Orchestre Symphonique de Montréal: Budapest Festival Orchestra

January 22 at 8 p.m.
At the Maison symphonique de Montréal

Budapest Festival Orchestra
Iván Fischer, conductor
Janine Jansen, violin

Performing:
Shostakovich, Suite for Variety Orchestra
Bernstein, Serenade (after Plato’s Symposium)
Rachmaninov, Symphony No. 2

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! If you have the time free, then see this special concert with the Budapest Festival Orchestra.

About the Music and Performers

The OSM is welcoming the Budapest Festival Orchestra in a Montreal premiere, an ensemble cofounded in 1983 by conductor Iván Fischer and pianist Zoltán Kocsis. In the space of a few years it acquired a reputation for excellence at the international level and has been invited to perform by the most prestigious halls and festivals. The Orchestra will perform Shostakovich’s Suite for Variety Orchestra, which includes the celebrated “Waltz,” and the Symphony No. 2 by Rachmaninov, a work of subtle architecture, demonstrating exemplary mastery and maturity, and the most frequently played of Rachmaninov symphonies.

Born into a musical family (especially her father and her older brother), Janine Jansen made her public debut in 1997 with the Amsterdam Concertgebouw and in September 2003 received the Dutch Music Prize from the Ministry of Culture. Her appearances in 2006 with the Berlin Philharmonic and in 2008 with the Los Angeles Philharmonic spread her fame as an international violinist. Here she performs the rarely heard Serenade by Leonard Bernstein, which was premiered by Isaac Stern and which was inspired by a rereading of Plato’s Symposium, the famous dialogue on the nature of love. And just as, in The Symposium, each speaker begins his discussion on the basis of material presented by the previous one, Bernstein does likewise with the musical motifs, which reappear in a fresh context or a new arrangement. (BorderlessNorth.org.)

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