Thursday and Friday, I Musici de Montréal (led by music director Yuli Turovsky) presented Stars of the Future, a concert featuring seven soloists under the age of 16! The wide-ranging program includes operatic excerpts, concerto movements for violin, flute and clarinet by Vivaldi, Seitz, Quantz and Weber, a word for erhu and strings, and Edith Piaf’s Non, je ne regrette rien! Also featured was guest conductor Stéphane Tétreault, a 16-year old student of Yuli Turovsky who has had a very busy and successful year on the cello as well.

You are a pro and knew it all? Here are the answers, just in case. For the others, why not a little bit more input…

1 R – 2 Q – 3 T – 4 A – 5 C – 6 D – 7 B – 8 N – 9 J – 10 M – 11 I – 12 K – 13 S – 14 O – 15 L – 16 E – 17 H – 18 P – 19 F – 20 G

1.    a theatrical work for singers and orchestra: opera. Opera started in Italy at the end of the 16th century with Peris’s lost Dafne, produced around 1597 but most textbooks cite Monteverdi’s Orfeo as the first official one, in 1607. The genre soon spread through the rest of Europe.

2.    a composition for soloist(s) and orchestra, usually in three movements: concerto. We’ll soon demystify that concept.

3.    a number in an opera, oratorio, or cantata for a single vocal soloist with orchestral accompaniment: aria.

4.    a composition for vocal soloists (usually just one or two) and orchestra, often with chorus as well and divided into several sections or movements: cantata. It can be sacred or not. Bach has written wonderful ones.

5.    a procedure in which a subject in one voice is repeated in different registers by several additional voices in succession: fugue. The term fuga was used as far back as the Middle Ages, but was initially used to refer to any kind of imitative counterpoint. It was not until the 16th century that fugal technique as it is understood today began to be seen in pieces, both instrumental and vocal. There also, Bach remains a master.

6.    instrumental music inspired by some extra-musical element – a story, a character, a landscape, a literary figure or an event: program music. The most famous example may be Berlioz’s Symphonie fantastique. (more…)

Musical vocabulary may appear at times a bit strange, at others very precise. Do you know it well? Here is a little game for you to find out. You only need to association the definitition and the term. Answers (and some explanations) in our next post.

Definitions

1.    a theatrical work for singers and orchestra
2.    a composition for soloist(s) and orchestra, usually in three movements
3.    a number in an opera, oratorio, or cantata for a single vocal soloist with orchestral accompaniment
4.    a composition for vocal soloists (usually just one or two) and orchestra, often with chorus as well and divided into several sections or movements
5.    a procedure in which a subject in one voice is repeated in different registers by several additional voices in succession
6.    instrumental music inspired by some extra-musical element – a story, a character, a landscape, a literary figure or an event
7.    art songs (as opposed to folk or popular songs) by German composers
8.    a musical form in which the principal theme alternates with a succession of subsidiary themes in the pattern of ABACADA
9.    a device used to dampen or muffle the sound
10.    a composition, often in three movements and usually written for either a single instrument or for a string or wind instrument plus piano
11.    a composition for orchestra usually lasting anywhere from about twenty to fifty minutes and often in four movements
12.    how loudly or softly the music should be played
13.    the rhythmic device of emphasizing the unstressed or weak beats instead of the normally accented strong beats
14.    the person who stands at the front of a band, orchestra, chorus or ensemble
15.    a passage in a composition for soloist and orchestra where the soloist plays completely alone, often in a virtuosic manner
16.    a group of singers who perform together, with more than one singer per part
17.    a symbol at the beginning of a line of music serving as a point of reference to indicate where all the pitches lie on the staff
18.    a method of composition in which all twelve pitches of the chromatic scale are treated equally
19.    the distance between two pitches
20.    The leader of the first violin section of an orchestra

Terms

A.    cantata
B.    lieder
C.    fugue
D.    program music
E.    choir
F.    interval
G.    concertmaster
H.    clef
I.    symphony
J.    mute
K.    dynamics
L.    cadenza
M.    sonata
N.    rondo
O.    conductor
P.    dodecaphony
Q.    concerto
R.    opera
S.    syncopation
T.    aria

The winner of the OSM Standard Life Grand Prize is Jan Lisiecki, a pianist from Alberta. This prize is awarded to one of the first-prize winners (piano and percussion) who made the strongest impression during the Competition. In addition to receiving a $10,000 scholarship offered by Standard Life, the 15-year-old winner will perform in a concert with the OSM on January 12, 2010. His prize also includes a professional recording from Espace musique as well as invitations from the orchestras of Ottawa and St.John (Newfoundland) as well as the Orford Arts Centre.

Pianist Tristan Longval-Gagné, from Quebec, and percussionnist Benjamin Duinker, from Nova Scotia, were the first prize winners in the two other categories of this year’s edition of the Competition.

A Leipzig orchestra has played in a brothel last night, as part of a series of concerts in strange places (an euphemism here), to meet its public “away from the atmosphere of classical concert halls”, to quote its music director.

Six musicians and a singer from the Forum for Contemporary Music of Lepzig performed eight works, including one from Kurt Weill and Bertold Bretcht’s Four-Penny Opera (one cannot accuse them of not having given serious thoughts to this program) in the city’s Eros Center.