OSM / November at the OSM

November at the OSM

FRANZ-PAUL DECKER,

former music director of the OSM, conducts three concerts

Pianist MARC-ANDRÉ HAMELIN

in Strauss's breathtaking Burleske

After a triumphant European tour,

MARIE-NICOLE LEMIEUX sings Mahler

The Beethoven cycle continues

with pianist TILL FELLNER and KENT NAGANO

OSM Standard Life Competition: voice, woodwinds and brass

Children's Corner

Montreal, October 15, 2008 – Former OSM music director (1961 to 1967) Franz-Paul Decker will be revisiting the musicians of the Orchestra when he leads a program devoted exclusively to the works of Richard Strauss on November 4 and 6. These concerts will feature pianist Marc-André Hamelin, a special collaborator of the OSM for 20 years, in the highly virtuoso Burleske, a concerto work rarely performed.

On November 11 and 12, Maestro Decker will conduct well-known works by Johann Strauss father and son along with other great Viennese classics, resuming a much appreciated tradition of evenings dedicated to Viennese music.

The first shows in the Children's Corner series will take place on November 9 at 1:30 p.m. for the French-language version and at 3:30 p.m. for the bilingual version. Québec actor Patrice Dubois, in the role of Octavio, will interact with OSM conductor in residence Jean-François Rivest, playing the captain. Soprano Kyra Folk-Farber as well as a chorus and musicians from Joseph-François Perrault High School will join the OSM for these exciting shows.

The celebrated contralto Marie-Nicole Lemieux, who is enjoying an extremely active international career, will be singing Mahler's Rückert-Lieder on November 16, Mahler being a composer with whom she has often been associated. Also on the program: Tchaikovsky's Symphony No. 4 and Escenas de pájaros, the work with which Barcelona composer Ramon Humet won the International Olivier Messiaen Prize at the OSM's 2007 composition competition as well as the 24th Queen Sofia Composition Prize in 2006.

On November 26 and 27, OSM music director Kent Nagano will lead the Orchestra and Austrian pianist Till Fellner in Beethoven's sublime Concerto No. 4.

Finally, the stages and activities of the 69th edition of the OSM Standard Life Competition, dedicated to voice, woodwinds and brass, are open to the public free of charge and will take place from November 26 to 30.

Information and reservations: 514 842-9951 or www.osm.ca

THE NOVEMBER CONCERTS:

November 4 and 6 at 8 p.m. (Salle Wilfrid-Pelletier) Grand Concerts: Decker and Strauss – a historic meeting. Franz-Paul Decker, conductor; Marc-André Hamelin, pianist.

November 9 at 1:30 and 3:30 p.m. (Théâtre Maisonneuve) Children's Corner: Adventure at sea, The further travels of Octavio. Jean-François Rivest, conductor; Marie-Lou Dion, scriptwriter and director; Patrice Dubois, actor; Kyra Folk-Farber, soprano. At 1:00 and at 3:00 p.m.: meeting with musicians from Joseph-François Perrault High School.

November 11 at 8 p.m.(Salle Wilfrid-Pelletier) Air Canada Classical Escapes: Viennese Evening. Franz-Paul Decker, conductor; Ulrike Steinsky, soprano; Alois Haselbacher, tenor. At 7 p.m.: pre-concert discussion: Jean-François Rivest, OSM conductor in residence, presents the concert program.

November 12 at 10:30 a.m. (Salle Wilfrid-Pelletier) Symphonic Matinees: Viennese Evening. Franz-Paul Decker, conductor; Ulrike Steinsky, soprano; Alois Haselbacher, tenor.

November 16 at 2:30 p.m. (Salle Wilfrid-Pelletier) Musical Sundays: Marie-Nicole Lemieux Sings Mahler. Roberto Minczuk, conductor; Marie-Nicole Lemieux, contralto.

November 26 and 27 at 8 p.m.(Salle Wilfrid-Pelletier) Grand Concerts: Till Fellner and Beethoven's Fourth. Kent Nagano, conductor; Till Fellner, pianist.

November 26 to 29 (Tanna Schulich Hall, Schulich School of Music, McGill University) Semi-finals, finals and master classes of the OSM Standard Life Competition.

November 30 at 7 p.m. (Redpath Hall, McGill University) OSM Standard Life Competition chamber-music concert. Alain Trudel, trombone; Jens Lindemann, trumpet; James Campbell, clarinet; Andrew Wan, concertmaster with the OSM and Grand Prize winner at the OSM Standard Life Competition, 2007 edition.

Information on the month's concerts:

Grand Concerts:

Decker and Strauss: a historic meeting

Devoted exclusively to Richard Strauss, this concert includes the suite of waltzes for orchestra from Der Rosenkavalier, an evocation of imperial Vienna from his famous opera, as well as the Symphonia Domestica, an autobiographical work in which the composer sets to music the characters of his wife and son as well as himself. In four linked movements, the work abounds in motifs, some 40 of them, interwoven by Strauss in a masterful way.

German conductor Franz-Paul Decker has been a fervent champion of the works of his compatriot Richard Strauss, whom he had the honour of meeting in his youth. Music director of the OSM from 1967 to 1975, he took the Orchestra to new heights – and new horizons, to among other places the Osaka World's Fair in 1970, the first of numerous trips the Orchestra would take to Japan.

The musicality and virtuosity of Canadian pianist Marc-André Hamelin have earned him legendary status as a piano master. Long renowned for his explorations of unfamiliar works, he is now recognized around the world for his dazzling technique and the originality of his interpretations of the classical repertoire. "For 20 years now," the pianist has said, "I've had the privilege of collaborating regularly with the OSM, which always gives me great pleasure. Furthermore, it seems to me that each time the pleasure only increases, and with the OSM, I always feel as though I'm at home." He will play Burleske, a work of formidable technical difficulty, considered unperformable by Strauss's contemporary the pianist and conductor Hans von Bülow.

Grand Concerts

November 4 and 6 at 8 p.m.

Salle Wilfrid-Pelletier, Place des Arts

Franz-Paul Decker, conductor

Marc-André Hamelin, pianist

Richard Strauss Symphonia Domestica

Richard Strauss Burleske

Richard Strauss Suite from Der Rosenkavalier

Tickets from $24.75

Information and reservations: 514 842-9951 or www.osm.ca

Children's Corner:

Adventure at sea, The further travels of Octavio

Children and their parents are invited aboard the great musical vessel of the OSM, skillfully captained by Jean-François Rivest. In the traces of the indefatigable voyager Octavio, this time acting as navigator, they will sail the seas with the best crew of musicians going! On the program: all the world's oceans, famous ships, tropical fish, marine monsters, whales, sirens and pirates… A thrilling adventure by way of great works of the symphonic repertoire, original compositions and movie music.

Taking part in a show scripted and directed by Marie-Lou Dion are actor Patrice Dubois (interacting with the conductor), soprano Kyra Folk-Farber, the OSM and a girls chorus as well as musicians from Joseph-François Perrault High School, everyone under the direction of OSM conductor in residence Jean-François Rivest.

Before the shows, in the Théâtre Maisonneuve lobbies, the audience is invited to meet some of the young students from the Joseph-François Perrault school, who will be presenting the instruments they play.

Following the success of The Enchanted Orchestra (a concert in the 2005 Children's Corner series nominated for "Best young-audience concert" at the Prix Opus) and A Trip Around the World (a concert in the OSM Youth Concerts and Children's Corner presented in 2007), Marie-Lou Dion is back to offer the OSM's young audience a new script, one that she is directing as well. Ms. Dion, who at one point was known mostly as an actress on the small screen, has devoted more of her time over the past 10 years or so to directing, writing for the stage and teaching acting.

Since he left theatre school in Saint-Hyacinthe in 1993, Patrice Dubois has been seen in about 20 stage works in various theatres in Québec, and in 2007 he became artistic co-director at Théâtre PÀP. On television he has played a number of roles in some 15 series. For more than five years he played the character Victor Dubé in Les Poupées russes. He also appears on the series Les Sœurs Elliott. Patrice Dubois has additionally been involved in the dubbing of about 100 films, of cartoon and of television series.

Canadian soprano Kyra Folk-Farber has appeared at the Orpheum Theatre in Vancouver, Jordan Hall in Boston, the Concertgebouw and the Ignatius Huis in Amsterdam and at the Snape Maltings Hall in England. She completed her bachelor's degree in vocal performance at Boston's New England Conservatory of Music, where she studied with Edward Zambara. She is currently doing doctoral studies in voice at the Université de Montréal with Rosemarie Landry and Catherine Sévigny.

Children's Corner

November 9 at 1:30 p.m.: French-language show

November 9 at 3:30 p.m.: bilingual show

November 9 at 1:00 and 3:00 p.m.: get-together with musicians

Théâtre Maisonneuve, Place des Arts

Jean-François Rivest, conductor

Marie-Lou Dion, scriptwriter and director

Patrice Dubois, actor

Kyra Folk-Farber, soprano

Orchestre symphonique de Montréal

Girls choir from Joseph-François Perrault High School

Musicians from Joseph-François Perrault High School

Nicolai Rimsky-Korsakov The Sea and Sindbad's Ship, from Scheherazade, symphonic suite, Opus 35 (excerpt)

Richard Strauss Also sprach Zarathoustra, symphonic poem, Opus 30 (excerpt)

Benjamain Britten Moonlight, Four Sea Interludes, from the opera Peter Grimes (excerpt)

Claude Debussy Jeux de vagues, from La Mer (excerpt)

Patrick Sobczak À l'abordage, OSM commission

Claude Debussy Sirènes, from Nocturne (excerpt)

Jean Sibelius Tapiola, symphonic poem, Opus 112 (excerpt)

Dimitri Shostakovich Symphony No. 8 in C minor, Opus 65, "Adagio" (excerpt)

Bedrich Smetana The Moldau, from the symphonic cycle Má Vlast (excerpt)

Claude Vivier Lonely Child (excerpt)

Bruno Coulais Caresse sur l'océan, from the soundtrack to the movie Les Choristes (excerpt)

John Williams Prologue, from the soundtrack to the movie Hook (excerpt)

Individual tickets:

Children: $13.75

Adults: $27.50

Information and reservations: 514 842-9951 or www.osm.ca

Air Canada Classical Escapes:

Viennese Evening

(this program is reprised in the Symphonic Matinees series)

Vienna stirs up romantic images of fairy tales with sparkling chandeliers, dazzling ballrooms and beautiful elegant women, in an atmosphere of infectious gaiety and excitement. Vienna is also the city par excellence for music.

The Viennese evenings were among the most loved and best attended when Franz-Paul Decker was music director of the OSM. For a rare occasion the conductor revisits that universe and invites us to an evening of waltzes, polkas, marches and operetta arias. Musical tipsiness and surprises are in store.

At 7 p.m., at a pre-concert discussion, Jean-François Rivest, the OSM's conductor in residence, will present the concert program.

Air Canada Classical Escapes

November 11 at 8 p.m.

Symphonic Matinees

November 12 at 10:30 a.m.

Salle Wilfrid-Pelletier, Place des Arts

Franz-Paul Decker, conductor

Ulrike Steinsky, soprano

Alois Haselbacher, tenor

Johann Strauss II Tritsch-Tratsch Polka

Johann Strauss II Furioso Polka

Johann Strauss II On the Beautiful Blue Danube

Johann Strauss I Radetzky March

and other Viennese classics

Tickets from $24.75

Information and reservations: 514 842-9951 or www.osm.ca

Musical Sundays:

Marie-Nicole Lemieux sings Mahler

Marie-Nicole Lemieux is known for her dark, voluptuous voice, an ideal vehicle for the romantic vocal music of Gustav Mahler inspired by texts by the German poet and Orientalist Friedrich Rückert. Mahler composted four of the five songs while staying at Villa Mahler in the summer of 1901. The last song is a poem that Mahler set to music in July 1902 for his wife, Alma Mahler. That evening in her diary she noted: "It almost made me cry. What profundity there is in such a man! And how I am lacking in soul! I am often made aware of just how little I am and how little I possess in comparison with his incommensurable wealth!" At its première, Mahler enjoyed one of his great successes. Wrote Paul Stefan: "We exulted with [Mahler], we shared, successively, his affliction, his childish moods, joyful or dreamy. We took pleasure in marveling at his knowledge and at his mastery of the small forms, as though at a magnificent flowering of beautiful poems."

The program begins with Escenas de pájaros by Ramon Humet, an orchestral synthesis of birdsongs that earned its author the International Olivier Messiaen grand prize at the OSM's 2007 composition competition and the 24th Queen Sofia Composition Prize in 2006. In the second part we will hear Tchaikovsky's Fourth Symphony, the final movement of which is one of the most sensational and most thrilling in the repertoire. "Never before had one of my orchestral works cost me so much difficullty," wrote Tchaikovsky, "but neither have I ever felt so much love for any of my compositions.

This much anticipated concert will be under the direction of Brazilian conductor Roberto Minczuk, a protégé of Kurt Masur, who is music director of the Calgary Philharmonic Orchestra and artistic director of the Orquestra Sinfônica Brasileira in Rio de Janeiro.

Musical Sundays

November 16 at 2:30 p.m.

Salle Wilfrid-Pelletier, Place des Arts

Roberto Minczuk, conductor

Marie-Nicole Lemieux, contralto

Ramon Humet Escenas de pájaros

Gustav Mahler Rückert-Lieder

Piotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky Symphony No. 4

Tickets from $24.75

Information and reservations: 514 842-9951 or www.osm.ca

Grand Concerts:

Till Fellner and Beethoven's Fourth

Alfred Brendel evoked the intelligence, the sensitivity, the curiosity and the vast esthetic appetite of his disciple Till Fellner, born in Vienna in 1972, winner of the Clara Haskil International Piano Competition in 1993 and one of the most interesting younger pianists on the international scene. He will be performing, under the direction of Kent Nagano, Beethoven's Fourth Concerto, a masterwork of the concerto literature devoid of all formal constraints and overflowing with lyricism and poetry. The piano seems to be in a perpetual state of grace and of improvisation here, supported by an orchestra of great richness. This concerto will appear on an upcoming recording by the OSM.

Kent Nagano will also conduct Béla Bartók's The Miraculous Mandarin, a forebear of Stravinsky's Rite of Spring in its orchestration and rhythms, and two Nocturnes by Claude Debussy, both the Bartók and Debussy having been recorded by the OSM, the second honoured with a Juno Award in 1991. "The title Nocturnes is to be interpreted here in a general and, more particularly, in a decorative sense," noted Debussy. "Therefore, it is not meant to designate the usual form of the nocturne, but rather all the various impressions and the special effects of light that the word suggests."

Rounding off the program is Orchestral Theater 1: "Xun" by Tan Dun, author of the score to the film Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon. "Theatrical and ritualistic," wrote Mark Swed of the Los Angeles Times, "Tan Dun's music sculpts sound and transforms everything into a riveting experience that is hard to define but very easy to appreciate." In this work Tan Dun has written something that reflects his compositional concepts and his personal ideas. He evokes his childhood memories of shamanistic rituals and integrates them into the symphonic fabric. "Xun" is written for orchestra musicians and their voices.

Grand Concerts

November 26 and 27 at 8 p.m.

Salle Wilfrid-Pelletier, Place des Arts

Kent Nagano, conductor

Till Fellner, pianist

Claude Debussy Nocturnes 1 and 2

Tan Dun Orchestral Theater 1: "Xun"

Béla Bartók Suite from The Miraculous Mandarin

Ludwig van Beethoven Piano Concerto No. 4

Tickets from $24.75

Information and reservations: 514 842-9951 or www.osm.ca

Non-series concerts:

OSM Standard Life Competition

and chamber-music concert

The 69th edition of the OSM Standard Life Competition, devoted to woodwinds, brass and voice, will take place from November 26 to 30, under the presidency of Mr. Jean Élie. We must point out the presence of two great ladies of the vocal arts on the jury: Madam Renata Scotto (judge for the finals, voice category), soprano and teacher at the Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia, Italy, and Madam Françoise Pollet (judge for the semi-finals and finals, voice category), soprano and teacher at the Conservatoire national supérieur de musique et de danse in Lyon, France. Mr. Jean-Pierre Brossmann, former executive director of Théâtre du Châtelet, in Paris, as well as Maestro Kent Nagano, music director of the OSM, will join the jury for the finals. Mr. Welz Kauffman, president and CEO of Chicago's Ravinia Festival, will act as chairman of the jury. Master classes will be offered by oboist Louise Pellerin, trumpeter Jens Lindemann and by singers Françoise Pollet and Renata Scotto.

The Competition will conclude with a chamber-music concert on November 30 at 7 p.m., featuring trombonist Alain Trudel, trumpeter Jens Lindemann, clarinetist James Campbell and violinist Andrew Wan, concertmaster with the OSM and Grand Prize winner at the OSM Standard Life Competition, 2007 edition.

All Competition activities are free of charge and open to the public.

Title sponsor of the competition: Standard Life; principal partner: Espace musique; major partner: Schulich School of Music, McGill University.

Non-series concerts

November 26 to 29: OSM Standard Life Competition

Tanna Schulich Hall, Schulich Music School, McGill University

November 25, 5:30 to 7:30 p.m.: master class given by oboist Louise Pellerin

November 26, 9:30 a.m. to 5:00 p.m.: woodwinds semi-finals

November 26, 5:30 to 7:30 p.m.: master class given by trumpeter Jens Lindemann

November 26, 8:00 to 10:00 p.m.: master class given by soprano Françoise Pollet

November 27, 9:30 a.m. to 5:00 p.m.: brass semi-finals

November 28, 9:30 a.m. to 5:00 p.m. voice semi-finals

November 28, 5:30 to 7:30 p.m.: master class given by soprano and director Renata Scotto

November 29, 9:30 a.m. to noon: woodwind finals

November 29, 1:00 to 3:30 p.m.: brass finals

November 29, 4:00 to 6:30 p.m.: voice finals

November 29, 9:00 to 10:30 p.m.: awarding of prizes

November 30 at 7 p.m.: gala chamber-music concert

Redpath Hall, McGill University

Alain Trudel, trombone

Jens Lindemann, trumpet

James Campbell, clarinet

Andrew Wan, OSM concertmaster

Grand Prize Winner at the OSM Standard Life Competition, 2007 edition

Free admission, open to the public

Information: 514 842-9951 or www.osm.ca

The Orchestre symphonique de Montréal is presented by Hydro-Québec

in association with National Bank

OSM / Tribute to musical creativity

Tribute to musical creativity

Susanna Mälkki of the Ensemble Intercontemporain in Paris

for the first time in Canada

Chantal Juillet back with the OSM

Walter Boudreau conducts works by Reich, Vivier and Frehner

Movie projections on a giant screen

Montreal, October 6, 2008 – Susanna Mälkki, music director of the Ensemble Intercontemporain in Paris, will be making her Canadian debut with the Orchestre symphonique de Montréal at a non-series concert presented at Théâtre Maisonneuve in Place des Arts on October 29. Founded by none other than Pierre Boulez in 1976, the Ensemble Intercontemporain is one of the most prominent ensembles of its kind in the world. A unique and bold program will bring together Madam Mälkki, Société de musique contemporaine du Québec music director Walter Boudreau, and violinist Chantal Juillet. Excerpts from the James Dormeyer film Journal d’une création (Diary of a Creation) and from Jérôme Bosc’s stylized video City Life will be projected on a giant screen during the concert, while works by Frehner, Prévost, Ligeti, Reich and Vivier are performed by the musicians of the OSM.

An essential part of the OSM’s 75th season, this concert is closely linked to two Québec composers who cannot be ignored, marking as it does the 60th anniversary of the birth and 25th of the death of Claude Vivier, and the 10th anniversary of the premiere by Chantal Juillet and the OSM of André Prévost’s Violin Concerto. In addition, the Orchestra will perform Canadian Paul Frehner’s Lila, which won the Claude Vivier National Prize in 2007 as part of the OSM’s International Composition Prize.

Susanna Mälkki

Music director of the Ensemble Intercontemporain since 2005, Susanna Mälkki has quickly obtained international recognition for her talent as an orchestra conductor. Deeply committed to the cause of contemporary music, she is one of the few women conductors enjoying an international career. She led both the world and the North American premieres of Finnish composer Kaija Saariaho’s oratorio La Passion de Simone, an event that was acclaimed by the New York Times. Her collaborators have included the Klangforum Wien, the Birmingham Contemporary Music Group and the ASKO and Avanti! ensembles, and she has conducted such prominent orchestras as the Rotterdam Philharmonic, the City of Birmingham Symphony, the Oslo Philharmonic, the Munich Philharmonic, the Danish National Symphony, the Berlin Philharmonic, the North German Radio Symphony, the Vienna Symphony, the Orchestre philharmonique de Radio France, the Swedish Radio Symphony and the Cincinnati Symphony.

Walter Boudreau

Walter Boudreau has been highly active, since the early 1970s, in musical creativity in Québec. Artistic director and principal conductor of the Société de musique contemporaine du Québec (SMCQ) since 1988, he has collaborated on a regular basis with the OSM in large-scale projects (OSMCQ, Symphony of the Millennium, Musimarch, Montreal/New Music International Festival…). In 1968, with poet Raoul Duguay, he founded Infonie, a colourful ensemble of about 33 members located somewhere in the middle of happening, jazz, contemporary music and multimedia.

The work of the Montreal-born composer and conductor has been rewarded with the prestigious Grand Prize of the Conseil des arts de la Communauté urbaine de Montréal. He is also the recipient of First Prize from the CBC National Competition for Young Canadian Composers, the Prix Jules-Léger for New Chamber Music, the Grand Prix Paul Gilson from the Communauté des radios publiques de langue française, in Paris, and a number of Prix Opus from the Conseil québécois de la musique. The Canada Council for the Arts presented him with its Molson Prize, in recognition of his career as a whole. He has won a Masque, awarded by the Conseil québécois de la musique, as well as the Théâtre du Nouveau Monde’s Prix Gascon-Roux for best sound design at the Theatre. Lastly, he has received the Prix Denise-Pelletier for performing arts – the highest distinction offered by the Québec government in the area of culture and science.

Chantal Juillet

The OSM has had a special relationship with violinist Chantal Juillet for some time. Winner of the OSM Competition in 1974, she joined the Orchestra in 1985, was appointed associate concertmaster in 1990 and has performed on a number of occasions as a soloist with the Orchestra.

Recognized as one of the country’s most brilliant musicians, she enjoys an international career that takes her to the five continents. She is a frequent guest with orchestras as pre-eminent as the Orchestre de Paris, the Orchestre national de France, the London Philharmonic, the London Philharmonia, the English Chamber Orchestra, the Amsterdam Concertgebouw, the Vienna Symphony Orchestra, the Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra and the Munich Philharmonic Orchestra. The violinist has soloed regularly with great American orchestras like the Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, Boston and New York, and has toured frequently in Europe, North America, South America, Japan, China and Australia. Today she is artistic director of the Saratoga Chamber Music Festival, which she founded in 1991.

Works on the program

André Prévost, Violin Concerto

Among other moments being celebrated by the concert is the 10th anniversary of the premiere of André Prévost’s Violin Concerto, which was commissioned by the OSM and Chantal Juillet. Fascinated by the creative act, director James Dormeyer spent two years, day after day, as a privileged witness to the creation of this work, from the first sketch to the final concert, given by Chantal Juillet and the OSM at Place des Arts. The film that resulted is called Journal d’une creation (Diary of a Creation), an excerpt of which will be shown during the performance. James Dormeyer set out to depict, with as much clarity as possible, not only the subtleties of a complex musical language but also the movements of the soul that were at the source of the work, with its author as with its performers.

Born in France, James Dormeyer settled in Canada in 1965 and joined Radio-Canada as a filmmaker in 1968. He has directed in several fields, ranging from variety to children's programs to news by way of dramatic series and music programs.

Claude Vivier, Orion

Orion, by Montrealer Claude Vivier, a composer the 60th anniversary of whose birth and 25th of whose death are being marked, was commissioned and premiered by the OSM in 1980. The work is also being presented as part of the Claude Vivier tribute series in the Montreal/New Music International Festival.

Vivier’s art is based on a melody. “I have to feel ‘close’ to my musical material,” Vivier stated. “I have to live it.” György Ligeti considered the music of Claude Vivier among the most original of his time.

Steve Reich, City Life

Celebrated American composer Steve Reich is featured with his City Life, for instrumental ensemble and samplers, an specially dense work that presents a New World of excess and immoderation, with images supplied by Jérôme Bosc and projected on a giant screen. City Life integrates real-life noises recorded in New York into the composition: car doors slamming, air brakes, a pile driver and boat horns are some of the things that engage in a dialogue with the musicians. The work, one of the composer’s most exciting, is being performed for the first time by the OSM.

Last year at the OSM, Jérôme Bosc’s Buster, a montage based on Buster Keaton movies, was projected to John Adams’s work Fearful Symmetries. The film was a great success.

György Ligeti, Lontano

Lontano by György Ligeti, who died in 2006, is a flagship composition of the 20th century. One of the composer’s best known works, it is nonetheless rarely heard in concert. In fact, the last time the OSM played it was in 1981, under the direction of Charles Dutoit.

Director Stanley Kubrick used György Ligeti’s music several times in his films, in particular Atmosphères, Requiem, Lux Æterna in 2001: A Space Odyssey and Musica ricercata in Eyes Wide Shut.

Paul Frehner, Lila

In 2007, Canadian Paul Frehner took the Claude Vivier National Prize with Lila at the OSM International Composition Prize. Lila is a Hindu creation myth in which Brahman transforms into the universe. It’s a “rhythmic play,” in the composer’s own description, “which goes on in endless cycles, the One becoming the many and the many returning into the One…. In Lila, there are no obvious audible references to Eastern musical tradition. The rhythmic and metric aspects of the score, however, are governed by a personal interpretation and application of Jhumra, a 14-beat cyclical metric structure used in Indian classical-music traditions.”

Non-series Concerts

October 29 at 8 p.m.

Théâtre Maisonneuve, Place des Arts

Susanna Mälkki and Walter Boudreau, conductors

Chantal Juillet, violin

György Ligeti Lontano

André Prévost Violin Concerto (premiered by Chantal Juillet) (with projection of the James Dormeyer film Journal d’une creation)

Paul Frehner Lila

Steve Reich City Life (with projection of the Jérome Bosc video City Life)

Claude Vivier Orion

Tickets starting at $24.75

15-30 years old: $15

Information and reservations: 514-842-9951 or www.osm.ca

The Orchestre symphonique de Montréal is presented by Hydro-Québec

in association with National Bank Financial Group

Concert OSMM/MWSO Halloween

La musique classique: un plaisir à découvrir pour les enfants!

26 octobre 2008, à 13h00, Salle Oscar Peterson

Chers amis de l'orchestre,

Vous êtes cordialement invités à vous joindre à nous pour notre magnifique « Concert d'Halloween Extravaganza » qui proposera aux tout petits une sélection de pièces classiques appropriées pour la saison d'Halloween. De plus, l'orchestre sera accompagné, pour l'occasion, d'une troupe de jeunes danseurs « Destination Danse » et d'un magicien émérite, Blair Marshall, sur la scène pour un spectacle haut en couleur. Les enfants sont encouragés de venir costumés.

Le concert aura lieu à la salle Oscar Peterson, Université Concordia, le 26 Octobre 2008 à 13h00. La salle Oscar Peterson est située au 7141 rue Sherbrooke Ouest.

25$ Billets adultes

10$ Enfants de 12 ans et moins

Pour plus d'information ou pour des billets, veuillez appeler au 514-484-7428 ou au 514-510-1826 ou au Admission au 514-790-1245

Nous sommes reconnaissants pour votre soutien continu pour l'orchestre et pour ce merveilleux concert. Nous espérons vous rencontrer tous à notre prochain concert.

Classical music: fun for the whole family!

Dear friends of the orchestra,

You are cordially invited to our upcoming "Halloween at the Hall" concert which will offer a selection of classical music for small children based on the Disney film. In addition, the orchestra will be accompanied on stage by 'Destination Danse', a group of young dancers, and by Blair Marshall, the talented magician, for this colorful event. Children are encouraged to come in costume.

The concert will take place at the Oscar Peterson Hall, Concordia University, on October 26, 2008 at 1:00pm. The Oscar Peterson Hall is located at: 7141 Sherbrooke west.

$25 Adult tickets

$10 Children of 12 years old and under

For more information or for tickets, please call at 514-484-7428 or at 514-510-1826 or at Admissions at 514-790-1245

We are grateful for your continued support of the Orchestra and our marvelous concerts. We hope to meet you all at our upcoming concert.

OSM / les concerts du mois d'octobre

October at the OSM

Great violinists at the OSM:

Joshua Bell, James Ehnes and Itzhak Perlman

5 to 8 is back