Music lovers around the world have reason to celebrate tonight, even if a global health pandemic has forced many into quarantine or precluded orchestras to perform before live audiences: Ludwig van Beethoven would have been 250 today. Or at least, he was baptized on Dec. 16, 1770, the closest record to his actual birthday. Radio stations, orchestras, fans of classical music and many others are recognizing the composer's genius by playing or listening to Beethoven's pieces. The prolific music writer was born in Bonn, Germany and died at the age of 56 in Vienna, Austria. But during his life, the composer left the world with musical scores that dominated the global art scene for two and half centuries. Beethoven's music has had a profound impact on many other musicians and ordinary people around the world. "I think it's so much the tremendous rhythmical vitality. I think that's a very important part of his music. Nobody quite wrote the way he did with rhythms and syncopations and accents that give his music a tremendous amount of life and verve," William Caplin, a music professor at The Schulich School of Music of McGill University, told Global News. The Orchestre Symphonique de Montréal (OSM) under former musical director, Kent Nagano, has performed all nine symphonies of Beethoven and on Jan. 12, the OSM will webcast a recent recording of Beethoven's 7th Symphony for 14 days. SEE THE Global News PAGE

The 2020 Juno Awards have wrapped, announcing a list of winners that has been on hold since the COVID-19 pandemic shuttered the in-person Saskatoon weekend of events in March. But tonight, June 29, the Canadian Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences (CARAS) and CBC combined the usual two-night series of events into an hour-and-a-half-long pre-recorded special, delivering a night that Canadian music fans have been waiting for. Winner for 'Classical album of the year: large ensemble' is Orchestre symphonique de Montréal, conducted by Kent Nagano, The John Adams Album. Released to coincide with Nagano's final season with the Montréal Symphony, The John Adams Album contains his key orchestral works conducted by one of his greatest, lifelong champions "Like all great pieces, each time one returns to them and restudies them, I'm able to find something more - new dimensions that I haven't seen before, other reflections of innovation and genius." - Kent Nagano on John Adams SEE ALL WINNERS ON CBC PAGE

Released to coincide with Nagano's final season with the Montréal Symphony, The John Adams Album contains his key orchestral works conducted by one of his greatest, lifelong champions "Like all great pieces, each time one returns to them and restudies them, I'm able to find something more - new dimensions that I haven't seen before, other reflections of innovation and genius." - Kent Nagano on John Adams. Continuing the award-winning series of orchestral and operatic recordings from OSM and Nagano on Decca, the OSM - The John Adams Album gets 2020 JUNO Award nomination for 'Classical Album of the Year: Large Ensemble'

"Common Tones in Simple Time" is featured on a 'minimalist' album brimming with sublime subtlety, which, like so many things in life, is much more than it first appears. The Montréal Symphony Orchestra's The John Adams Album presents some of John Adams's most spectacular orchestral works. Included are the Schoenberg-inspired "Harmonielehre," the fast-paced "Short Ride in a Fast Machine," and Adams's first minimalist orchestral work, our focus this week on Out of the Box, "Common Tones in Simple Time." Minimalism is, broadly speaking, a compositional style characterized by simplicity and repetition -- think of it as music stripped down to the chassis. There is something deeply mesmerizing about minimalism, especially in the hands of composer John Adams. In the late Seventies there were very few models for an Minimalist orchestral style. So in a certain sense, I felt both the excitement as well as the challenge of venturing in to uncharted terrain. - John Adams, on 'Common Tones in Simple Time' Minimalism grew out of one of the more heated musical debates of the 20th century: what should Western "classical" music be? Should it be deeply complex, cerebral, and impenetrable? Should it be big and richly colorful, shot through with meaning and story? Or should it be undecorated and simple, aiming for a sonic and rhythmic aesthetic above all else? Composers like Arnold Schoenberg and Alban Berg believed firmly in the first, creating atonal and mathematically derived serial compositions. Gustav Mahler, Ralph Vaughan Williams, and Richard Strauss were deeply committed to the second, following in the footsteps of Romantics like Brahms and Wagner. But the "minimalists," composers like Philip Glass, Steve Reich, and eventually John Adams, disavowed the central tenets of either of those compositional philosophies and set about creating something simpler than atonal music and without the narrative aspects of the Romantics. It was... minimal. I really enjoy the driving subtlety of minimalism because I find it really easy to become enveloped in it. And I find John Adams, of all the early minimalist composers (having come to the style nearly a decade after it was first invented in Manhattan in the 1960s), the most interesting to listen to. As writer Michael Steinberg puts it, John Adams's works are "full of surprises, always enchanting in the glow and gleam of their sonority, and bursting with the energy generated by their harmonic movement." It's as though John Adams took aspects of all three of the aforementioned 20th-century schools of compositional thought, and wove them into his own unequivocably unique sound tapestry. It's not simple music. It's just minimal, and mesmerizingly so. p.p1 {margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px 'Helvetica Neue'; color: #4d4d4d} p.p2 {margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px 'Helvetica Neue'; color: #4d4d4d; min-height: 14.0px} LISTEN TO THE SEGMENT Catch Out of the Box on the radio Sunday nights at 9, following WCRB In Concert.

Though Habs fans did not get the result they wanted Thursday night against the Oilers, they did get a rare treat as Montreal Symphony Orchestra maestro Kent Nagano took in the game and played the national anthem to the capacity crowd at the Bell Centre. Nagano was spotted on the metro green line before the game with his daughter Karen. "They managed to really seduce me to this great tradition," said Nagano. "It's wonderful... We're really looking forward to opening up the match today." This is the last year of Nagano's tenure as artistic director and conductor with the MSO. His final concert in Montreal will be in August.  WATCH THE CTV News VIDEO p.p1 {margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px 'Helvetica Neue'; color: #4d4d4d} p.p2 {margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px 'Helvetica Neue'; color: #4d4d4d; min-height: 14.0px} span.Apple-tab-span {white-space:pre}

The John Adams Album" continues the award-winning series of recordings from the Montreal Symphony Orchestra and Kent Nagano on Decca, released in time for Nagano's final, triumphant season with the orchestra. The recording contains the composer's key orchestral works, including Common Tones in Simple Time and Harmonielehre, conducted by one of his greatest champions. For December 2, 2019, The Montreal Symphony Orchestra, Kent Nagano - The John Adams Album is the WFMT: Chiccago 'Featured New Release.'

Kent Nagano previews his last summer with the Montreal Symphony Orchestra.cHis name is synonymous with our city's vibrant cultural scene and music to the ears to so many Montrealers. Kent Nagano became Music Director of the Montreal Orchestra in September 2006. At the time of his appointment he said ..."Symphony to be the new Music Director of this highly respected Orchestra as of 2006 - and, at the same time, become part of the wonderful Montréal community which, for me, combines the best features of North American and European Cultures " Nagano's highlights with the orchestra include the complete cycles of Beethoven and Mahler Symphonies, Schoenberg's Gurrelieder, concert versions of Wagner's Tannhäuser, Tristan and Isolde, The Rheingold and Messiaen's Saint Francois d'Assise, and the concert series' featuring the works of Dutilleux (2010-2011 ) and Boulez (2011-2012) alongside the more contemporary works of Ives, Ustvolskaya, Nono and Messiaen. New Music also featured prominently with commissions from Canadian composers Michel Longtin and Ana Sokolovic.  The Maestro joins Global News' Andrea Howick in studio to talk about his book and last summer with the MSO. Watch p.p1 {margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px 'Helvetica Neue'; color: #4d4d4d} p.p2 {margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px 'Helvetica Neue'; color: #4d4d4d; min-height: 14.0px}

At age 67, the Californian-born maestro has been a fixture in the musical landscape in Europe for decades. Having occupied important positions in Berlin and Munich, Nagano is now the general music director at the Staatsoper opera house in Hamburg. Always maintaining a bicontinental existence, he went from the Los Angeles Opera to the Orchestre Symphonique de Montréal, where he will have served as music director from 2006 until 2020. DW caught up with the jet-setting maestro during his final European tour with the musicians from Canada from March 11-25. The star conductor explains to DW why his America no longer exists, why Quebec belongs to Europe and what he's looking forward to now. READ THE Q&A

Worldwide celebrations of the hundredth birthday of Leonard Bernstein, which fell on August 25th, have touted the man as a kind of musical superhero, who conquered every medium he touched: conducting, composing, Broadway shows, education, television, the intricate game of American celebrity.  The centenary year has yielded not only hagiography but also candid biographical accounting. Jamie Bernstein, one of Bernstein's three children, has written a riveting, disconcerting memoir, "Famous Father Girl," which gives an unsparing picture of the downward spiral of her father's later years, when he was "prone to throwing lit cigarettes at us across the dinner table or calling people ‘fuckface.' " Charlie Harmon, who served as Bernstein's assistant in the nineteen-eighties, is even more explicit, in "On the Road and Off the Record with Leonard Bernstein," documenting the maestro's habit of patting his assistants' crotches. Yet neither book is a denunciation of its subject: a troubled adoration persists, along with a sympathy for Bernstein's inner torments. Bernstein's more or less official birthday party took place at the Tanglewood festival, the summer home of the Boston Symphony. This was fitting, since he grew up in and around Boston, and effectively began his conducting career at Tanglewood, in 1940, when he took up studying with Serge Koussevitzky. That career ended in the same place, fifty years later, on August 19, 1990, when Bernstein led Beethoven's Seventh, faltering briefly in the middle. He died in New York two months later, his body ravaged by alcohol, amphetamines, and cigarettes. Tanglewood's centennial concert involved five conductors-Michael Tilson Thomas, Christoph Eschenbach, Keith Lockhart, John Williams, and Andris Nelsons, the current music director of the Boston Symphony-together with Yo-Yo Ma, Midori, Thomas Hampson, Susan Graham, and, for choreographed excerpts from "West Side Story," a gang of Broadway singers. Audra McDonald served as host and sang "Somewhere" as an encore. About fifteen thousand people were in attendance, with a huge crowd filling the lawn outside the Koussevitzky Music Shed. The anniversary year has also brought a flurry of recordings, together with inevitable repackagings of Bernstein's huge catalogue for the Sony and DG labels. A new account of "Mass," with Yannick Nézet-Séguin conducting the Philadelphia Orchestra, fails to match the blazing conviction that Marin Alsop achieved on a 2009 recording. A disk of Bernstein's three symphonies, with Antonio Pappano conducting the Santa Cecilia Orchestra, lacks urgency. But Kent Nagano's rendition of "A Quiet Place," in a nimble chamber-orchestra version by Garth Edwin Sutherland, is the best argument yet for Bernstein's final stage work. I gave particular attention to the prelude to Act III, the passage that Harmon describes in his book. Here the score withdraws into itself, exposing the ache behind the limpid melodies that Bernstein spun so effortlessly. It is the music of unquiet nights, in which music itself is the only consolation. ♦ p.p1 {margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px 'Helvetica Neue'; color: #606060} p.p2 {margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px 'Helvetica Neue'; color: #606060; min-height: 14.0px} READ THE FULL New Yorker ARTICLE

Leonard Bernstein composed one of the greatest of all musicals in West Side Story, as well as, in Candide, one of the few 20th-century comic operas that is likely to persist in the repertory. But until the end of his life he kept trying to write the great American opera – something that would hold up a truthful mirror to American life in the second half of the 20th century. A Quiet Place, first performed in Houston in 1983, was his final attempt and also his last stage work. He and his librettist Stephen Wadsworth designed it as a sequel to Trouble in Tahiti, the jazzy, frothy one-acter he'd composed in 1952. Looking in on the same family 30 years on, the opera begins with the central character from the earlier work, Sam, struggling to come to terms with the death of his wife, Dinah, in a car crash. Conducted with missionary fervour by Kent Nagano, who had worked with Bernstein on the 1986 premiere, the latest revision seems to bring A Quiet Place into sharper focus than its baggy predecessor. Whether it would seem convincing on stage is another matter – some passages of the snappy, vernacular dialogue still sit awkwardly. But the music is unmistakably intense, and intensely serious. Anyone hoping for the great melodic effusions of Bernstein's Broadway shows will be disappointed: this is a very personal meditation on loss and its consequences, and Nagano's cast – Lucas Meachem as the unswerving Sam, Gordon Bintner as his son Junior, and Claudia Boyle as his daughter Dede, with Joseph Kaiser as her husband Francois – make its seriousness very clear.   Photograph: Antoine Saito READ THE FULL Guardian REVIEW

Over the years, Montreal Symphony Orchestra (OSM) maestro Kent Nagano has grown to embody the spirit of the city's rich culture. "We wanted to create a symphony that was really vibrant and directly attached and directly relevant to the community," he said. With his laid-back attitude and long hair, the California-born was a breath of fresh air when he arrived as a guest conductor in 2004. "That was, for me, a moment when I felt this was a very special orchestra," he recalled. Global News Montreal Senior Anchor Jamie Orchard speaks to the 66-year-old maestro about how he reconnected Montrealers with classical music. WATCH THE VIDEO

The city marked its 375th birthday with the giant, free outdoor concert by three orchestras. Police say 80,000 converged at the foot of Mount Royal to watch the 'Montréal Symphonique' concert Saturday night celebrating the city's 375th anniversary. Put on by the city's three major orchestras - The Montreal Symphony Orchestra, the McGill Symphony Orchestra and the Orchestre Métropolitain, some of the country's biggest pop artists also participated including; Rufus Wainwright, Martha Wainwright, Patrick Watson, Isabelle Boulay, Coeur de pirate, Pierre Lapointe, DJ Champion and Diane Dufresne. About 300 musicians took part in all. 80,000 in attendance and more watched it live in a number of the city's parks. The show was also broadcast in full on Radio-Canada's ICI Musique radio station at 100.7 FM. The concert was directed by Simon Leclerc and Monique Giroux and included a stirring tribute to late singer songwriter Leonard Cohen and to filmmaker Denis Villeneuve for the soundtrack of his movie Arrival.  READ THE FULL CBC ARTICLE READ ICI.Radio-Canada.ca READ CTV News p.p1 {margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 10.0px Arial} p.p2 {margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 10.0px Arial; min-height: 11.0px} span.Apple-tab-span {white-space:pre}

Kent Nagano has announced he will leave the Orchestre symphonique de Montréal at the end of his contract in 2020, leaving both of Montreal's main orchestras along with the Toronto Symphony Orchestra looking for new musical directors to take up the baton. Mr. Nagano, who will be the second-longest-serving maestro at the OSM when his term ends, renewed his contract on his other main job with the Hamburg State Opera and Philharmonic Orchestra 20 months ago. Nagano who came to the Montreal orchestra when it was emerging from shambles, leaves the orchestra in much better position with a new concert hall and a solid balance sheet and years of critical acclaim.  As the Orchestre prepares for a new season, Nagano stopped by the Breakfast Television studios to discuss it along with the upcoming OSM Classical Spree, Festival Virée Classique!   WATCH THE INTERVIEW p.p1 {margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 10.0px Arial} p.p2 {margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 10.0px Arial; min-height: 11.0px}

Kent Nagano receives the ECHO KLASSIK Award for http://www.crossovermedia.net/artists/orchestre-symphonique-de-montreal-kent-nagano/projects/l-aiglon/‘Conductor Of The Year.' The ECHO KLASSIK trophies will be handed out on Sunday, 29 October 2017 during a gala event in the Elbphilharmonie Concert Hall in Hamburg. All of the artists receiving an ECHO KLASSIK this year have made outstanding contributions to Classical Music in the 2016/17 music year. Their performances have brought audiences closer to numerous works of traditional classical music, but also to so-called New Classics. Whether its brilliant solo artists, collaborating ensembles, global superstars or exciting young newcomers – each of these musicians has helped to foster the extraordinary diversity of classical music and ensured that it continues to reach and inspire people of all ages and social backgrounds on all possible distribution channels.  The ECHO KLASSIK Award ceremony will be held on 29th October in the Elbphilharmonie concert hall. The German public TV channel ZDF will broadcast the evening starting at 10 pm. Once again this year, popular television presenter Thomas Gottschalk will host the ECHO KLASSIK, marking the fourth time overall he acts as master of ceremonies for the event. The names of those award winners who will perform live that evening will be announced shortly.

Kent Nagano has announced he will leave the Orchestre symphonique de Montréal at the end of his contract in 2020, leaving both of Montreal's main orchestras along with the Toronto Symphony Orchestra looking for new musical directors to take up the baton. Mr. Nagano, who will be the second-longest-serving maestro at the OSM when his term ends, made the announcement Thursday afternoon without giving a precise reason for his departure, saying only it seemed a natural transition point. Mr. Nagano renewed his contract on his other main job with the Hamburg State Opera and Philharmonic Orchestra 20 months ago. READ THE FULL Globe and Mail ARTICLE

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The Orchestre symphonique de Montreal's (OSM) Decca recordings enjoyed great acclaim during Charles Dutoit's tenure (1977-2002) as conductor; perhaps it can recapture its former glory under current conductor, Kent Nagano, who took over the podium in 2006. This is the OSM's second release with Decca under this new contract. The first, the rarely-heard Ibert-Honegger opera L'Aiglon, was well-received and this new CD, comprised of pieces celebrating Halloween - some very familiar warhorses as well as some novelties such as Balakirev's Tamara and Charles Ives' brief Hallowe'en - is first-rate in nearly every respect. READ THE FULL Musical Toronto ARTICLE p.p2 {margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 10.0px Helvetica; min-height: 12.0px}

You couldn't find a better time to explore Montreal, the ‘City of Festivals' than from August 10-13 when the fine Orchestre Symphonique de Montréal and music director Kent Nagano throw their annual musical gift to the city, OSM's Classical Spree, Couche-Tard. Now in its fifth year, Classical Spree is a marathon of music, solo to symphonic, spread over four days that includes over forty performances and runs from late-mornings well into the cool Montreal nights. The Orchestre Symphonique de Montréal made a well-reviewed splash this spring with a ten-city US tour (‘This is a sound with tremendous polish but little varnish, and the result is exciting‘...) and OSM anchors Classical Spree with three concerts, starting with a free outdoor olympic-sized celebration at Montreal's Olympic Park. Galaxy of Heroes celebrates the 40th Anniversary of the 1976 Montreal Olympic Games (outside its iconic stadium) and features selections from Holts' The Planets and a hundred young Quebec athletes in a stadium spectacular conducted by Maestro Nagano. Later in the week, OSM plays Beethoven's popular Ninth Symphony, and wraps the festival with a unique night of works by Saint-Saëns, including the lush, romantic (and loud) ‘Organ' Symphony. OSM was gifted its new Grand Orgue Pierre-Béique in 2014, and the orchestra is showing off its new acquisition in this beautiful symphonic gem. READ THE FULL Huffington Post ARTICLE

Members of the German Symphony Orchestra have been joined by more than 900 amateur musicians in a spontaneous concert at a Berlin mall, entertaining hundreds of spectators. Led by conductor Kent Nagano, the "Symphonic Mob" performance treated passersby to works by the likes of Giuseppe Verdi, Richard Wagner and George Bizet, winning rave applause. Germany's Berliner Zeitung newspaper reported that about 950 amateur musicians joined 50 members of the German Symphony Orchestra, which said the event was a "rousing success". SEE THE FULL Australia Broacasting Company PAGE WATCH Breakfast Television Montreal

I suspect that this new recording will come as a complete surprise to most music-lovers. Who knew that two leading 20th-century French composers had collaborated on an opera? In fact, Honegger and Ibert had done just that. There was even a recording (incomplete) of L'Aiglon (The Eaglet) made in the LP era (1956), but it was never re-released on CD. Obscure pieces do turn up from time to time; not all are notable, but this one is a genuine discovery - or re-discovery if you will. The libretto, based on a play by Edmond Rostand – the man who wrote Cyrano de Bergerac – is excellent, and the music is superb. To top it off, we have a performance that makes the best possible case for the opera. Kent Nagano conducts L'Aiglon with a sure sense of style and colour, and the Decca engineers have given the performance excellent reproduction. Credit should also be given to the superior acoustical qualities of the OSM's home, Maison symphonique. READ THE FULL Musical Toronto ARTICLE

Each week KDFC: San Francisco members can download a free mp3 from some of the biggest releases in the world of Classical music. Since its founding in 1934, the Orchestre symphonique de Montréal has distinguished itself as a leader in the orchestral life of Canada and Québec. A cultural ambassador of the highest order, the Orchestra has earned an enviable reputation internationally through the quality of its many recordings and tours under the leadership of its Music Director, Kent Nagano. The OSM has made over 100 recordings for Decca, EMI, Philips, CBC Records, Analekta, ECM and Sony as well as on its own label, which have earned it some 50 national and international awards. Congratulations to the Orchestre and maestro Kent Nagano, Olivier Latry and Jean-Willy Kunz on winning The JUNO Awards for Best Classical Album of the Year - Large Ensemble as well as on this week's download pick for KDFC. Grab the thunderous finale from Saint-Saens' Organ Symphony now!'

Since its founding in 1934, the Orchestre symphonique de Montréal has distinguished itself as a leader in the orchestral life of Canada and Québec. A cultural ambassador of the highest order, the Orchestra has earned an enviable reputation internationally through the quality of its many recordings and tours. The OSM carries on that rich tradition under the leadership of its Music Director, Kent Nagano, while featuring innovative programming aimed at updating the orchestral repertoire and deepening the Orchestra's connection with the community. The OSM has made over 100 recordings for Decca, EMI, Philips, CBC Records, Analekta, ECM and Sony as well as on its own label, which have earned it some 50 national and international awards. Congratulations to the Orchestre symphonique de Montréal, Kent Nagano, Olivier Latry and Jean-Willy Kunz on winning The JUNO Awards for Best Classical Album of the Year - Large Ensemble!!  VIEW THE PAGE

Kent Nagano returned to Berkeley on Saturday night and received a hero's welcome. The Califonia-born conductor was music director of the Berkeley Symphony from 1978 to 2009, and longtime Bay Area music lovers who attended his concerts in Zellerbach Hall during that era still treasure the memories of his local premieres of new works by Ades, Adams and Ligeti. As Cal Performances director Matias Tarnopolsky observed in his preconcert remarks Saturday at Zellerbach, Nagano "called this stage his own" for 30 years. But this event was about Nagano's Montreal Symphony Orchestra, for which he has served as music director since 2006. As part of the orchestra's national tour, the Cal Performances event was both a homecoming for the conductor and a fresh introduction to the ensemble he has shaped over the past 10 years. READ THE FULL San Jose Mercury News ARTICLE

I you check out the surprisingly cursory Wikipedia entry on the Orchestre Symphonique de Montréal you will discovery that "in recent years, the OSM has fallen on tough times." That depends on how you define "recent" and maybe even "tough." If we are talking about the early 2000s, things weren't looking so hot. If we are talking about the triumphant concert the orchestra gave at Granada Theatre here Thursday night, there was all manner of heat - instrumental glow, sustaining emotional warmth and, when wanted, scorching fire - a rare and marvelous combination and something that can be produced only by an orchestra in glowing health. READ THE FULL Los Angeles Times REVIEW

Spring arrived three days late at Jacobs Music Center's Copley Symphony Hall. On Wednesday, Kent Nagano led the Montreal Symphony Orchestra in a thrilling performance of Stravinsky's "The Rite of Spring." It was joined by two more early 20th-century masterpieces: Prokofiev's Piano Concerto no. 3 and Debussy's "Jeux" (Games). In the MSO's fantastic performance, presented by the La Jolla Music Society, instrumental colors melted into each other and melodies seamlessly transformed. The musicians worked together like a finely calibrated car engine and transmission, a smooth trip from start to finish. They have a wide dynamic range, producing subtle pianissimos, yet capable of fortissimos that engulfed the audience. In "Jeux," climaxes came one after the next, gradually building up, dying away, only to surge back again, all done fluidly and organically.  READ THE FULL San Diego Union-Tribune REVIEW

Kent Nagano can be heard is on a series of outstanding recordings with the Orchestre Symphonique de Montréal over the last decade. These include a Beethoven symphony cycle, Mahler recordings with German baritone Christian Gerhaher ("Das Lied von der Erde" is a must) and Unsuk Chin's phenomenal Violin Concerto, all of which show the Montrealers to be in gorgeous shape. The latest are two seemingly less significant releases on the Analekta label revolving around Saint-Saëns. Expect the unexpected. For one thing, there is Montreal's orchestral sound, which has acquired a burnished and near mystical warmth under Nagano. For another, there is Analekta's showcase recorded sound, the finest I've heard of an orchestra in some time. If you have the equipment to play hi-res digital files, you can find them (at remarkably reasonable prices) on the Analekta website. Each release features a famous, and over-recorded, Saint-Saëns' Third - the Symphony No. 3 and Violin Concerto No. 3. But Nagano places each score in an unusual context. The symphony, which features organ, is surrounded by recent works for orchestra and organ by Samy Moussa and Kaija Saariaho that Nagano commissioned for the OSM. A 31-year-old composer from Montreal, Moussa is a dazzling colorist, and his "A Globe Itself Unfolding" glowingly immerses the organ in an ocean of orchestral sonorities. Saariaho's "Maan Varjot," which the Los Angeles Philharmonic performed in 2014, explores cooler and harsher but highly original organ/orchestra colors. The soloists are the orchestra's emeritus organist, Olivier Latry, and its resident one, Jean-Willy Kunz. For a survey of Saint-Saëns' three violin concertos, Nagano relies on the OSM's suave young concertmaster, Andrew Wan. What is unexpected here is that the little-known first two concertos are worth the excavation for their melodic freshness and verve, while the third, a virtuoso showpiece, sounds just as fresh when played with reserve and class. Sonically, Nagano's refinement stands in considerable contrast to the more brightly colored and detailed OSM sound that previous music director Charles Dutoit made famous in a series of spectacular Decca recordings produced in the early digital age. But Decca has now signed the orchestra again, and the first release with Nagano is a find: an obscure French opera, "L'Aiglon" (The Eaglet), jointly composed by Arthur Honegger and Jacques Ibert.  Decca's engineers expect the expected in their attempt to revive on record the crystalline OSM sparkle of old. That's not entirely inappropriate, given the quantity of sparkle that "L'Aiglon" supplies and the careful attention Nagano pays to telling details. But this orchestra no longer needs Dutoit's brilliance. Nagano has taken it to less obvious, more ethereal realms. READ THE FULL Los Angeles Times REVIEW

Most visiting orchestras can be relied on to pack their most glamorous party pieces as tour baggage, doing so perhaps more to seek audience favor than to make a serious statement about what they are all about musically. The Montreal Symphony Orchestra, which delivered an impressive and often exciting concert Friday night at Symphony Center, is a notable exception to that depressing rule. What set the program apart was how cannily its components - all reflecting the aesthetic ferment of early 20th century Paris - revealed the deeply ingrained Gallic sensibility of Nagano's orchestra, also how carefully that ensemble has preserved the best stylistic qualities of a heritage Charles Dutoit refined during his 24-year tenure as Nagano's predecessor. READ THE FULL Chicago Tribune REVIEW

The last time the Montreal Symphony Orchestra came to Chicago, Ronald Reagan was in the last year of his presidency, The Last Emperor was Best Picture of the Year, and U2‘s Joshua Tree won the Grammy for Best Album. More to the point, Charles Dutoit was music director of Orchestre symphonique de Montreal and the partnership was at the peak of their international fame before their bitter bad breakup of 2002. Kent Nagano has been leading the orchestra for a decade now, and on the evidence of Friday night's impressive concert at Orchestra Hall, the Quebec ensemble appears to be thriving once again under its American music director. Nagano's thoughtful program brought together three near-contemporaneous works that showed the roiling creative cauldron of French-Russian influence in pre- and post-World War I Paris. READ THE FULL Chicago Classical Review

I could not help wondering this on Tuesday evening, when Kent Nagano conducted the Montreal Symphony Orchestra in an impressive program at Carnegie Hall, this ensemble's first appearance in New York in five years. Mr. Nagano opened with a slyly seductive account of Ravel's "La Valse," followed by a majestic performance of Beethoven's Third Piano Concerto with the distinguished Portuguese pianist Maria João Pires, then ended with a grim, weighty take on Stravinsky's "The Rite of Spring." That this orchestra, which Mr. Nagano has directed since 2006, had not played in New York since the Spring for Music festival at Carnegie in 2011 was only one issue. Why has the California-born Mr. Nagano, 64, a major international artist, hardly been engaged by New York's leading orchestra and opera company? READ THE FULL New York Times REVIEW

As part of its cross-country tour, the Orchestre Symphonique de Montréal dazzled Symphony Hall Wednesday night under the direction of music director Kent Nagano in Debussy's Prélude à l'après-midi d'un faune, and Stravinsky's Rite of Spring, and Prokofiev's Third Piano Concerto with Russian piano sensation Daniil Trifonov. Each of the works represents an integral part of the Russian-French musical ingenuity of the early decades of the 20th century, connected by Diaghilev's Ballets Russes and Vaclav Nijinsky. This stylistic and cultural common tone united this troika of works, similar in conception yet distinct in execution. READ THE FULL The Boston Musical Intelligencer REVIEW

This week, the Montréal Symphony Orchestra returns to Chicago for the first time since 1988. Friday, musicians from the Orchestra join pianist Daniil Trifonov for a live concert and conversation with WFMT host Lisa Flynn at 10:00 am. MSO Music Director Kent Nagano joins Kerry Frumkin at 11:00 am as a guest host. Later, the orchestra performs at Symphony Center under Nagano's direction. Nagano recently revealed his mantra for programming classical music: "the status quo has no meaning." In anticipation of his Chicago appearances, he spoke about how challenging the status quo has made the MSO's audiences some of the youngest in North America. "On one level, it's really no mystery," Nagano admitted.  "Classical music represents exceptional quality, which is to say quality that is divorced from what is popular.  It represents quality so high it is divorced from time.  That's why when we return for the twentieth, fiftieth, seventy-fifth times to hear a Beethoven symphony, we hear that symphony relevant to ourselves and our own time.  Yes, it was written 200 years ago, but it is pertinent to our experience as humans living in the 21st century." READ TH FULL WFMT POST

Urbanism, minimalism, Haydn, anniversaries and a steady if subtle stress on the 20th century: these are some of the themes of the 2016-17 OSM season, presented Wednesday by music director Kent Nagano at city hall. "We are only 16 years into the 21st century," Nagano said in an interview earlier this week. "To me it's fascinating that when I was conducting 20th-century music in the 20th century, it was considered avant-garde and a box-office risk. How quickly has the perspective changed." There is surely little risk involved in the season-opening performances in the Maison symphonique on Sept. 7, 8 and 10 of Carl Orff's Carmina Burana. This immensely popular cantata of 1936 is coupled with György Ligeti's Concert Românesc of 1951, which the late Hungarian once personally asked Nagano to program. READ THE FULL Montreal Gazette ARTICLE

Each week KDFC: San Francisco members can download a free mp3 from some of the biggest releases in the world of Classical music. ANALEKTA's catalogue already features seven of Beethoven's nine symphonies performed by the Orchestre Symphonique de Montréal, under the direction of Maestro Kent Nagano. The Canadian label is now releasing the famed composer's complete nine symphonies, together in a 6 CD box-set: Between The Enlightenment and Revolution. Produced by the OSM, this complete set of Beethoven's symphonies is the result of several years of work and effort. With its 56-page booklet, this multiple album set reflects a significant period of Beethoven's life, between 1800 and 1830. You can download the moving Allegretto from Beethoven's Symphony #7 this week, absolutely free!

    This new album on the Analekta label celebrates the Grand Orgue Pierre-Béique, the massive new Casavant organ recently installed in La Maison symphonique de Montréal, the 2,100-seat concert hall that is home to the Orchestre symphonique de Montréal. Named after the founder and general manager of the OSM from 1939 to 1970, this organ bears the Casavant opus number 3,900. With 109 registers, 83 stops, 116 ranks and 6,489 pipes, it's one of the largest organs ever built by Casavant. (View photos of the Grand Orgue Pierre-Béique in the gallery above.) The OSM and its music director, Kent Nagano, threw a bash on May 28, 29 and June 1, 2014, to inaugurate the organ. Highlights of those concerts are preserved on this new release, streaming above until Oct. 23. The centrepiece of the album is Camille Saint-Saëns's Symphony No. 3 in C minor, Op. 78, known as his Organ Symphony. The OSM's guest for this work is Olivier Latry, organist at Notre-Dame Cathedral in Paris and professor of organ at the Paris Conservatory. He's also organist emeritus of the OSM. Rounding out the album are two new works. First, A Globe Itself Infolding, an 11-minute work for organ and orchestra commissioned by the OSM from Samy Moussa, a Montreal composer now living in Berlin. The organ soloist is Jean-Willy Kunz, the OSM's organist in residence. The third work on the album is Maan varjot (Earth's shadows), a three-movement work for organ and orchestra by Finnish composer Kaija Saariaho, dedicated to French composer Henri Dutilleux who died in 2013. It was co-commissioned by the OSM, the Orchestre national de Lyon and London's Southbank Centre. Latry is the soloist. Pre-order Saint-Saëns - Moussa - Saariaho on Archambault. Tracklist 1-4. Saint-Saëns: Symphony No. 3 in C minor, Op. 78 I. Adagio - Allegro moderato II. Poco adagio III. Allegro moderato - Presto IV. Maestoso - Allegro 5. Moussa: A Globe Itself Infolding 6-8. Saariaho: Maan varjot I. Misterioso ma intenso II. Lento calmo III. Energico VIEW THE CBC - First Play PAGE

There is no mistaking the music of Unsuk Chin. Born in Korea and based in Berlin, Chin brings a range of cultural perspectives to her work. She often describes her music in terms of light and colour, and evokes dreamscapes when recalling her inspirations. Yet her music also has a strong gestural quality, her musical ideas are clear and definite, often subtle but never ambiguous. It is an approach that has won her many admirers and advocates, among them some of classical music's biggest names, including Simon Rattle, Esa-Pekka Salonen and Gustavo Dudamel. And she has received numerous awards, most notably the Grawemeyer in 2004, often described as the Nobel Prize of classical music. UK audiences have had several opportunities to hear her music in recent years. Her Cello Concerto was premiered at the BBC Proms in 2010 by Alban Gerhardt, followed in the 2014 season by a performance of Šu, her concerto for sheng (the traditional Chinese mouth organ) and orchestra given by soloist Wu Wei and the Seoul Philharmonic. In 2011, the BBC Symphony Orchestra organised a full day of concerts devoted to Chin's music, showcasing the vast array of influences and ideas that have contributed to her music over the last two decades. Unsuk Chin has had a particularly high profile this year as a result of her first opera, Alice in Wonderland. The piece dates back to 2007, but a new multimedia staging of the opera by Netia Jones toured to several cities around the world, and played to a capacity audience in London. Ilan VolkovDance is at the heart of her latest piece, little wonder perhaps, given the focus on gesture and movement in all her music. The work, entitled Mannequin, has been commissioned by the National Youth Orchestra of Great Britain. They will be giving the premiere on 9 April in Gateshead, in a concert led by the enterprising young Israeli conductor Ilan Volkov. READ THE FULL ArtsDesk PIECE

Modernist Korean composer Unsuk Chin brought her arresting version of Lewis Carroll's iconic creation - Alice in Wonderland to LA's Walt Disney Concert Hall last Friday February 26. The opera featured - Rachele Gilmore as Alice and Christopher Lemmings as Mouse, and Finnish conductor Susanna Malkki conducted the Los Angeles Philharmonic. A huge undertaking, the project was written for Fifteen singers assuming 31 roles and an eclectic orchestra that includes plenty of utensils. Nothing in this opera is easy including executing the high pitched sounds compliments of the Los Angeles Children's Chorus.  READ THE FULL Los Angeles Times REVIEW READ NYTimes REVIEW READ Independent REVIEW READ THE Telegraph READ ClassicalMusic.com 

It was a concerto, her 2001 work for violin, that won Unsuk Chin the high-profile Grawemeyer award for music three years later. The three works here – the Piano Concerto composed in 1997, the other two in 2009, though the Cello Concerto was revised last year – show how writing concertos has been a consistent thread through Chin's orchestral output; as well as these works, she has also produced a double concerto for piano and percussion, and one for clarinet, which received its world premiere this month. For all its craftmanship and vividly imagined textures, the Violin Concerto was relatively conventional, both in its form and in the way it treated the relationship between the soloist and the orchestra, but in these pieces there's much more sense of Chin taking the concerto form and reimagining it in her own terms.  READ THE FULL guardian REVIEW

The Montreal Symphony Orchestra has unveiled its $4 million pipe organ at the Maison symphonique, joining the ranks of North American orchestras installing the king of instruments in their concert halls during the past two decades. Inaugurated by four sold-out events that will conclude Monday, the organ was built by the internationally known Canadian maker Casavant Frères. It is an imposing instrument with 83 stops (types of sounds) and 6,489 pipes-more than 25 tons of high-octane power, brilliance, flexibility and coloristic variety. But the organ's highest achievement is how beautifully it blends into the aural fabric of the orchestra and, a few quibbles aside, how well it sounds in the pleasingly reverberant 1,900-seat hall. READ THE FULL Wall Street Journal ARTICLE

A benefit concert featuring 20-year-old cellist Stéphane Tétreault and the I Medici di McGill orchestra will take place this Friday February 28. The performance is in support of the Viva! Sistema project at St. Gabriel's School in Montreal Viva! Sistema is an offshoot of El Sistema, a program introduced in Venezuela in 1975 by economist and musician José Antonio Abreu. The idea was to give economically disadvantaged children the opportunity to make music at no cost, and it was wildly successful. Children in the program became members of the acclaimed Simon Bolivar Youth Orchestra, and some went on to become professional musicians. One such person was Gustavo Dudamel. Mr. Dudamel will conduct the Montreal Symphony next month. READ THE FULL Montreal Gazette ARTICLE.

Kent Nagano is set to remain as music director of the Montreal Symphony Orchestra until 2020 after agreeing to a contract extension. A California native, Nagano, 61, has held the position since 2006 and said "It is very, very moving, because of the depth of the honour, to be asked to carry this great institution on into the future. I feel that what we've accomplished since 2006, as impressive as it is, really reflects on the community of Montreal and the orchestra itself. There is something happening here, in Montreal, in Quebec. It's a very interesting time. The dynamics and the energy here are exceptional. And I speak as someone who travels the world."  READ THE FULL CBC ARTICLE.

The Orchestre symphonique de Montréal has announced their Bruckner's Sixth Symphony performance for April 16 2004 at Maison symphonique de Montréal, will be streamed live on medici.tv,  For the occasion, the Orchestre symphonique de Montréal, under its music director, Kent Nagano, will be welcoming pianist Till Fellner, who will perform Beethoven's Third Concerto. This is a first OSM / medici.tv collaboration and is avail for a 3 month period after live, made possible by Air Canada.  Available in 182 countries. Program: ROSSINI, Overture to William Tell
BEETHOVEN, Piano Concerto No. 3
BRUCKNER, Symphony No. 6  Anton Bruckner described his Sixth Symphony as the boldest of them all. Performed in its entirety only posthumously, under the direction of Gustav Mahler, it is known most of all today for its scherzo, one of the most beautiful that Bruckner composed. Kent Nagano also presents the overture to Rossini's William Tell, a great success in its time and the composer's final opera.

Conductor Kent Nagano is renowned for interpretations of clarity, elegance and intelligence. He is equally at home in music of the classical, romantic and contemporary eras, introducing concert and opera audiences throughout the world to new and rediscovered music and offering fresh insights into established repertoire. In this interview he discusses his career and the future of contemporary music. READ THE Sonograma Magazine INTERVIEW HERE

Kent Nagano and the OSM explore Korean composer Unsuk Chin's artistic landscape. Chin's music is modern in language, but lyrical in communicative power. The colour of her music might be explained by Chin's affinity for non-European music and by her occupation with electronic music. This recording principal work, the prestigious Grawemeyer award-winning Violin Concerto, Viviane Hagner shows an almost hauntingly masterful display of technique and artistry. Also on this recording, the iridescent Rocana, an orchestral work commissioned by Maestro Kent Nagano.

Rocana (2008)
The title is Sanskrit and means "room of light." For Unsuk Chin, the title does not have any specific religious or mythological meaning. Instead, it refers in many respects to the character of the work as well as to the composition techniques employed. The composer tells that in Rocana she was concerned with the behavior of beams of light – their distortion, refraction, reflections, and undulations. This was not a matter of mere illustration, but of their depiction by musical means: "Art as harmony parallel to nature" (Cezanne). Since sound waves – as the physical phenomenon of a bodiless oscillation – are similar to light waves, music seems the appropriate medium for a "translation" of light phenomena. Furthermore, physical phenomena like space depth and space density, spatial perceptions and illusions of various sorts were important associations in the composition process. Olafur Eliasson's installations The Weather Project and Notion Motion provided additional extra-musical inspiration. The music in Rocana flows uninterruptedly. The overall picture and the overall structure are one entity, one "tonal sculpture". However, one can look at it from various angles, since the inner structures are constantly changing. Even if the music at times gives the impression of stasis, subtle impulses, interactions, and reactions are continually present. Certain elements appear time and again, yet always in varied form. They are not developed: they instead lead seamlessly into one another and blend, forming new interactions and processes. Orderly structures suddenly turn into turbulence and vice versa. Pointilistic structures transform into cloudlike aggregates of sound and vice versa. The composer once pointed out that because of her cultural background she has "a certain aversion to the sound world produced by traditional symphony orchestras rooted in 19th-century aesthetics, and I feel a great deal of affinity for non-European musical cultures. That is why I always try to introduce a completely different color into my compositions based on my experience of non-European music." In Rocana, the instrumentation is more or less standard, but an attempt has been made to treat the orchestra like a "super-instrument" as well as like a virtuoso "illusion machine" that creates something new out of that which is familiar. Primarily through the combination of various instrumental techniques, through rhythmic development and the interplay of overtone structures and microtones, shifts and changes of timbre are achieved; light and color phenomena playfully alternate with one another. Violin Concerto
The instrumentation is definitely classic: a soloist and her violin are facing the orchestra. But in this case, the latter has been expanded by adding numerous percussion instruments. And within the group, they seem to form a distinct section of their own, conferring to the work a peculiar colour and intensity. They will not only be used to heighten the increasingly powerful sounds but will also be used to show all the richness in tone. The sensitivity to the rich possibilities offered by such "new" sounds grew out of the European musical framework: one has to remember the strong impression left by Javanese gamalan orchestras who performed at world fairs at the end of the 19th century, as well as by the discovery of Indian and African music. All this came late but started seeping into the creative process of European composers. With her Violin Concerto, Unsuk Chin does not only refer herself to a certain tradition but places it within a much wider cultural horizon. The work also refers to the different means and models taken by music in the last century. The work is made up of four movements. While listening to its sequence, one will clearly recognize the outline of the old symphonic form: an overture, a slower movement, a scherzo and to crown it all, a finale that harks back to material heard at the beginning of the work, thus closing the cycle. But in spite of the contradictions between the numerous layers and sections, the conflicts and dramatic aggravations do not by themselves determine the course of events. It is rather the large lines in the development, the dialogue and the interweaving of the fine transitions which will link the different levels, which thus become the center of action of the musical process. As far as virtuosity and technical challenge are concerned, the solo part leaves nothing to be desired. The player should see himself much more as a partner of the orchestra and its diverse sections than an adversary. Only in the first movement do we find something similar to a cadenza, in which the soloist can deliver a performance on his own. And even there, the solo offers half tones which change over long intervals, which then pick up on the previously played melody. In Unsuk Chin's Violin concerto, one often finds such "zooming" effects in the tonality and structure of the work. Ever since dissonance made its appearance on the musical scene, each contemporary composer must ask himself the question of how music can be sustained in a tri-dimentional continuum of time and space. In her concerto's first movement, Unsuk Chin applied numerous methods such as the contrast between the different movements, variations in the layering of events, varied changes in the course of the development and made use of strains between the static surfaces and the directed movements. Thus the first movement forms, in the strict sense of the compositional technique, a basis on which all other movements, which are shorter, will emanate. On the other hand, the second movement, which is made up of four sections of almost equal length, begins as an interval play by the open strings. Eventhough it is accompanied by percussion and plucked string instruments, it produces fine and checkered sounds. This part forms a serene contrast to the violin solo. It attempts to respond to it, just as in the first movement where the solo violin resonates and responds to the orchestra. All this occurs at a low level, even coming from the barely-heard sounds of the harmonics played by the string and woodwinds. The sounds surround the silence just like they would a blackdrop and allow for the deployment of the infinite musical possibilities. As a counterpoint, short and rapid passages are inserted and interrupt the quiet flow: it recalls the more rapid sections found in the first movement. The music heard at the beginning returns at the end, unchanged and more concise. It surrounds two middle sections. The first holds its basic quiet tempo; however it is able to expose certain elements in another light. The sustained notes are displaced by the tremolos of unease, the rapid entry of the strings is reflected in the extreme virtuosity of the solo parts, the drum effects seem to multiply the clusters of harps and celesta. If the first movement had started accompanied with the sounds of the marimba and the second with that of the percussion and plucked string instruments, similar to those of the glockenspiel, the third, in turn, is dedicated to the short percussive sounds. This movement, a scherzo and an intermezzo, is the shortest of the concerto and is laid out like a miniature musical scene. The four open strings and the interval gap between them, form the starting point of the first three movements. Here, the fourth offers somewhat of a contrast. It begins within a very high position, set in a form which the spectrum will intensify, then take it to lower levels. The recollections of the preceeding movements will culminate in the end with clear references to the work's beginning. The cycle is thus complete. In it was fulfilled a musical process in which the tone colours, the quiet flow of time, the relation to different cultures and a non linear logic of musical development, all contribute to create an individual form of expression. By her musical disposition, Unsuk Chin's work opens perspectives on the different historical and musical levels and reconnects with the diverse cultural traditions. To describe the Violin Concerto as a synthesis between European and Far-Eastern music, would remain too abstract and would not bring anything new to the subject. To qualify it as an attempt to intermediate between her ancestral (Korean) culture and her adopted (European) culture would miss the point. Unsuk Chin grew up with European music; it became as natural for her as it is to the old continent's native. The Violin Concerto is an individual performance of a highly sensitive artistry, created from a rich collection of personal experiences and bound with curiosity, experimentation and method. When hearing it, it does not wish to provoke, neither does it retrench into comfortable habits. We know that today, time is filled with a variety of pulsating events, this is now part of our daily expectations. And thus, an artistic work must pass the test of time by proving itself...