.png)
It's been a standout year for Canadian classical music, with exceptional albums from both established artists and rising stars.
As 2024 is the rear-view mirror we here at Classic 107 sat down and discussed our favorite Canadian recordings of this past year.
Check out our selections here:
Luminos Ensemble is a Charlottetown-based professional choir of trained vocal soloists who are passionate about small ensemble performance. Formed in 2017 by Artistic Director Dr. Margot Rejskind, Luminos Ensemble’s music has been described as “sublimely beautiful.” The voices of Luminos Ensemble “create an ethereal and spiritual musical experience” that is “thrilling and electric”. Luminos Ensemble strives to redefine the choral experience for audiences and singers alike by presenting innovative and thoughtful programs, performed in a manner that engages the audience as active, rather than passive, listeners.
For her latest musical journey, pianist Louise Bessette visits the port of call of New England. Her musical guideposts are works by two American composers: Piano Sonata No. 2, “Concord, Mass., 1840-60,” by Charles Ives (1874-1954), and New England Idyls, Op. 62, by Edward MacDowell (1860-1908).
The “Concord Sonata” is one of the great masterpieces of the piano literature, and Ives’ revised 1947 edition is the version most often performed today. Scholars such as Jay Gottlieb, with whom Louise Bessette worked on her interpretation, have improved the 1947 edition by adding details that Ives had included in the manuscripts, but later omitted in the published scores. The brief parts for viola (first movement) and flute (fourth movement) are marked as optional. Louise Bessette chose to include them on her recording, calling on violist Isaac Chalk and flutist Jeffrey Stonehouse.
New York-born pianist and composer Edward MacDowell was particularly renowned for his piano music—concertos, sonatas and etudes. MacDowell wanted to add a “local flavour” to the music he had learned in the European tradition, and drew inspiration, for example, from the music of America’s First Nations. In his score for the cycle New England Idyls, each of the ten short pieces is preceded by a short poem, including “Indian Idyl,” which is based on a love song of the Iowa nation. Composed in 1902, Opus 62 would be the last work in Edward MacDowell’s catalogue before his death in 1908.
Following the success of their award-winning debut album, La Peste, Les Barocudas period ensemble returns with Basta parlare! (Enough said!), a program exploring the dynamic, experimental musical style that swept 17th century Italy — in particular, works that showcase the violin and recorder.
Joining Les Barocudas’s trio, Marie-Nadeau Tremblay (violin), Tristan Best (viola da gamba), and Nathan Mondry (organ), are Vincent Lauzer, recorder; Antoine Malette-Chénier, baroque harp; Hank Knox, harpsichord; and Matthias Soly-Letarte, percussion. Basta parlare includes works by Italian baroque composers including Dario Castello, Giovanni Legrenzi, Tarquinio Merula, and Biagio Marini, among others, whose music was considered almost radical at the time.
“When Vincent Lauzer and I thought of making an album together, we knew from the start that we wanted to focus on music from 17th-century Italy, our repertoire of choice,” says Marie Nadeau-Tremblay. “No further discussion was needed: we had already reached an unspoken consensus. Lovers of 17th-century Italian music share an almost spiritual je ne sais quoi which brings them together—and sets them apart. We have a tacit understanding.”
“The 17th century was a period of exploration, invention, and research across all disciplines, including in music,” says Nadeau-Tremblay. “Vocal music, which had long dominated the spotlight, began to make way for technically complex instrumental forms that better suited this new paradigm—a music centered around virtuosity and lyricism. Thus came the title of this album, Basta parlare! which means “enough said!”
Dialogues by cellist Noémie Raymond and pianist Zhenni Li-Cohen present two monumental works composed by Sergei Rachmaninoff and Rebecca Clarke. The album centers around a pair of sonatas that the performers hold dear. It seeks to bridge two universes in conversations between two instruments, two musicians, and two composers. The performers write, “it is a dialogue between you and us.”
This album explores the duality of two titanic masterpieces, from the pen of a woman and a man, both virtuoso instrumentalists with strikingly distinct musical voices. Dialogues begins with Rachmaninoff‘s Cello Sonata in G minor, Op. 19, composed during his most prolific period alongside his famous Piano Concerto No. 2. Considered by some to be his most successful chamber work, Rachmaninoff dedicated the sonata to Anatoly Brandukov, his best man at his wedding and a celebrated Russian cellist who also premiered several of Tchaikovsky’s works. Brandukov inspired Rachmaninoff to imbue the cello line with expressiveness and intensity. The album continues with Clarke‘s Viola Sonata (Version for Cello & Piano), composed in 1919. An internationally renowned violist, Clarke is often considered a proponent of “English Impressionism.” Despite placing second in a prestigious composition competition, Clarke’s works were not celebrated or performed as much as those of her male peers due to societal gender biases. It was not until the 1970s that Clarke emerged from obscurity, and this Sonata has since taken its rightful place in the standard repertoire for viola.
Marie Hubert – Fille du Roy is the latest recording by the renowned Canadian soprano Karina Gauvin. This intriguing album brings the folklores of Quebec and France to life using song to recount the experiences of Marie Hubert, one of the Filles du Roy (the King’s daughters) intended to help populate New France. Recruited as one of almost 800 marriageable French young women, Marie crossed the Atlantic at the end of the program, which was launched in 1670 by the Roi-Soleil, King Louis XIV, and Jean Talon, his intendant in New France.
For nearly a decade, Karina Gauvin had been yearning to record a selection of Québécois and French folk songs. Quite fortuitously, recent genealogical research has traced Gauvin’s family origins to Marie Hubert. In the midst of pandemic lockdowns, Gauvin examined the contents of an old chest of drawers and unearthed some scores handed down more than 30 years earlier by the aptly named soprano, Louise Roy.
Among these treasures were folk harmonizations from the first half of the twentieth century by such eminent Canadian musicians as Gabriel Cusson, Ernest MacMillan, Michel Perrault, and Oscar O’Brien, to name just a few. Going through these scores with pianist Pierre McLean, Gauvin selected the songs for this new album, which feature orchestrations by Claude Lapalme and two arrangements for piano and harpsichord by Pierre McLean.
From Belle rose du printemps to Gai lon la, gai le rosier, and from Isabeau s’y promène to Les cloches du hameau, Karina Gauvin brings rich colors to these folk songs in new arrangements for strings, winds, harp, and piano by Claude Lapalme, with Pierre McLean (piano), Valérie Milot (harp), Étienne Lafrance (double bass), Quatuor Molinari, and Pentaèdre.
Catharsis is an album that expresses an emotional release experience, often of complex, deeply held, or repressed emotions. The experience later transforms into peace, tranquility, and, most importantly, a shift of perspective. This album’s pieces were selected on his tour across Canada, where Potvin performed music exclusively by Canadian composers. These compositions include works from Cris Derksen’s Growing Forgiveness, Keiko Devaux’s murmuration, and Jean Coulthard’s Preludes for Piano and Canada Mosaic: The Contented House (arranged for piano by David Potvin), which has never been recorded before.
The album starts with Derksen’s Growing Forgiveness, an artistic response to the tension she felt in certain relationships during the pandemic; a truly serene ending follows the piece’s driving climax. Followed by Coulthard’s 13 Preludes, they are all imbued with deep emotional expression, and over the complete set, tension peaks near the end. Then Devaux’s murmuration is not explicitly an exercise in emotional expression: pianistic gestures describe the movement of small birds moving in large flocks. Catharsis concludes the album with a piano arrangement of Coulthard’s Canada Mosaic: The Contented House, a meditative reflection that gives the listener a moment to contemplate the churning passion.
Check out Chris Wolf's conversation with David Potvin about the album Catharsis here
Cellist Cameron Crozman returns with a new recording of Joseph Haydn’s Cello Concertos Nos. 1 and 2 and Jacques Hétu’s Rondo for Cello and String Orchestra, Op. 9. He joins Les Violons du Roy conducted by Nicolas Ellis.
Long thought lost, Haydn’s Cello Concerto in C was rediscovered in 1961 at the National Museum in Prague. According to the eminent Haydn scholar H. C. Robbins Landon, it is “a major discovery of our time, and surely one of the finest works of the period”. The concerto in D major was long attributed to Anton Kraft, and it wasn’t until 1951 that the discovery of an autograph manuscript finally did justice to Haydn, its true author.
Completed in 1965, Jacques Hétu’s Rondo for Cello and String Orchestra, Op. 9, was premiered on Radio-Canada by cellist Arpad Szomoru and the Orchestre de chambre de la Société Radio-Canada de Québec. The Rondo is the first concerto work by Jacques Hétu, then aged 27. It demonstrates Hétu’s taste for classical forms, his ability to highlight the strings, and his solid contrapuntal skills.
Check out Chris Wolf's conversation with Cameron Crozman about his album here
ATMA Classique proudly presents Jean Sibelius’ Symphonies Nos. 2 & 5 with Yannick Nézet-Séguin conducting the Orchestre Métropolitain de Montréal. Recorded at Maison symphonique de Montréal, this new release is part of our complete cycle of Sibelius symphonies launched in 2019 with Symphony No. 1.
The two symphonies on this recording are among the best-loved works of Jean Sibelius. Symphony No. 2 marks the conclusion of his first stylistic phase. Like many other Finnish patriotic artists around the turn of the century, Sibelius identified as a national Romantic. Symphony No. 5, on the other hand, established the foundations of what would become Sibelius’ mature style, in which he pushed concentration and austerity to extreme limits. The popularity of these two works has never faltered since they were premiered in Helsinki more than a century ago.
After the recent release of his second album entitled The Seasons, in which Liu focusses on the intimate and expressive solo piano music of Tchaikovsky, the pianist now continues this theme by releasing his rendition of a further piece written by the Russian composer.
“For me, this is a moment to explore some personal emotion,” the pianist says about The Seasons, an album that envelops the Russian composer’s intimate and profoundly poetic language with musical breathing space. “What’s so special about the work is that it’s so intimate, as if Tchaikovsky were speaking to himself when he wrote the pieces. It combines the folk element that inspired his ballets with the brilliance and flamboyance found in his concertos. More than that, it has a thoughtfulness and calmness at its core.”
Pianist Philip Chiu presents Voyages, “a deeply personal album that represents a humble attempt to capture something elusive to me: a sense of belonging. Where do we belong? To whom do we belong? What belongs to us, what is ours simply because it was handed to us, and what is ours because we chose it?”
Chiu offers no answers, only exploration consisting of “my reflections and musings channeled through the vivid music of Claude Debussy (Petite suite, Images, livre I, and Estampes) and Alice Ping Yee Ho (Hong Kong Nostalgia), along with beautiful artwork by Marie H. Sirois, as inspired by my own recollections, my family’s story, and a teeny-tiny bit of whimsy”, says Chiu.
Check out Chris Wolf's conversation with Philip Chiu about his album Voyages here
Where Waters Meet is an Indigenous/settler partnership built on friendship, deep respect and admiration, and the desire to communicate through our shared sung medium. It is a culmination of several joint projects in different regions of Canada over the course of many years. We are thankful to many for contributing their talents and engaging with the CCC on numerous levels in the creative phases: composer Carmen Braden, poet Yolanda Bonnell, incubation collaborator Sarain Fox, tour partners Wesley Hardisty (violinist) and Aaron Prosper (singer/drummer), and non-Indigenous collaborator Hussein Janmohamed, who has inspired us all in the CCC to consider what our music can be like if we honour and respectfully incorporate cultural traditions into our creative process. Hussein has modelled this in envisioning the expansion of his composition Sun on Water to include Sherryl Sewepagaham’s spoken word, drumming, and sung improvisations. We also thank the many Elders, Knowledge Keepers, and community members who have guided us along the way in our reciprocal creative collaborations. The music on this album has evolved organically as we have listened, asked questions, and responded honestly and in relationship with each other.
Where Waters Meet considers water as a symbol of a parallel journey – as a reminder of life and lives, as a call for action, and as a conduit for change. The synergy of Sherryl Sewepagaham’s powerful musical perspective with the CCC’s versatile choral colours has resulted in a unique musical reflection of our journey together.
Far from typical harp music – this album fuses the worlds of classical and rock music. Kristan has transcribed some of the most popular songs from her social media channels, bringing the unbridled energy of rock and roll to the harp. Whether it’s a classic Guns N’ Roses riff or the intricate rhythms of Tool, each track showcases Kristan’s brilliant solo transcription and artistry.
Featured songs include these rock classics: Sweet Child O’Mine (Guns N’ Roses); Paint It, Black (The Rolling Stones); Love of My Life (Queen); Wish You Were Here (Pink Floyd); Nothing Else Matters (Metallica); Californication (Red Hot Chili Peppers); Stairway to Heaven (Led Zeppelin); Lateralus (Tool); Hotel California (Eagles); Starlight (Muse); Smells Like Teen Spirit (Nirvana); Good Riddance/Time of Your Life (Greenday).