Music for lovers: Lineup announced for summer event

By ARTHUR KAPTAINIS, The Montreal Gazette
April 20, 2010

http://www.montrealgazette.com/entertainment/Music+lovers/2927904/story.html

Order your roses: the Lanaudière Festival plans to concentrate on Romantic-era composers.

The summer music celebration will present the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra under its music director Manfred Honeck in the Amphitheatre near Joliette, as well as the MSO under Kent Nagano, the Quebec Symphony Orchestra under Yoav Talmi and the Deutsche Kammerphilharmonie Bremen under Paavo Järvi.

Conspicuous by its absence is the Orchestre Métropolitain. Opening the schedule instead on July 10 is the in-house Orchestre du Festival. Jean-Marie Zeitouni conducts works by Chopin, Schumann, Mendelssohn, Liszt and Wagner, all bicentenarians or near-bicentenarians.

Other weekend highlights include the QSO in a July 17 opera and choral program counterbalanced by Jacques Hétu's valedictory Symphony No. 5. Toronto soprano Yannick-Muriel Noah sings Verdi and Bellini.

An all-Beethoven Pittsburgh concert on July 23 is followed on July 24 by Wagner, Strauss and Mahler (Symphony No. 1). The Bremen band will perform Schumann's Four Symphonies over three days (starting July 30) with star concerto appearances by violinist Hilary Hahn (Beethoven on July 31) and pianist Piotr Anderszewski (Mozart K. 453 on Aug. 1).

Nagano and the MSO give us Brahms's Violin Concerto (Isabelle Faust) and Shostakovich's Symphony No. 10 on Aug. 6, followed on Aug. 7 by Haydn's The Creation. The festival concludes on Aug. 8 with a six-pianist potpourri.

Concerts in churches offer the complete piano music of Chopin (1810-1849) as played by Ronald Brautigam, Sa Chen, Angela Cheng, Valentina Lisitsa, Wonny Song, Edna Stern, Cédric Tiberghien and Mihaela Ursuleasa. Lisitsa gives two recitals and plays Beethoven's Piano Concerto No. 5 with Pittsburgh. Alain Lefèvre, another Festival favourite, will appear on opening night (Chopin's Piano Concerto No. 1) and in an Amphitheatre chamber concert on July 16 (Mathieu and Chausson).

Subscriptions are available. Single tickets go on sale May 17. Go to www.lanaudiere.org.