Canadian composer Jacques Hétu's remarkable final symphony in a stunning new recording resulting from the collaboration between three of Canada's major ensembles

Jacques Hétu: Symphony No. 5; Canada's National Arts Centre Orchestra, Orchestre Symphonique de Québec, Toronto Mendelssohn Choir, Alexander Shelley; Analekta
Reviewed 29 January 2025

Premiered three weeks after his death, Canadian composer Jacques Hétu's massive symphony is a remarkable reflection of the acuteness and refinement of his ear, and his striking reinvention of the symphony as a 21st century form, looking forward and back

The Canadian composer Jacques Hétu became one of the country's most esteemed and frequently performed composers, with a catalogue of some 70 works, including symphonies, opera, choral and chamber music, and concertos. His Symphony No. 5 was commissioned by the Toronto Symphony Orchestra and premiered at the 2010 New Creation Festival. Sadly, Hétu died just three weeks before the premiere. Though there is a selection of Hétu's work in the catalogue, there seems little in the way of his symphonies. So there are plenty of reasons to welcome the innovative new release of his final symphony.

On this new disc from Analekta, Canada's National Arts Centre (NAC) Orchestra and the Orchestre Symphonique de Québec (OSQ) join forces with the Toronto Mendelssohn Choir under the baton of Alexander Shelley (musical director of the NAC Orchestra) to perform Hétu's Symphony No. 5. Under the title The Two Orchestras, One Symphony project represents a partnership between the NAC Orchestra and the OSQ, who joined forces for the first time to bring Hétu’s masterwork to life with over 100 instrumentalists and 114 singers.

Hétu's musical studies took him from Canada, to Tanglewood (where he worked with Lukas Foss) and finally Paris where he worked with Henri Dutilleux and Olivier Messiaen. Dutilleux encouraged Hétu to pursue his own style in composition and not be influenced strongly by current trends and rather than exploring serialism or atonality, Hétu moved towards tonality and his Symphony No. 3 from 1971 represents his definitive return to having a tonal core to his compositional technique. Evidently, this did not always go down well with his more avant-garde fellow musicians but he commented, "I handled the ostracism thanks to performers who played my music or commissioned works from me".

Jacques Hétu: Symphony No. 5 - Canada's National Arts Centre Orchestra, Orchestre Symphonique de Québec, Toronto Mendelssohn Choir, Alexander Shelley - Southam Hall, Ottawa (Photo: Curtis Perry)

Leading with a love that inspires: Canadian ensemble, Tafelmusik has a new collaboration with violinist Rachel Podger & a new disc of Haydn symphonies under her direction

Tafelmusik & Rachel Podger (Photo: Dahlia Katz)

Tafelmusik, the Canadian period instrument ensemble, recently appointed violinist Rachel Podger as principal guest director and this month the orchestra released a disc of Haydn symphonies with Rachel Podger as director, on the ensemble's own label. Tafelmusik is led by the artistic triumvirate, all three players in the ensemble, Brandon Chui (viola), Christina Zacharias (violin) and Dominic Teresi (bassoon) and I recently chatted to Brandon to find out more about the new disc and Tafelmusik's collaboration with Rachel Podger.

The new disc features two of Haydn's symphonies, No. 43 in E-flat Major “Mercury” and No. 49 in F minor “La Passione", both recorded live from concerts at Toronto's Jeanne Lamon Hall in 2023 led from the violin by Rachel Podger. The ensemble was not, originally, planning on issuing a recording. But they have a digital stream, issuing three programmes per season. The plan was for Rachel Podger to come and direct a programme of Hadyn and Mozart which would be performed in Toronto and recorded for video. The initial concept of the two Haydn symphonies and a Mozart violin concerto was one that Rachel Podger and co-artistic director Dominic Teresi initially came up with. They filmed the concert, as planned, but the results were, in Brandon's words, 'so damn good' that it was decided to issue the recording on the ensemble's own label.



Brandon explains that many of the ensemble's recordings are made live, including their set of the complete Beethoven symphonies conducted by Bruno Weil and their recording of Handel's Messiah. Whether or not a recording is made live is to a certain extent dependent on financing, but also there is the desire to capture the effect of playing for a live audience. Brandon explained that, though it can sound cliched, when Tafelmusik is on stage, they find an extra gear for the audience, collectively taking a level of risk which can sound special.

Providing a voice for composers whose careers were disrupted by anti-Semitism and bigotry: Royal Conservatory of Music's ARC Ensemble celebrates 20 years

ARC Ensemble

The ARC Ensemble of Canada's Royal Conservatory of Music is celebrating 20 years of music making. Comprised of the senior faculty of The Royal Conservatory's Glenn Gould School, with guests drawn from its alumni and students, the ARC Ensemble has become an influential cultural ambassador. Its concerts and recordings have gained multiple Grammy and JUNO nominations. ARC has released nine recordings (on RCA Red Seal and more recently on Chandos Records), including six in its illuminating Music in Exile series. 

The ensemble aims to provide a voice for the hundreds of superbly-trained and highly gifted composers—many graduates of Europe’s most prestigious conservatories—whose careers were disrupted by anti-Semitism and bigotry – who were forced into exile, almost every work in its discography is a new and historically significant addition to the catalogue. Thanks to the ARC Ensemble, masterworks not heard in decades have joined the musical canon. 

The ensemble's 2021 Music in Exile disc featured works by Ukrainian-Jewish composer Dmitri Klebanov (1907-1987), and the disc's release coincided with Putin’s invasion of Ukraine. Klebanov, an ardent nationalist, drew on several Ukrainian melodies for his Fourth Quartet, melodies that had been used by his older colleague Mykola Leontovych. In the context of Russia’s aggression, Leontovych was killed by the Soviet secret police in 1921. With the Klebanov release, artistic director Simon Wynberg has received requests for his scores from all over the world and Klebanov’s voice became one of protest.    

Whilst the ensemble's disc of chamber works by Walter Kaufmann (1907-1984) convinced the Austrian publisher Doblinger to publish first his chamber music and some of his orchestral works. These were taken up by the Berlin Radio Orchestra who is recording them as well as several regional American and European orchestras. Kaufmann's Indian Symphony will be performed at Carnegie Hall in 2024 conducted by Leon Botstein. 

The ARC Ensemble's recent discs in the Music in Exile series are on Chandos and you can read my in my 2021 interview with the ensemble's artistic director, Simon Wynberg.

New music should not be seen as extra-terrestrial, it should not generate fear: I chat to composer Ana Sokolović, artistic director of the Société de musique contemporaine du Québec

Ana Sokolovic (Photo: Jérome Bertrand)

In the third of my interviews devoted to exploring music in Canada [previously, I chatted to Alexander Shelley, music director of the NAC Orchestra, see article, and cellist/composer Margaret Maria and soprano Donna Brown, see article], I chat to Canadian-based, Serbian-born composer Ana Sokolović. Ana has been the artistic director of the Société de musique contemporaine du Québec (SMCQ) since early 2022. From 23 February to 5 March 2023, SMCQ will present the 11th edition of Montreal/New Musics (MNM), one of North America's largest new music festivals. SMCQ is in fact one of the oldest contemporary music societies in North America and the oldest in Canada. It is notable for being founded by composers, and the artistic director has always been a composer. Ana is perhaps best known in the UK for her opera Svadba (The Wedding), which was performed by Waterperry Opera Festival last year.  

SMCQ wasn't just created to produce concerts, the idea was that people could meet, think and talk about music and contribute to the musical world. Prior to that, in Canada, there were sporadic contemporary music events but nothing that was taking care of new music exclusively. This year will be SMCQ's 56th season. In fact, both Ana's predecessors were composers and conductors; Ana's predecessor, the Canadian composer Walter Boudreau, conducts a major premiere at this year's MNM. Though Ana hastens to add that she is not a conductor. 

Each year, SMCQ presents a concert season, and alternates between MNM and a Homages Series, a tribute to one composer's legacy. But there are many other activities beyond these, including a youth programme, SMCQ Jeunesse (SMCQ Youth) and many activities to promote new music. As Ana develops her own seasons with SMCQ (the current MNM is largely the work of her predecessor) she wants to involve not just musicians and composers, but musicologists and other artists, to bring out the idea that music is not alone and artistic expression can be correlated with other arts. 

Unexpected creativity: cellist Margaret Maria and soprano Donna Brown talk about the joys of collaboration on the words and music of their album Between Worlds

Donna Brown and Margaret Maria

Cellist and composer Margaret Maria and soprano Donna Brown, both Canadian, have been collaborating on an album, Between Worlds, which has recently been released on the Canadian Music Centre's Centrediscs label. Consisting of eight songs which feature Donna's voice and her words, plus Margaret's music and her cello, the album is very much a joint venture. 

As a soprano, Donna began her opera career with Peter Brook's production of La Tragédie de Carmen, a work which involved two months of intensive workshops with Peter Brook, learning his method of acting based on Stanislavsky, followed by three months of performing La Tragédie de Carmen in Paris, and then touring it throughout Europe for a year with his troupe. Since then she has performed all over the world and had special collaborations for over 15 years with Helmuth Rilling and John Eliot Gardiner, doing numerous recordings with both of them. 

Margaret trained as a classical cellist as a graduate of the Curtis Institute of Music and was a professional cellist with the Vancouver Symphony Orchestra and the National Arts Centre (NAC) Orchestra, she has since developed a career as a composer very much focusing on her own instrument. Her most recent solo album was Where Words Fail - Music For Healing from 2021, with music is born 'in the hope that it can be helpful to others…it can offer some healing, some understanding, some comfort, some strength when we feel weak or when words fail us'.

They see their new album as very much a creative outflow from two people, and the moods and emotions of the music they hope will elicit a reaction from listeners, and they comment that it is almost a mini-opera in the sense of journey, the music takes you there and back. They want the album to be a piece that makes people react. 

Advocating for a sense of classicism: conductor Alexander Shelley on recording the music of Robert Schumann, Johannes Brahms and Clara Schumann

Alexander Shelley and NAC Orchestra (Photo: Dwayne Brown)

The conductor Alexander Shelley has been the music director of the National Arts Centre (NAC) Orchestra in Ottawa since 2015, and he is also principal associate conductor of the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra. With the NAC Orchestra, Shelley is part of the way through a cycle of four double-CD sets on Analekta devoted to the music of Robert Schumann, Clara Schumann and Johannes Brahms, with the third disc in the set to be released on 3 March 2023. This new release features the third symphonies of Schumann and Brahms with songs, piano music and the Piano Trio by Clara Schumann, performed by Alexander Shelley and the NAC Orchestra with soprano Adrianne Pieczonka, pianists Liz Upchurch, Gabriela Montero, and Stewart Goodyear, violinist Yosuke Kawasaki (concertmaster of the NAC Orchestra) and cellist Rachel Mercier (principal cello of the NAC Orchestra).

Each of the double CD sets features one of the four symphonies both by Robert Schumann (with the later version of Schumann's Symphony No. 4) and Brahms along with chamber music, songs and instrumental music by Clara Schumann.

One of the largest contemporary music events in North America: Montreal/New Musics 2023 - Music and Spirituality

 

Montreal/New Musics (MNM) international festival, presented by Société de musique contemporaine du Québec (SMCQ), has developed into one of the largest contemporary music events in North America. The 11th edition takes place from 23 February to 5 March 2023 under the title Music and Spirituality, bringing together artists from different musical backgrounds. At the centre of 10 days of music making are five major concerts reflecting diverse musical influences. 

Ensemble Obiora and the Ensemble de la SMCQ, conducted by Cristian Gort, open the festival with a new work by Canadian composer Katia Makdissi-Warren who brings together two traditions, Inuit and Breton throat singing. Alongside this will be music by Arvo Pärt and French composer Alexis Savelief.

Andrew Balfour, a composer of Cree origin, presents Notinikew, an anti-war mini-opera that tells the story of indigenous soldiers who fought for Canada in the First World War and were denied the right to return home. Another featured composer is Canadian Walter Boudreau with a performance of Golgot(h)a, which uses poems by Boudreau's friend Raôul Duguay to create a Way of the Cross, based on a motet by Victoria. Other concerts include the French ensemble Court-circuit in different generations of French, Canadian and American composers, reflecting a spirit of freedom, and works for piano, ondes martenot and women's choir by Olivier Messiaen

Full details from the festival website.

Gustavo Dudamel been chosen as the fourteenth Glenn Gould Prize Laureate

Gustavo Dudamel & the Los Angeles Philharmonic (Photo Dustin Downing)

Founded in 1983 in Glenn Gould's home-town of Toronto, Canada, the Glenn Gould Foundation celebrates the life, career, and enduring influence of Canadian pianist, writer and broadcaster Glenn Gould. Every two years, the Foundation convenes an international jury to award the Glenn Gould Prize to a living individual for a unique lifetime contribution that has enriched the human condition through the arts. 

Nominees for the international prize come from a broad spectrum of creative disciplines including music, theatre, writing, film, video, radio, television, recording, technology, architecture and design. Past laureates of the international prize include documentary filmmaker Alanis Obomsawin (2020), Jessye Norman (2018), Leonard Cohen (2011), El Sistema founder Dr. José Antonio Abreu (2008), Yo-Yo Ma (1999), and Oscar Peterson (1993).

Venezuelan-born conductor, violinist and music education activist Gustavo Dudamel has been chosen as the fourteenth Glenn Gould Prize Laureate. Gustavo Dudamel is currently music and artistic director of the Los Angeles Philharmonic, and music director of the Opéra National de Paris and Simón Bolívar Symphony Orchestra.  Dudamel was chosen from a distinguished list of international candidates across a broad spectrum of creative disciplines, nominated by members of the general public from around the globe.

Full details from the foundation's website.

Music Lights the Way

 

Music Lights the Way is a celebratory piano concert at the Royal Conservatory of Music (RCM) in Toronto, Canada which takes place on 27 April 2022, but worry not the concert is also being live streamed. The performers will include RCM Artist in Residence Stewart Goodyear, Jan Lisiecki, RCM Honorary Fellow Lang Lang , International Fryderyk Chopin Competition laureate Tony Yang, and Angela Hewitt.

And the focus of the celebrations is the launch of the RCM's Celebration Series®, Sixth Edition piano books, which contain a selection of exciting new pieces by 73 living composers from 20 countries. The series includes music of 54 American and 47 Canadian composers, and includes 32 newly commissioned works published for the first time, which continue one of RCM’s core missions to support living artists.

Further information about the new piano books from the RCM website, and details of the live stream of the concert also from the RCM website.

Ich habe genug: Canadian company Sound The Alarm: Music Theatre's latest project uses a Bach cantata to explore issues of mental health, identity and more.

Our relationship to the great works of the past is complex, and the current challenge is to explore further than musical works by dead white men, but companies are also re-examining ways of presenting existing classical works. One such is the Canadian company, Sound The Alarm: Music Theatre (STA). STA's most recent project uses a Bach cantata to not only explore issues of mental health, but to do so in the context of recent Canadian colonial history, to challenge historically white, Christian, heteronormative narratives as it relates to personal and cultural identity. 

The first fruit of this is a collaboration with Early Music Vancouver and their artist in residence, Cree-Metis baritone Jonathan Adams, performing Bach's Cantata BWV 82 "Ich habe genug", directed by Alan Corbishley with Alex Weimann conducting Pacific Baroque Orchestra, and video from Michael Heid, and recorded live on 5 August 2021. The performance also features a concert performance of BWV 56, which will be the subject of a companion video project.

Full details from the STA website, and the full performance is available on YouTube.

Unfamiliar voices: Société de musique contemporaine du Québec's new season (live & on-line) gives us a chance to explore a range of Canadian composers

For 2021/22, the Société de musique contemporaine du Québec (SMCQ) is presenting a series of monographic concerts dedicated to Québec composers; as the concerts are being presented both live and on-line this means that audiences outside the Québec area have a chance to explore music by contemporary Canadian composers.

The season begins on 26 September 2021 with an event devoted to André Hamel, who has been active as a composer since the mid-1980s. Then on 10 October there are three contemporary operas by women composers and librettists, composer Sonia Paço-Rocchia and librettist Marie-Ève Bouchard, composer Parisa Sabet and librettist Nika Khanjani, composer Anna Pidgorna and librettist Maria Reva.   

Further ahead there are portrait concerts devoted to Simon Bertrand, Michel Longtin, Jean Lesage,  and Linda Bouchard.

None of the composers are well known in the UK, and the monographic concert format will give us a chance to explore a range of unfamiliar voices.

Full details from SMCQ's website

We can certainly dream! Tempting Summer plans for the largest classical music festival in Canada, the Festival de Lanaudière

Amphithéâtre Fernand-Lindsay, the main venue of the Festival de Lanaudière

International travel might be tricky at the moment, but we can certainly dream! And this Summer's Festival de Lanaudière in Canada certainly has plenty to tempt. Set in Lanaudière, a region in Quebec that is North East of Montreal and which is popular as a holiday destination, it is the largest classical music festival in Canada. Under artistic director Renaud Loranger, this year's festival is the 44th edition and is presenting four weekends of concerts from 17 July to 8 August 2021, featuring the Orchestre symphonique de Montréal and its chorus, Les Grands Ballets Canadiens, Les Violons du Roy and Orchestre Métropolitain.

There is a diverse range of programmes from a new ballet to Brahms' German Requiem, soprano Karina Gauvin in arias by Mozart and Gluck, Poulenc's Concert Champetre,  pianist Marc-André Hamelin in all five Beethoven piano concertos over two concerts with Orchestre Métropolitain and Yannick Nézet-Séguin, Piazzolla's Seasons of Buenos Aires,  Martinu's Frescoes of Piero della Francesca and a new work by Canadian composer Barbara Assiginaak. There are also smaller scale concerts in churches, and fifteen concerts in open air spaces.

Four concerts are being broadcast on-line, so we can catch some of the magic even if we can't travel:

• Songs of Love - OSM Chorus, 18 July 2021
• Destination Buenos Aires - Les violons du Roy, 24 July 2021
• Romanticism in the French style - OSM, Jacques Lacombe, Bryan Cheng (cello), 31 July 2021
• All Hamelin, All Beethoven - Marc-André Hamelin, OSM, Yannick Nézet-Séguin, 6 August 2021

The concerts will be available on the Thursday of the week following the concert,  and the video will be available for 14 days. Once downloaded, you have 48 hours to listen to it. Price : 15$ (CAN) 

Further information from the festival website.    

Introducing the music of Katia Makdissi-Warren

The name of composer  Katia Makdissi-Warren might be entirely new to you. She is resident in Quebec but her background mixes the Middle-East and Canada, whilst her music draws in a whole variety of influences. She studied composition in Quebec and in Hamburg, as well as Arabic and Syrian music in Beirut, and her teachers included Ennio Morricone. Now, thanks to the wonders of the inter-web, there is the chance to explore Makdissi-Warren's music. 

On 17 June 2021, the Société de musique contemporaine du Québec (SMCQ) concludes its hybrid season (concerts with audience and live stream) with the Dialogues at the Cocathédrale Saint-Antoine-de-Padoue in Longueuil, Canada. The concert is live in the church but will also be live-streamed, and for those who cannot cope with the time differences, the concert is available on catch-up for six months.

The concert presents music for flute, harp and voice by Makdissi-Warren, Caroline Lizotte and Marc Hyland. the organisers describe it thus, 'Navigating between the written and the improvised, Dialogues leads listeners into a complex and mysterious sound universe, where the modern flute is imbued with the colours of the nay (a reed flute played in Arab, Turkish and Persian music), bringing together a dozen musicians in a skilful blend of western and eastern influences '

The music will include six works by Makdissi-Warren, Dialogue du silence (2003), Jetstream (2007), Ô Virtus (2018), Chants du prophète (2012, 21), La dame du Nil (2011), and the premiere of Dialogue de l'écho (2003, 2021) performed by Marie-Hélène Breault, artistic director, arrangements, flutes ; Guy Pelletier, flutes; Geneviève Déraspe, flutes; Jeffrey Stonehouse, flutes ; Ghislaine Deschambault, mezzo-soprano; Vincent Ranallo, baritone; Catherine Meunier, percussions ; Pamela Reimer, piano ; Antoine Malette-Chénier, harp.

The concert's artistic director Marie-Hélène Breault has been working with the composer for 15 years, and describes Makdissi-Warren's music has having a dialogue between cultures, so that several pieces on the programme are inspired by taqasim, a form of improvisation found in Arab music.

The concert is free, full details from the SMCQ website.