Montreal Bslakirev

Another outstanding success for one of North America's most responsive orchestras, with playing not just brilliant, but relaxed and joyful.

The Orchestre symphonique de Montréal and its Music Director Rafael Payare make their Pentatone debut with Mahler’s 5th Symphony. The album is also the first recording under Payare’s tenure, and the beginning of a longer recording relationship with the label. For Payare, the Fifth is the last symphony that shows Mahler still looking forward to what the future might bring, unlike his subsequent, much darker and existential works. Despite that optimism, there is enough tragedy and struggle along the way, resonating with Mahler’s life at the time of creation. Payare’s proficiency in late-Romantic repertoire coupled with the matured, distinctive sound of the Montréal players make this a collaboration to look out for.

Orchestre Symphonique de Montréal is well-known for his innovative concert programmes. Here he conducts the Montreal Symphony Orchestra for his third Beethoven project. After his two previous CD's with the titles "Ideals of the French Revolution" (Beethoven's Fifth Symphony & the Egmont overture) and "Gods, Heroes and Men" (Beethoven's Third and the ballet music "Creatures of Prometheus"), this new release is dedicated to the subject "In the Breath of Time". Featuring the “Pastorale” Symphony (No. 6) and the seldom performed 8th Symphony, this release consists of what are probably Beethoven's two sunniest symphonies.

Ideals of the French Revolution is the unusual title of this two-disc set by Kent Nagano and the Orchestre Symphonique de Montréal of music by Beethoven with texts by Goethe, Matthisson, and Paul Griffiths. The second, fairly conventional disc includes three works by Beethoven that could reasonably be said to embody the ideals of liberté, égalité, fraternité: his Fifth Symphony, excerpts from his incidental music for Goethe's Egmont, and his fourth setting of Matthisson's Opferlied (Song of Sacrifice). The far less conventional first disc, however, features a single work, called The General, setting a text by the aforementioned Griffiths, noted author and Beethoven scholar, to music drawn from Beethoven's incidental music for Egmont, König Stephan, and Leonore Prohaska, plus the Opferlied.

This collection of English verse anthems and viol fantasias – there are no examples of the a cappella, highly polyphonic full anthem – comes from Montreal's vibrant early music scene and it offers a fresh version of these often-recorded classics of English choral music of the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries. The verse anthem, written in English, was a characteristic Anglican genre, alternating between choral and solo passages and deploying the text across plain but often rather fervent lines of music. It is accompanied here, as was normal, by viols; an organ can also be used. Done right, a work like John Ward's Prayer is an endless chain (track 2) or any of the three thorny but exultant anthems by Orlando Gibbons should have the combination of piety and rich beauty that would be characteristic of Bach's music a century or more later.

Here is Volume 2 of the series "Nouveaux Territoires," launched by the ECM in the fall of 2000. The three works featured in this recording were premiered by the ECM on the occasion of an event entitled Unions Libres, each one being the result of a collaboration with an artist involved in a different medium. In their original format, along with dance, cinema, or poetry, these works attempt to draw together the thoughts and the concerns of today’s artists, throughout all mediums. Presented here in their strictly musical form, these compositions provide dialogues, filled with referents of a social dimension, in tune with the multimedia experience of Unions Libres.

These disc were recorded in 1995 during Charles Dutoit's long spell as artistic director of the Montreal Symphony Orchestra. During that time they made many outstanding recordings with a particular reputation for French and Russian music and a glorious sound recorded in Saint-Eustache church. Dutoit is an ideal conductor for Bizet's music, sufficiently romantic to bring out its drama without letting it become self-indulgent.

Even by Bach’s standards, they are exceptional. All three of them were conceived as grateful celebrations of the ancient feastday of the Archangel Michael . St Michael’s day commemorates the apocalyptic combat and eventual victory of Michael and the angels of Heaven against the armies of Satan. All three of these cantatas are set for a festive orchestra with strings plus three trumpets, drums, and other luxuries (an extra third hautboy, a traverso in Cantata 130, and hautboys doubling on hautbois d’amour or playing oboe da caccia in Cantata 19).

This Chandos release is the second such prizewinners’ showcase from Yuli Turovsky’s Orford International Competition, the winners being invited to commit their respective concertos to disc with I Musici de Montreal. The result is an attractive coupling of three lesser-known works performed with freshness and enthusiasm. The programme makes a logical sequel to last year’s Glazunov/Arensky coupling, although the Glazunov will not be to everyone’s taste. The Yamaha piano is hard-edged and uneven in tone, and it is used by Herskowitz to hammer home the musical arguments in the grand manner.

With this 2011 release, Musica Vaticana, Studio de musique ancienne de Montréal, led by its founder Christopher Jackson, solidifies its reputation as one of the very finest choirs specializing in music of the Baroque and Renaissance. Its tone is warmly blended and pure, and it is able to produce a wide range of tonal colors suited to whatever is being performed. Most importantly, the chorus enters fully into the spirit of the music, so its performances are lively and spontaneous-sounding.