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Vancouver's Orpheum Theatre

Newswire | Vancouver Symphony Orchestra Announces 2026-27 Season

By Newswire on 4 March 2026 Chamber Music, Newswire, Orchestral, Vancouver, West

[Vancouver, B.C.] — The Vancouver Symphony Orchestra (VSO) is thrilled to announce its 2026/27 season of concerts. Audiences can look forward to hearing some of the world’s greatest soloists join Music Director Otto Tausk and Vancouver’s very own Grammy- and Juno Award-winning symphony orchestra. “In spring 2026, the Vancouver Symphony Orchestra travels to Europe, proudly representing our city on the international stage while carrying the spirit of our audiences with us,” says VSO Music Director Otto Tausk. “Experiences like this remind me that music connects people across borders just as powerfully as it does within a concert hall. The musicians of…

Steven Osborne. Photo: Ben Ealovega

Review | Steven Osborne Delivers Sturm und Drang at the Ladies’ Morning Musical Club

By Jan Krejcar on 4 March 2026 Classical Music, Concert Reviews, Montreal, Piano

Over every mountain-top Lies peace, In every tree-top You scarcely feel A breath of wind; The little birds are hushed in the wood. Wait, soon you too Will be at peace. Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, The Book of Lieder, trans. Richard Stokes (London: Faber, 2005). The great German polymath, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe wrote these lines, The Wanderer’s Nightsong in 1776. One of his most famous poems, it masterfully delivers a feeling of all-enveloping serenity, not even broken by birdsong. Over 50 years later, in 1828 Franz Schubert (1797–1828) wrote his last sonata (Bb major, D. 960) months before his…

Zita Szemere (Lucia) in Hungarian State Opera's Lucia di Lammermoor. Photo: Attila NAGY / Hungarian State Opera

Review | Zita Szemere Shines in Hungarian State Opera’s Dramatically Confused Lucia di Lammermoor

By Gianmarco Segato on 3 March 2026 Concert Reviews, Opera, Vocal

Hungarian State Opera’s revival of their 2016 production of Donizetti’s Lucia di Lammermoor by Máté Szabó gives us a new Lucia ascendant who succeeds within a dramatic vacuum. Up until now, soprano Zita Szemere has mostly been known for lyric roles such as Ilia, Norina, and Blonde. Here, she cranks things up a notch on her own vocal terms. She offers a beautifully sung, and convincingly dramatic Lucia, the tragic heroine abused by the men in her life, who only gains agency once she has been driven mad. Would that the production around her could offer a better showcase for…

The 66 selected candidates for the 2026 Queen Elisabeth Cello Competition. Photo: Queen Elisabeth Competition

Newswire | Four Canadians selected for 2026 Queen Elisabeth Competition

By Newswire on 3 March 2026 Classical Music, Newswire, Orchestral, Strings

Brussels – Applications for the third cello edition of the Queen Elisabeth Competition closed on Wednesday 26 November 2025. A total of 185 cellists, aged between 18 and 30, applied to take part in the 2026 session (nearly 20% more than the previous edition in 2022). Canadian Participants The following Canadian candidates are taking part in the Cello edition:Andrew Ilhoon Byun, Michael Song, Romain-Olivier Gray and Leland Ko. For the preselection stage, candidates were required to submit video recordings of a demanding programme including one of the Six Études for cello and piano, opus postumus by François Servais, Variations concertantes op. 17…

Toronto Children's Chorus (TCC), Photo: Justin Friesen

Newswire | Toronto Children’s Chorus Tours Asia

By Newswire on 3 March 2026 Choral, Classical Music, Newswire

Toronto, March 2, 2026 – The Toronto Children’s Chorus embarks on its 34th international tour with travel to Hong Kong and Singapore in July 2026 where the Choir, under the leadership of Artistic Director Zimfira Poloz, has been invited to perform at two prestigious choral festivals. 38 TCC choristers (aged 12-17) and TCC artistic leaders will represent Canada through performances, musical and cultural exchange, and collaboration with top youth choirs from around the world. TCC Chamber Choir (TCC’s senior choir) was invited to be a Resident Choral Artist at the World Choir Festival-Hong Kong taking place from July 13-16, 2026.…

Gabriel Felcark, Francis Choinière, Nicholas Choinière Photo: TamPhotography

Newswire | ATMA Classique under New Management

By Newswire on 2 March 2026 Arts Industry, Classical Music, Newswire

Montreal, March 2nd, 2026 – The record label ATMA Classique enters a new era with the arrival of Nicholas Choinière, Gabriel Felcarek, and Francis Choinière as its new owners. The three entrepreneurs, who founded GFN Productions in 2018, present more than 100 large-scale symphonic concerts across Canada each year. ATMA, Canada’s leading classical music label, has a catalogue of 780 albums and releases dozens of new recordings each year by Canadian artists. Its parent company, Les Éditions Ad Litteram, along with its sister companies Studio Esplanade and Livetoune, will also come under the direction of the new owners. Together, they…

A scene from Opéra national de Paris's Carmen. Photo: Benoite Fanton

Review | How to Bludgeon Carmen: Bieito’s Lesson in Four Acts

By Denise Wendel-Poray on 27 February 2026 Concert Reviews, Opera, Vocal

Calixto Bieito’s Carmen at the Opéra Bastille—a production created in 1999 at the Festival de Peralada (Spain) and revived in Paris since 2017—arrives with the reputation of a once-scandalous staging. Yet what unfolds on stage today feels less provocative than crude. The production (seen Feb. 22) is built on a succession of aggressively literal gestures—sexual exhibitionism, staged violence, crudely stylized mob behavior—presented with little variation or psychological progression. Rather than revealing new facets of the characters, these devices reduce them to caricature: Carmen becomes a bundle of mannerisms, Don José a schematic figure of brutality, Escamillo a hollow emblem of…

Photo: Misha Obradovic

Lebrecht Weekly | Sergei Prokofiev: 2nd violin concerto &c (Warner Classics)

By Norman Lebrecht on 27 February 2026 Lebrecht Weekly, Violin

The Serbian violinist Nemanja Radulovic is a maverick in the manner of Nigel Kennedy and David Garrett, a stage animal with a twist of difference. On his latest album, Radulovic wears a monk-like cassock down to the floor with hair down to his waist, as if he had spent the last forty days in a cave, communing with the eternal. The music he performs here is by Prokofiev, a composer whose eye was forever on the earthly and the existential. The surprise lies in the soloist’s approach. Radulovic plays the concerto softly and with introspection, requiring the Philharmonia Orchestra (conducted…

Newswire | Azrieli Music Prizes: New Jewish Music, Vol. 5, Out February 27

By Newswire on 27 February 2026 Choral, Classical Music, Music Competition, Newswire, Orchestral, Vocal

The Azrieli Music Prizes (AMP), the top music composition competition in Canada, returns with its fifth album for Analekta. Available February 27, 2026, New Jewish Music, Vol. 5 features the world‑premiere recordings of the 2024 Azrieli Music Prize–winning works by Jordan Nobles (Azrieli Commission for Canadian Music), Josef Bardanashvili (Azrieli Prize for Jewish Music), Yair Klartag (Azrieli Commission for Jewish Music), and Juan Trigos (Azrieli Commission for International Music). All four works are performed by members of the Orchestre symphonique de Montréal and the OSM Chorus, conducted by Andrew Megill. The album will also be available in stereo and Dolby Atmos formats. Opening the album is kanata, an a cappella choral work in which Jordan Nobles uses…

Sean Panikkar (Sergei) & Ambur Braid (Katerina) in Komische Oper Berlin's Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk. Photo: Monika Rittershaus

Review | Ambur Braid Kills It in Komische Oper Berlin’s Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk

By Gianmarco Segato on 25 February 2026 Concert Reviews, Opera, Vocal

Like its material, Komische Oper Berlin’s new production of Shostakovich’s Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk by director Barrie Kosky is unrelentingly grim. The action takes place in an undefined space with a white rectangle superimposed upon a distressed gray wall. Props are minimal, the principal one being the title character’s bed where all manner of lust, violence and murder takes place. Visual excitement is ignited by the strategic movements of the chorus, and the unrelenting acrobatic demands placed on the principals. The story is told in a remarkably straightforward manner, but it’s the coalescence of all these artistic elements that pushes…