Gregory Charles joins Lanaudière Festival
The OSM under Kent Nagano will open the 40th Lanaudière Festival, and the Orchestre Métropolitain under Yannick Nézet-Séguin will close it with Wagner’s Parsifal.
Both concerts are likely to be introduced by Gregory Charles, who was officially named the next artistic director of the festival at a news conference Tuesday near Joliette.
“It all seemed to make sense,” the multi-talented entertainer said in an interview of the appointment. “I hope I can do a good job.”
Charles was not involved in the organization of the 2017 festival. The incoming artistic director and his plans for Lanaudière will be further explored in the Montreal Gazette on Saturday.
The Parsifal concert performance on Aug. 6 will function as a sneak preview of a YNS run of Wagner’s tale of Christian redemption at the Metropolitan Opera.
The July 1 opener by the OSM brings together Mahler’s Fifth Symphony, a concerto for organ by Samy Moussa with Jean-Willy Kunz at the keyboard, and Ravel’s Piano Concerto in G with Alain Lefèvre in the starring role.
A popular figure at Lanaudière, Lefèvre is no longer the festival’s official spokesperson, having resigned from this post before it became widely known that Charles was to be named artistic director.
Most weekend concerts in the Fernand Lindsay Amphitheatre offer familiar ensembles and conductors in standard repertoire. The novelty on July 8 and 9 will be the joint presence on stage in three concerts of I Musici de Montréal and their Quebec City rivals Les Violons du Roy.
Jean-Marie Zeitouni of I Musici and Les Violons founder Bernard Labadie divvy up conducting duties in Beethoven’s Third (Eroica), Fifth and Seventh Symphonies, Schubert’s Eighth Symphony (Unfinished), Mozart’s Symphony No. 40 and Haydn’s Symphony No. 104.
July 15 and 16 offer the Sinfonia de Lanaudière under Stéphane Laforest and the Orchestre national de jazz de Montréal with trombonist Jean-Nicolas Trottier. Pianist Marc-André Hamelin plays a recital of Liszt and Schubert on July 21, and joins the Orchestre Métropolitain under Mathieu Lussier the following evening in Beethoven’s Piano Concerto No. 5 (Emperor).
Details on the following weekend have yet to be announced, but Charles and tenor Marc Hervieux are likely to sing popular repertoire on the afternoon of July 30.
The final weekend comprises three concerts. Nagano and the OSM combine the applause-generating Tchaikovsky Piano Concerto No. 1 and Brahms Symphony No. 2 on Aug. 4, the former with 2010 Warsaw Competition winner Yulianna Avdeeva as soloist.
On Aug. 5 Nagano and the OSM make a match of Mozart’s Symphony No. 39 and Fauré’s Requiem with soprano Sumi Jo, baritone JeanFrançois Lapointe and the Choeur du Festival.
Parsifal, starting at 5 p.m., will feature German tenor Christian Elsner in the title role, which he has recorded. Kundry is Mihoko Fujimura, an established Japanese mezzo-soprano who appears in Wagner’s Ring in the coming weeks at the Vienna State Opera.
Standard repertoire reigns in the weekday evening programming in regional churches. The Jupiter Quartet finishes its Beethoven cycle. Pianists Luca Buratto and Charles Richard-Hamelin (the latter a native of Joliette) give recitals.
Quatuor Saguenay (formerly the
Alcan Quartet) collaborates with cellist Stéphane Tétreault, pianist Marie-Ève Scarfone and violist Victor Fournelle-Blain in three concerts stressing Viennese repertoire.
On July 28 Christine Jensen conducts the Orchestre national de jazz de Montréal at Salle RollandBrunelle. One item will be a suite from Gershwin’s Porgy and Bess.