The Montreal Symphony Orchestra is publishing the program for its 2024-2025 season this Wednesday. It is marked, among other things, by a Mozart Festival in April, during which Rafael Payare will conduct Così fan tutte with Anna Prohaska, Michèle Losier, Matthew Swensen, Florian Sempey, Jenny Daviet and Thomas Hampson as Don Alfonso. At the press conference on Tuesday, the conductor promised a cycle of the three operas Mozart-Da Ponte (Così, The Marriage of Figaro And Don Giovanni) over several years.
The season will begin on September 11 with the Gurre-Lieder by Schoenberg, composer whose 150th anniversary will be celebratede birthday on September 13, 2024. Rafael Payare, who was called by the Schoenberg Center in Vienna to be part of a committee surrounding the commemorative festivities, this week records his 3e CD with OSM coupling The transfigured night And Pelléas and Mélisande by the Austrian composer.
The Mahler, Shostakovich and Strauss cycles will be continued. Mahler with the 6e Symphony And The Song of the EarthShostakovich with the 11e Symphony and Strauss with the Alpine Symphonywhich will be part of the OSM’s touring program in major European capitals in November.
The “5 à 7” with Philippe-Audrey Larrue St-Jacques will try to capture the public before returning home or to counter their petrification in front of the screens in the evening. Three programs will be offered: a South American menu with Rafael Payare, the Pastoral Symphony and the 3e Concerto by Rachmaninov. The concerts are at 6 p.m., after an hour of socializing at the bar, punctuated by the witty interventions of the deadpan comedian.
The notable visits will be those of chefs Osmo Vänskä (2e by Rachmaninov on October 10), Vasily Petrenko (October 30) and Kent Nagano, for a Christmas program with Marie-Nicole Lemieux, and soloists Daniil Trifonov, Bruce Liu and Sergeï Khachatryan. To discover: pianist Marie Ange Nguci and the astonishing South African cellist-singer Abel Selaocoe, who has just performed at Bourgie Hall.
For the rest, as Marianne Perron, senior director of the artistic sector, said in very chosen words in her very first sentence, it is a season marked by “the diversity and the great spectrum of works and colors”. Indeed, during this 2024-2025 season, where the Orchester Métropolitain is putting a lot of water into its wine of very ostentatious diversity by returning to the classics and reasoned balances, the OSM takes the opportunity to, Conversely, zealously add wine to water that has until now been limpid and balanced. However, how will we look in the short term at these years when a young chef was invited to lead the Gaelic Symphony from Amy Beach? In less than 2 or 3 years, hasn’t fashion basically become the pinnacle of conformism?