Orchestre Symphonique de Montreal: Alain Lefèvre

Alain Lefèvre (Image credit: Orchestre Symphonique de Montreal)

Grand Concerts
Tuesday, January 15, at 8:00 p.m. and
Wednesday, January 16 at 8:00 p.m.
At the Maison symphonique de Montréal

Ludovic Morlot, conductor
Alain Lefèvre, piano

Performing:
Wagner, Die Meistersinger, Prelude
Boudreau, Concerto de l’Asile (premiere; Radio-Canada commission)
Debussy, Images, for orchestra

Virtuosity, great sensitivity, warm personality – the reputation of Alain Lefèvre is beyond reproach. As a manifestation of his eagerness to champion contemporary Canadian repertoire, he’ll be premiering the Piano Concerto by Walter Boudreau, a Montreal composer honored many times over and artistic director as well as principal conductor of the SMCQ since 1988.

Former assistant conductor under Ozawa and Levine and today music director of the Seattle Symphony and Théâtre de la Monnaie in Brussels, the French conductor Ludovic Morlot will open the concert with excerpts from Richard Wagner’s opera Tannhäuser and will conduct Claude Debussy’s Images. (Orchestre Symphonique de Montreal)

Take a day trip from the Essex countryside, and drive up to the city of Montreal, Canada. End your day by visiting the Orchestre Symphonique de Montréal for an invigorating classical concert! See this concert with Alain Lefèvre or find another day and event that works for you.

About the Concert’s Music

The process of creating the Concerto de l’asile was begun nearly five years ago, when pianist Alain Lefèvre and Walter Boudreau expressed the desire to collaborate on something. The composer, who had already done the incidental music for the production of L’Asile de la pureté by Claude Gauvreau mounted at Théâtre du Nouveau Monde in 2004, chose to construct his concerto around the “Valse de l’asile,” which had been turned into a piece for solo piano soon after. The waltz, fragments of which are heard in the third movement, became the pretext for a grand symphonic poem that recounts the life of a Québec dramatist, poet and literary critic, the sole poet in the Automatist group and a signer of the Refus Global.

“It’s heroic, for the pianist and for the orchestra,” explains Alain Lefèvre, who spent many long hours learning the demanding score. “Walter Boudreau opted for an extremely romantic style of writing, but an updated one.”

Debussy’s Images, originally intended for two pianos before being cast for orchestra, and an extension of the two piano collections of the same title, is made up of three movements. “Gigues” evokes memories of England and incorporates a quotation from the popular melody “The Keel Row,” while “Rondes de printemps” (Round Dances of Spring) is inspired by the folksongs “Nous n’irons plus au bois” and “Do, do, l’enfant do.” The central section, “Iberia,” itself a triptych, remains the most popular of the three movements.

The program is under the direction of the young critically hailed French conductor Ludovic Morlot, who served as assistant conductor at the Boston Symphony Orchestra with James Levine from 2004 to 2007. He will also lead the OSM in the prelude from Wagner’s Die Meistersinger, Wagner the bicentenary of whose birth is being celebrated in 2013.

The concert on January 16 is presented by Fasken Martineau. (BorderlessNorth)

Before the concert there will be a pre-concert discussion at the Salon Urbain, at 7 p.m.; Kelly Rice will interview conductor Ludovic Morlot.

About Editorial Staff

Posts published under the Editorial Staff byline are drawn from press releases and other notices, and/or they may be first-time submissions from someone/some organization without a byline of their own; if latter, then the author will be acknowledged in the post. To submit your news for publication on the Essex blog please use the Submit a Story form or contact the editors via email (blue button above), Facebook or Twitter.