The Orchester symphonique de Montréal is offering a series of six webcast concerts that will be posted online until June 21. There will be five recordings of concerts presented in front of an audience and a digital exclusive with the return of conductor Zubin Mehta.
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This new initiative will be launched on February 15 with the concert Zubin Mehta returns to the OSM with Wagner and Brahm. The ensemble, under the direction of the conductor who directed the OSM from 1961 to 1967, will perform two works by Wagner with the Overture to the opera Rienzi and the Prelude and Liebestod of Tristan and Isolde. Brahms’ Symphony No. 4 will complete this exclusive program recorded at the Maison symphonique. It will be available until March 8.
From March 8 to 29, the OSM will broadcast the heroic Sibelius concert, Beethoven radiant, under the direction of Danish conductor Thomas Sondergard. The ensemble, accompanied by soloist Yefim Bronfman, will perform Beethoven’s Piano Concerto No. 3. Sibelius’ Symphony No. 5 and Precipice, a world premiere commissioned by the OSM, from composer Dorothy Chang, will be played as a complement to the program.
We will then find the concert Accents slaviques, de la Moldau aux Balkans, conducted by the Chinese-American conductor Xian Zhang of the New Jersey Symphony Orchestra. This performance, featuring works by Dvorak, Smetana and Sokolovic, will be offered from March 29 to April 19.
From April 19 to May 10, the OSM, under the direction of American conductor Michael Tilson Thomas, will perform Two Elegiac Melodies by Grieg and Symphony No. 9 by Schubert. We can see the young Russian pianist Alexander Malofeev in Prokofiev’s Concerto No. 3.
The last two concerts offered via webcast will feature conductor Rafael Payare. The Russian concertos and French symphonic poems programme, presented from May 10 to 31, will consist of works by Dukas and Debussy. Soloist Daniil Trifonov will perform, in addition to the programme, Russian piano concertos by Schnittke and Prokofiev.
The latest digital work, available from May 31 to June 21, will feature Bruckner’s Symphony No. 7 with Wagnerian tubas, an instrument halfway between horn and trombone.
Each webcast will be enhanced with exclusive content with interviews with specialists, conductors, soloists and musicologists.
All programs, except the one with Zubin Mehta, will be presented in theaters before being offered by webcast.
The cost to view a program is $20. A package costing $100 gives access to the six webcasts. All the details are online at osm.ca.