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La Scena Online is the digital magazine of La Scene Musicale.Contents: News, Concert reviews, CD reviews, Interviews, Obituaries, etc; Editor: Wah Keung Chan; Assistant Editor: Andreanne Venne
ISSN: 1206-9973

The Dover Quartet at the Celebrity Series of Boston. Photo: Robert Torres

Review | The Dover Quartet at LMMC: Classical & Romantic Combined

By Jan Krejcar on 10 February 2026 Classical, Classical Music, Concert Reviews, Montreal, Romantic, Strings

On Feb. 8, the temperature in Montreal plummeted to -16°C and a biting wind lowered it by some magnitudes more. The city was in need of some warmth and sun, and they got it. The Dover Quartet rolled into town to play for the Ladies’ Morning Musical Club and fortuitously gifted the audience in Oscar Peterson Concert Hall one of Joseph Haydn’s (1732-1809) “Sun” quartets–op. 20, no. 4. in D major. Note: there is nothing particularly sunny about the opus 20 quartets. The nickname comes from one of the early editions having a picture of a sun on its cover.…

Lebrecht Weekly | Elgar: The Dream of Gerontius (Hyperion)

By Norman Lebrecht on 6 February 2026 Choral, Lebrecht Weekly, Opera, Vocal

Edward Elgar’s great oratorio could justly be called a deathbed masterpiece – not his own, for it was written in the fullness of his powers, but that of Gerontius who spends the first part of the work dying in an agony of faith and doubt and the second in the company of a Guardian Angel who escorts him into eternity. The dying man is a tenor, the angel a soprano. A baritone and chorus cover the rest. The work is devotional and Roman Catholic though not preachy or pompous. Elgar is not in the business of saving immortal souls. He…

A scene from Paris Opera's Eugene Onegin. Photo: Guergana Damianova

Review | Ralph Fiennes’ Eugene Onegin at Paris Opera

By Denise Wendel-Poray on 3 February 2026 Concert Reviews, Opera, Vocal

The excitement around this sold-out Eugene Onegin at the Palais Garnier (seen Feb. 1) begins with a name: Ralph Fiennes. One senses his presence before a note is played. This is not a production that announces a concept; it unfolds as an act of direction in the cinematic sense. Fiennes shapes time, stillness, and gesture with the instincts of an actor and film-maker. The theatre itself—Garnier’s red velvet, gold leaf, painted ceilings—lingers in the peripheral vision like a living extension of the staging. Built in the same decade as Tchaikovsky’s opera, it feels less like a venue than like part…

Marie-Nicole Lemieux (Erda) in Paris Opera's Siegfried. Photo: Herwig Prammer

Review | Siegfried at Paris Opera: Magnificent Music, a Theatrical Void

By Denise Wendel-Poray on 3 February 2026 Concert Reviews, Opera, Vocal

At Opéra national de Paris’s Opéra Bastille, Calixto Bieito staging of Wagner’s Siegfried arrives as the third panel of a much-anticipated new Ring. Musically, the evening often reaches a very high level (seen Jan. 31). Theatrically, it descends into something that is not so much provocative as empty. Let us begin with what worked, because it worked magnificently. The singing was, across the board, of a calibre one rarely encounters in this punishing score. As Mime, Gerhard Siegel was a masterclass in vocal characterisation. His tenor, bright yet edged with acid irony, captured the character’s neurotic cunning without ever descending…

Lebrecht Weekly | Dmitri Shostakovich: The last 3 quartets (Harmonia Mundi)

By Norman Lebrecht on 30 January 2026 Lebrecht Weekly

There is a tension within this recording that I have struggled to resolve. The Cuarteto Casals are currently among the world’s best string quartets, certainly top ten. Their two previous volumes of Shostakovich quartets earned my unfettered admiration. The playing on these albums is hyper-athletic, the interpretations informed, sensitive and intelligent. Just about as good as it gets. My first hearing of this final set left me unconvinced. The 13th quartet – a 20-minute-long movement led by the viola – felt overly harsh, unmediated by the possibility of beauty. The 14th, dedicated to a cellist, pulled too much in the…

Andrii Maslov in Paradisum. Photo: Balint Hirling

Review | A Poetic Night at the Circus: Recirquel’s Paradisum

By Kaija Pepper on 27 January 2026 Circus, Concert Reviews, Contemporary, Dance, Vancouver, West

Paradisum is an unusual theatrical experience—a dark and brooding new circus show grounded in contemporary dance, with enough high-flying acts of derring-do to arouse the audience to frequent applause. That at least was the case in Vancouver when Hungary’s Recirquel premiered Bence Vági’s Paradisum in North America as part of the DanceHouse season, presented in partnership with the Cultch. Key to this brooding and also beautiful work is the mysteriously threatening setting—mountains and towers rise imposingly, then collapse and reform, or melt into thin air and reappear in new configurations. Once I became aware of the simplicity of the stagecraft,…

A scene from the Canadian Opera Company’s Rigoletto. Photo: Michael Cooper

Review | Canadian Opera Company’s Rigoletto Dazzles with Spectacular Singing

By Denise Lai on 27 January 2026 Concert Reviews, Opera, Toronto, Vocal

Rigoletto, Giuseppe Verdi’s masterpiece and one of opera’s most tragic stories, opened Canadian Opera Company’s winter season on Jan. 24 to a full house on a frigid night. To start, the audience warmed up their vocals with a rousing rendition of “O Canada,” sung with more bravado than usual, given the recent political climate. The Story Rigoletto is a jaded jester in the court of the Duke of Mantua. His master is an arrogant philanderer who boasts of his many amorous conquests. When Rigoletto mocks Monterone, whose daughter has been dishonoured by the Duke, Monterone curses him with the same…

Calidore Quartet Photo: Marco Borggreve

Lebrecht Weekly | American Tapestry (Signum)

By Norman Lebrecht on 23 January 2026 Jazz, Lebrecht Weekly

At the end of a week of abusive American power, the last thing I wanted to hear was sentimental Americana squeezed out by a string quartet based in Delaware. There’s a reason companies list in Delaware. It has 2 percent tax, business-friendly courts and no questions asked. Unreal. Still, you never know what a recording will reveal. This one plays out four unrelated styles. Samuel Barber’s first string quartet is known for its mournful middle movement, Barber’s Adagio. The outer movements are rich in tunes. Every American composer envied Uncle Sam Barber’s gift for melody. Jazzman Wynton Marsalis raids New…

Lebrecht Weekly | Schubert: Impromptus; Brahms: Late piano works (Warner Classics)

By Norman Lebrecht on 16 January 2026 Lebrecht Weekly

Some people love cheese, others turn green at the sniff of it. We are talking here of matters of taste and discrimination. Several people whose judgement I respect have responded with great enthusiasm to Eric Lu’s twin sets of Schubert Impromptus on the Warner label. Lu, 28, is the American who won last year’s Chopin Competition in Warsaw and the Leeds in 2018. Regardless of how one views those results he is a competent, dedicated and experienced pianist who will enjoy a long career. That said, I practically threw up at the opening note of the opus 90 impromptus, and…

Lebrecht Weekly | Soulima Stravinsky (Nimbus)

By Norman Lebrecht on 9 January 2026 Lebrecht Weekly

Igor Stravinsky was too much of an egotist to be a good parent. He was a brute to his first wife, Yekaterina, who was also his first cousin, obliging her to pay a monthly stipend to his mistress, Vera Sudeikina. Relations with his children atrophied in the course of these humiliations. Soulima, his third child, never stood much of a chance to find an independent existence. Tutored by his father’s acolyte Nadia Boulanger, he augmented his attempts at being a composer with playing his father’s fairly undemanding piano pieces. In 1939, when Igor and Vera moved to the US, Soulima…