L'Orchestre Symphonique de Montréal

Till Fellner, pianist

Pianist Till Fellner plays with scrupulous musicianship, purity of style, and sparkling keyboard command – qualities that have earned him plaudits throughout Europe, and in the United States and Japan. His readings of the works of Bach and Beethoven in particular have already placed him among the elect in this repertoire.

Mr. Fellner is currently performing all of the Beethoven piano sonatas in a cycle spanning seven concerts over several seasons; the cycle is being presented in New York at the Metropolitan Museum of Art; in Washington, DC as a co-presentation with the National Gallery, the Embassy Series and the Austrian Cultural Forum; as well at the Konzerthaus in Vienna; Wigmore Hall in London; the Salle Gaveau in Paris; and Toppan Hall in Tokyo.  Mr. Fellner has appeared in recital at Carnegie Hall’s Zankel Hall, and in major halls throughout the world.

This evening’s performance marks one of Mr. Fellner’s several return engagements with Kent Nagano and the Orchestre symphonique de Montréal, with whom he has recorded the Beethoven Piano Concertos Nos. 4 and 5. Mr. Fellner performed in Toronto's Roy Thomson Hall on January 25, 2010 and will be featured in two concerts during the "Kent Nagano and the OSM Week" at the Orford Arts Centre in the summer 2010. Other recent engagements include performances with the Orchestre National de France with Kurt Masur, the Philharmonia Orchestra of London under Sir Charles Mackerras, and the Munich Philharmonic with Lothar Zagrosek at the podium.  He has also appeared as guest soloist with conductors including Claudio Abbado, Vladimir Ashkenazy, Christoph von Dohnányi, Nikolaus Harnoncourt, and Leonard Slatkin, among others.

Mr. Fellner’s impressive discography includes credits on the EMI, Claves, Erato, Philips, and ECM labels. His newest recording for ECM, Bach’s Two- and Three-Part Inventions and French Suite No. V, has received widespread critical praise, in keeping with his acclaimed ECM recording of the first book of Bach’s Well-Tempered Clavier. Mr. Fellner has also recorded Mozart’s Piano Concertos Nos. 19, 22, and 25; Beethoven’s Concertos Nos. 2 & 3; a selection of Beethoven piano sonatas; Beethoven’s works for cello and piano (with Heinrich Schiff), Schubert’s Sonata in A minor D.784 plus 6 Moments musicaux, 4 Impromptus and 12 waltzes; Schumann’s “Kreisleriana,” Op. 16 and Schönberg’s Suite for Piano, Op. 25.

Michèle Losier, mezzo soprano

Michèle Losier begins the 2009-2010 season at Arizona Opera as Dorabella (Così fan tutte), and follows with her debut at Teatro alla Scala as Frasquita (Carmen). She returns to the US for performances at Palm Beach Opera as Donna Elvira (Don Giovanni), and at Washington National Opera as Cherubino (Le Nozze di Figaro), a role in which she debuts in a subsequent season at San Francisco Opera. In her home town with the Orchestre symphonique de Montréal for the first time, she sings a world premiere under the baton of Kent Nagano, and makes a further concert appearance with the Toronto Symphony in Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony.

Future seasons include Miss Losier’s debut appearances at the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden as Dorabella, Opéra Comique in Paris as Cendrillon‘s Prince, and at Teatro Municipal in Santiago, Chile, as the Komponist (Ariadne auf Naxos). Additionally, she returns to Opéra de Montréal, Seattle Opera and New York’s Metropolitan Opera.

The artist’s achievement at the Metropolitan Opera Auditions in 2005 led to her house debut in 2007 as Diane (Iphigénie en Tauride), under the baton of Louis Langrée, alongside Susan Graham and Plácido Domingo, who later conducted her at Los Angeles Opera. Her success at the Queen Elisabeth of Belgium International Competition in 2008 led to a recital tour of Europe and a recording of the works of Duparc with pianist Daniel Blumenthal, released in April 2009 on the Fuga Libera label. She is also a past member of San Francisco Opera's Merola Program, Opéra de Montréal's Atelier Lyrique and of the Juilliard Opera Centre in New York.

Michèle Losier was among the winners of the OSM Standard Life Competition in 2004.

L’Origine, for mezzo-soprano and orchestra

Written for voice and orchestra, this work, commissioned by Radio France, was inspired by one of the poets closest to the composer, Fernand Ouellette, who noted in his diary the date the two first met: September 5, 1959. One subject in all likelihood that bound them together: composer Edgard Varèse, a brilliant creator whose biography Ouellette was preparing to write. Their friendship has lasted more than fifty years, and traces of it can be found in the writer’s poetry and essays: “Le Fleuve en l’arbre,” “Désert,” and…“De l’Origine,” from the cycle L’Inoubliable-Chronique III (published by L’Hexagone in 2007), a cycle that, in the poet’s opinion, stands out “through the strength of its spiritual vision, with the sense of urgency that a more luminous world must appear with the dawn. In us, in humanity. This is my way of reacting against the barbarism of our time, and spiritual emptiness.”

If these words accurately reflect the inner quest pursued by Gilles Tremblay in a number of his works, they evoke another dimension as well. Interviewed by Georges Nicholson on his seventieth birthday in 2002, the composer alluded to the life given us on Earth as a passage between birth and death, a death concerning which we have pre-echoes of what will be happening, in that place where we have never been. And he added:

“But this is an unlikely echo, because in general the echo comes after the event. A pre-echo is not natural. It’s a kind of mirror of the natural echo. A kind of prescience, of intuition. But at the same time, we can imagine events in a wholly intuitive way, which is something that inspires me a great deal. I find an extraordinary source of youthfulness in it because one gets the impression of moving closer to what lies at the origin. And for an artist, what is source is essential, be it in painting or in poetry. The origin is one of the most important things in all art, and perhaps the one we spend most time looking for.”

What source, what origin does this latest work of Gilles Tremblay reflect? That remains for us to discover, at the moment of its premiere.

Marie-Thérèse Lefebvre
Translated by Ron Rosenthall

Ludwig van Beethoven
Born in Bonn, December 16, 1770
Died in Vienna, March 26, 1827

Piano Concerto No. 1 in C major, Op. 15

Beethoven made his first venture into the concerto genre in 1784 at the age of 14 with a Piano Concerto in E-flat (WoO 4), which survives as a complete solo part with piano reduction of the orchestral preludes and interludes. Canadian pianist Anton Kuerti recently reconstructed and orchestrated this material and gave the world premiere with the McGill Chamber Orchestra on May 29, 2006. Beethoven’s first completed piano concerto was the one we now call No. 2 in B-flat, written in 1795, but due to order of publication, the Concerto in C major was called No. 1. Beethoven himself, known at the time more as a pianist than as a composer, gave the first performance, probably in Prague in 1798 (history is sketchy on this point; some sources indicate the premiere took place in 1795).   Already possessing the magnetic personality that riveted attention at every performance, he was described by the contemporary Czech composer Vaclav Tomasek, who attended the Concerto’s premiere, as follows: “His magnificent playing and particularly the daring flights in his improvisation stirred me to the depths of my soul; indeed, I found myself so profoundly shaken that for several days I could not bring myself to touch the piano.”

The C-major Concerto is a Janus-faced work, looking both backwards to the Classical era and forward to the Romantic. Compared to the Concerto in B-flat (written earlier, remember), it is a bigger work - larger in scale, fuller in its sonorities, broader in emotional range. The score calls for additional instruments absent in the B-flat concerto - pairs of clarinets, trumpets and timpani - and contains the longest slow movement of any Beethoven piano concerto. At the same time, Beethoven adheres to the Mozartian principle of the soloist as primus inter pares (first among equals) in its relation with the orchestra - a balanced opposition of forces (in contradistinction to soloist and accompaniment).
 
The Concerto opens quietly with the first movement’s main theme, which corresponds closely to Alfred Einstein’s characterization of the “ideal march” in the opening movements of Mozart’s piano concertos.  Soon this is expanded to presentation in full orchestral garb, its grandeur revealing a composer already straining at the shackles of classicism. A contrasting, lyrical theme soon presents itself in the violins, but this too has its unorthodox element, for it is heard sequentially in three different keys (E-flat major, F minor, G minor), none of them the tonic key of C major that a more traditional composer would almost certainly have employed here. An additional idea in the form of a military fanfare for horns, trumpets and drums brings the orchestral exposition to a close. The wide range of contrasts found in this exposition serves as the catalyst for a wide-ranging drama that now unfolds. Among the more memorable events are the sunny, smiling manner in which the soloist gently makes his entrance and the tension-laden dialogue for horns and piano leading into the recapitulation.
 
The second movement explores a mood of sustained expressiveness and emotional depth.  The principal theme is a Beethoven trademark: a bare, simple, but sublimely beautiful hymn-like melody. The key is A-flat major, the key Beethoven used also for the slow movement of the Pathétique Sonata, written about the same time. Beethoven proceeds to decorate this theme with the finest pianistic filigree.
 
The rollicking third movement, a rondo, is full of folk-like melodies, rhythmic syncopations, irregular phrases and other musical surprises, including an episode of “Turkish” music in A minor.
Robert Markow

Johannes Brahms
Born in Hamburg, May 7 1833
Died in Vienna, April 3, 1897

Symphony No. 2 in D major, Op. 73

Brahms completed this symphony at Lichtenthal near Baden-Baden in October of 1877. The first performance was given by the Vienna Philharmonic, led by Hans Richter, on December 30. Although the Viennese liked it, the symphony rode a rocky course towards acceptance in other cities. One smiles in amusement to read that in Leipzig, for example, where it was introduced in 1880, a critic felt it was "not distinguished by inventive power." In Boston (1882), the Post called it "coldblooded," and the Traveler proclaimed that the symphony lacked "a sense of the beautiful," while in New York the Post (1887) called for a return of Anton Rubinstein's Dramatic Symphony to replace Brahms's "antiquated" music. So much for the perspicacity of critics!

Right from the very opening notes, the listener is caught up in the symphony's gentle, relaxed mood. The first two bars also provide the basic motivic germs of the entire movement and for much material in the other movements besides. The three-note motto in the cellos and basses and the following arpeggio in the horns are heard repeatedly in many guises - slowed down, speeded up, played upside down, buried in the texture or prominently featured. All the principal themes of the movement are derived from this motto. The second theme is one of Brahms's most glorious, sung by violas and cellos as only these instruments can sing.

The second movement is of darker hue and more profound sentiment. The form is basically an A-B-A structure, with a more agitated central section in the minor mode.

The genial, relaxed character returns in the third movement - not a scherzo as Beethoven would have written, but a sort of lyrical intermezzo, harking back to the gracious eighteenth-century minuet. This movement proved so popular at its premiere that it had to be repeated.

The forthright and optimistic finale derives heavily from the melodies of the first movement, though as usual with Brahms, this material is so cleverly disguised that one scarcely notices.
The trombones have a special role to play in the coda that brings this joyous work to a blazing conclusion.

Robert Markow