The Orchestre symphonique de Montréal is taking in the sights and sounds of Scotland this week, as they perform at the prestigious festival. Last night saw a repeat performance of the program the orchestra gave in Orford recently, with Tan Dun’s rather fascinating Water Concerto for water instruments and orchestra, Debussy’s La Mer and Beethoven’s “Pastoral” Symphony. Tonight, the musicians and music director Kent Nagano take on Takemitsu, Stravinsky’s Firebird and Mahler’s magnificent Rückert Lieder, with mezzo Waltraud Meier. A chamber music concert is also on the schedule tomorrow.

Days only after coming back from tour, OSM’s concert master Andrew Wan will be featured in several chamber music concerts at the New Brunswick Summer Music Festival next week. You can learn more about the festival and Mr. Wan by accessing this article from the Daily Gleaner.

The Orchestre symphonique de Montréal and  Kent Nagano will have a very busy week. They will spend three days at the Orford Festival to kick it off (August 3 to 5).

Four concerts are scheduled and the repertoire includes contemporay chamber music works as well as the essential Schubert Octet, performed by some of the OSM principals, as well as Beethoven’s “Pastoral,” Stravinsky’s Petrushka, Debussy’s La Mer and the intriguing Water Concerto by Tan Dun, for three percussion instruments (Wang Beibei, percussion solo, Serge Desgagnés and Andrew Dunsmore). The composer explains it as such:

“What is water? Sometimes you feel water is the voice of birth, or rebirth. But now I feel water is like tears, tears of nature. Every time I travel around I feel it’s very difficult to find clean water. Everywhere is polluted almost. So it makes me feel difficult to sing with my music…

To me, my early life, living with water, having fun with water, and playing ritualistic music with water, has become very inspiring. Somehow now, I spend so much of my time to recompose this kind of memory…to recompose this kind of experience, with the new method. In Hunan, water was a daily thing with our life. Every day we washed everything with the river. All the old women, they always went to river for laundry, making a beautiful sound, very rhythmic. So I transpose those memories of beautiful laundry sounds, and swimming sounds, body popping sounds, water dancing sounds, water teasing sounds, water popping sound, into my orchestrations.”

Details here…

The orchestra will then travel to Joliette to close the Lanaudière Festival Saturday night. On the program: Takemitsu, Stravinsky and Mahler. Tickets can be bought here…

The Orford Academy Orchestra (OAO!), featuring gifted musicians from all over the world working under the direction of conductor Jean-François Rivest, taught by several first chairs of the OSM, will perform tomorrow afternoon in Saint-Jean-Bosco Church in Magog.

Soprano Karina Gauvin will be the soloist of Mahler’s magnificent Fourth Symphony.

Details of the program, featuring as well pianist Marc-André Hamelin, can be found here…