Tourstart: OSM and Kent Nagano’s Europe Tour (March 2019)

On Monday, 11 March the big European tour by Kent Nagano and the OSM will start with a concert in Dusseldorf. On the program will be works by Debussy, Mozart and Stravinsky.

The orchestra and Kent Nagano will also be guest in the Elbphilharmonie Hamburg, Berlin Philharmonie, Vienna Concert House and Paris’ Cité de la musique, among others.

Soloists of the tour are pianists Jean-Yves Thibaudet and Rafał Blechacz as well as alto Marie-Nicole Lemieux.

Find here an overview of the tourdates.

Kent Nagano | Announcement of the Orchestre symphonique de Montréal’s 2019-20 Season (March 2019)

Kent Nagano and the Orchestre symphonique de Montréal (OSM) announced their coming season 2019/20 on 28 February 2019. It will be Kent Nagano’s final season as Music Director of the OSM and with more than 100 concerts it will feature celebrations, prestigious invited guests, and performances of great masterpieces of the symphonic repertoire.

At the season’s opening concert, in September 2019, Kent Nagano and the OSM will present works by Shostakovich, Schoenberg and Rachmaninoff. Throughout the season, they will perform concert programs, which reflect Kent Nagano’s legacy with the orchestra: Mahler’s Symphony No. 5, Bruckner’s Symphony No. 4 as well as the traditional Christmas program, this year featuring Bach’s Christmas Oratorio. In January 2020, Kent Nagano will also conduct the OSM’s first cycle of Schubert Symphonies at a festival dedicated to showing the many facets of this composer.
In February 2020, Pascal Dusapin’s Symphony pour orgue et orchestre “Waves” will have its North America premiere both in the Maison Symphonique and in Toronto under the direction of Kent Nagano – after being world premiered in Hamburg’s Elbphilharmonie in January.

In October 2019, the OSM and Kent Nagano will be performing on a tour in Latin America and in Chicago. Soloists will be the violinist Veronika Eberle and Pianist Denis Matsuev.

In March 2020, the orchestra and its Music Director will be re-invited to New York’s Carnegie Hall. Together with pianist Mikhail Pletnev they will perform Schumann’s Piano Concerto in A minor.

Kent Nagano about his last season as the OSM’s Music Director:

“Nearly twenty years after my very first collaboration with the OSM as a guest conductor, the 2019–2020 season provides the Orchestra with a new opportunity to offer themes that engage with a variety of perspectives and experiences: we hope they will be a source of wonder and vitality for our audience members while remaining at the forefront of our modern lives.”

Here you can find further information on the Orchestre symphonique de Montréal’s new season 2019/20.

Kent Nagano and Charles Richard-Hamelin in Montréal (October 2018)

On 12 and 14 October, Kent Nagano and pianist Charles Richard-Hamelin will perform concerts with the OSM. On the program will be Chopin’s piano concertos No. 1 and 2 as well as the Serenade in e flat major by Richard Strauss.

The concert on Sunday, 14 October will be streamed as Facebook live on the Facebook page of the Orchestre symphonique de Montréal, streamed and presented by Medici.tv. Find here a link with further information. The stream will start at 20.30 CET (19.30 GMT)

Kent Nagano and the OSM go on Nunavik Tour (September 2018)

From 9 – 19 September Kent Nagano and musicians of the OSM will go on tour to the very north of Quebec and will trace a path from the arctic down through Quebec’s interior toward the Côte-Nord. The chamber opera Chaakapesh of the young Canadian composer Matthew Ricketts was commissioned especially  for  this upcoming  tour. 10 years after their first visit, Kent Nagano and the OSM will visit Inuit, Cree and Innu villages and will perform Chaakapesh, composed for five languages (Cree, Inuktitut, Innu, French and English). Cree playwright Tomson Highway provided the idea and wrote the libretto. It is based on a Cree legend, similar to the biblical Noah story. Find here an interview with the composer Matthew Ricketts about the OSM commission.

Find here the performances dates and venues of the tour:

10 September
Kuujjuaq

12 September
Salluit

14 September
Kuujjuarapik

17 September
Oujé-Bougoumou

18 September
Mashteuiatsh

19 September
Uashat mak Mani-Utenam          

29 Aug – 2 Sept: Kent Nagano & the OSM present Virée Classique 2018 (August 2018)

The Orchestre symphonique de Montréal and its Music Director Kent Nagano present this year’s Virée Classique in Montréal from 29 August until 2 September.

The festival will offer concerts with soloists like violinist Patricia Kopatchinskaïa or pianists Paul Lewis and Alexei Volodi.

Find here more information on the concerts and the dates.

The OSM has created a trailer announcing the festival. You can click on it here.

Kent Nagano and the OSM on tour in Kracow and at the Salzburg Festival (July 2018)

Kent Nagano and the Orchestre symphonique de Montréal are currently in Europe and will give concerts in Kracow and at the Salzburg Festival, presenting Krzysztof Penderecki’s St. Luke Passion on the occasion of the composer’s 85. birthday anniversary.  The concert in Kracow is on 18 July.

The concert in Salzburg on 20 July will be the festival opening within the Ouverture spirituelle. The OSM will celebrate its festival debut with this concert.

Find here information on the tour on the webpages of OSM.

Kent Nagano & OSM: New CD “A quiet Place” at Decca (May 2018)

The Orchestre symphonique de Montréal (OSM) and Kent Nagano are proud to present the world premiere recording of the chamber version of Leonard Bernstein’s ‘A Quiet Place’, adapted by Garth Edwin Sunderland. It will be released on 22 June, ahead of the Bernstein centenary on 25th August 2018.

Premiered in 1983, Bernstein’s opera ‘A Quiet Place’ was the composer’s last work written for the stage and remains one of his lesser known large-scale compositions. The concert-version presented on the new album features a chamber orchestra and was recorded live at the Maison symphonique de Montréal  in May 2017.

Kent Nagano was introduced to Bernstein by Seiji Ozawa in 1984 and studied with him until his death in 1990. Nagano says, “For Bernstein music was life – the two were synonymous, inseparable. He never stopped exploring and pushing his own compositional language. The goal in this particular adaptation is to allow the spirited brilliance and poetic depth of the work to shine through – including dance rhythms and elements of American folklore. Our hope is that the timeless and universal quality of the piece and the genius of the composition are laid bare in this new recording.”