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.”

The OSM and Kent Nagano reveal season 2018/19 (March 2018)

The Orchestre symphonique de Montréal and Kent Nagano unveiled the programming for season 2018/19, marking the OSM’s 85. season. At a glance, the season will offer more than 100 concerts, 60 or so programs, 112 artists and 2 tours.

“The OSM’s 85th season is a reflection of the strong Montreal tradition, a musical tradition which has always had a core. This is to say that in our tradition, a symphony is a picture or a metaphor for human life and human experiences. It is a gigantic palette of styles with special connections to the folklore of many countries and regions within. A symphony is “diversity in unity” and it is exactly that which makes up our special social life in both small and large scale. We invite you all to celebrate with us this rich musical tradition.”  – states Music Director Kent Nagano.

The first tour in September 2018 will lead the OSM and Kent Nagano to Nunavik, the Far North of Quebec to visit six villages in three nations: Inuit, Innu and Cree. The opera Chaakapesh, The Trickster’s Quest by Tomson Highway and Matthew Ricketts was commissioned for the occasion. The idea of this tour is to share the OSM’s classical music with all the peoples of Quebec and is intended as a meeting point between the different cultures by way of rich and respectful interaction through music. Thus the project will consist of a musical journey from North to South, from Nunavik to the Côte-Nord, by way of Saguenay-Lac-Saint-Jean and northern Quebec.

A twelfth European tour is on the agenda for March 2019 (11 – 23 March 2019), when the Orchestra will be visiting some of the most highly esteemed concert halls of the great capitals of Europe: Dusseldorf (Tonhalle), Hamburg (Elbphilharmonie), Essen (Philharmonie), Vienna (Konzerthaus), Paris (Philharmonie), Brusells (Palais des Beaux-Arts), Munich (Philharmonie Im Gasteig), Regensburg (University Audimax) and Berlin, at the prestigious Philharmonie. Soloists will be pianists Jean-Yves Thibaudet and Rafał Blechacz as well as Alto Marie-Nicole Lemieux.

In Montréal, Kent Nagano will stand at the rostrum of the orchestra with Bach’s Mass in b minor (4, 5 Dec 2018) and a Brahms Symphony cycle (7 – 10 Feb 2019), among others. Guests of the new OSM season will be violinists Anne-Sophie Mutter and Julian Rachlin, pianists Leif Ove Andsnes, Evgeny Kissin and Daniil Trifonov and the conductors Christoph Eschenbach and François-Xavier Roth, and many more.

Find here the OSM’s program for season 2018/19. And click here for the video trailer of the new season.