jean-François Rivest, artistic director of the academy and its adjacent festival, said the other day. “Or the complement.”
Rest assured that this opening miscellany, bringing together the Alcan Quartet, actors Christian Bégin and Sophie Cadieux and the Kleztory ensemble, is the only truly hard-to-figure-out event of the Orford summer. Starting next week, we get concerts, concerts, concerts, mostly classical and generally by artists who are distinctly worth the journey.
On Friday, the festival starts in earnest with a gathering of 11 players, including many teachers, in what might be called a chamber jamboree. The headline item is Schubert’s Trout Quintet, a piece that needs a double bass. Joel Quarrington, ranked by many as the best in the world, will be our sure foundation.
Another chamber night worth noting brings together the New Orford Quartet and Marc-André Hamelin. This program on July 12 features Schumann’s Piano Quintet and a new work by the Orford resident composer for 2014, Tim Brady. The Gryphon Trio on July 18 also takes care to combine the super-standard (Beethoven’s Archduke Trio) with the contemporary (R. Murray Schafer’s Piano Trio).
Piano fans are well served by Orford Six Pianos on July 6 (Mussorgsky’s Pictures at an Exhibition and Tchaikovsky’s Romeo and Juliet, among other hefty works); Hamelin on July 11 (Schubert Sonatas, Field and Liszt); the British comeback kid Christian Blackshaw on July 26 (Mozart); the aristocratic Austrian Till Fellner on Aug. 2 (Bach, Haydn, Schumann); and the dynamic Ukrainian-Montrealer Serhiy Salov on Aug. 8 (Bach, Beethoven, Stravinsky, Ravel’s La Valse and Brady’s The Spontaneous Sonata Project, which will involve contributions from the composer on electric guitar).
There will be, as always, concerts at the nearby St-Benoît-du-Lac, including a program of Elizabethan songs (in English!) on July 5 by soprano Suzie LeBlanc and harpsichordist/organist Alexander Weimann.
Another standard element of the Orford summer is orchestral music, this year without any performing input by the OSM or Kent Nagano.
“There was really no way to organize the schedules,” Rivest said. “We tried very hard.”
A substantial proportion of Orford teachers, however, are OSM players, so we have cause to expect high standards from the students even in repertoire as demanding as Brahms symphonies (all but No. 3). The program of Aug. 10 puts together the Second Symphony with the notably less sunny Mozart Requiem (in the Robert Levin conclusion).
“They balance,” Rivest said. “That is why they go together.” Rivest, of course, conducts. There are other events, some geared to jazz enthusiasts. An appearance by the Canadian Brass on Aug. 9 will surely combine music and humour. Visit arts-orford.org for more information.
Having dealt to some degree with the whodunit question last week, we should take a moment to remember who paid for it. There is no controversy here: Jacqueline Desmarais funded the Grand Orgue Pierre-Béique with a gift to the OSM of $5 million. Four million of that sum was for construction and $1 million is for programming and maintenance.
The donation is noteworthy both for its magnitude and its self-effacement. Most benefactors are inclined to name the things they make possible after themselves or a spouse. The late Paul Desmarais Sr. would have been a perfectly fitting subject of a tribute.
Instead, the honour went to the late Pierre Béique, the longtime OSM managing director who put the orchestra on a secure footing and comported himself as a perfect gentleman in every task he undertook.
The OSM has reported 20,000 admissions for the inaugural week of organ concerts and the additional concert on June 9. The free recitals of the open-house Saturday accounted for 12,000 admissions.
Of course, it is vital to keep the instrument in use. The next concert involving the organ brings together pop singer Pierre Lapointe and OSM organist Jean-Willy Kunz as part of the OSM Couche-Tard Classical Spree Festival on Aug. 16. OSM organist emeritus Olivier Latry plays a recital on Oct. 16 and William O’Meara improvises a soundtrack to The Phantom of the Opera (1925) on Oct. 31.
Kunz is soloist in Jacques Hétu’s Organ Concerto on Nov. 9. Luc Beauséjour accompanies the OSM under Nagano and tenor Vittorio Grigolo in December. There is more in 2015. But let us not get ahead of ourselves.
The Orchestre Métropolitain has already started its summer schedule. On Thursday, it opened the east-end Concerts Populaires with a re-creation of the very first Populaire concert, a mostly Viennese affair led by OM principal guest conductor Julian Kuerti.
As previously announced, Yannick Nézet-Séguin will be conducting a Beethoven-Wagner program at the Lanaudière Festival on Aug. 6. But you can hear the same music free at the Chalet of Mount Royal the following evening (starting at 7) or on Nuns’ Island on the evening following that (starting at 7:30).
If you feel a little disappointed by the absence of a heavyweight visiting orchestra this summer at Lanaudière, take heart. Elizabeth Bloom of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette reports that the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra will visit the festival in July 2015 under its music director, Manfred Honeck. These concerts, marking the third PSO visit to Lanaudière, represent the only international appearances by this orchestra in 2014-15. No word on repertoire.
Choral fans should note that the Choir of Christ’s College, Cambridge will give a program of sacred motets (Byrd, Tompkins, Purcell, Howells, Parry, Bruckner) and organ works (Saint-Saëns and Fauré) at Westmount Park United Church on Thursday at 7:30 p.m. Tickets cost $15 for adults, $12 for students/ seniors. The church is at 4695 de Maisonneuve Blvd. W. (at the corner of Lansdowne Ave., across from the Westmount Recreation Centre). The choir’s website gives the size of the ensemble as 28. A publicity photo shows 22. Allmale for centuries, the Choir of Christ’s College became a mixed group in 1979.