“The Orchestre Métropolitain, which for decades has assiduously toured the island of Montreal and cultivated crowds in LaSalle, Pierrefonds and St-Léonard, will take its act to Amsterdam, Cologne, Dortmund, Hamburg, Rotterdam and Paris a year from now,” led by OM Artistic Director Yannick Nézet-Séguin, writes Arthur Kaptainis in Thursday’s (11/24) Montreal Gazette (Canada). “The 2017 tour will mark the OM’s first journey overseas. Seven concerts are wedged into eight days, starting on Nov. 26 in the 2002-vintage Konzerthaus in Dortmund, Germany and concluding on Dec. 2 in Philharmonie in Paris…. Other stops” include Cologne’s Kölner Philharmonie, Amsterdam’s Royal Concertgebouw, Rotterdam’s De Doelen, and Hamburg’s “spectacular and soon-to-open Elbphilharmonie waterfront complex…. Tour repertoire comprises four French selections, including Debussy’s La Mer; two works by Elgar, including the Enigma Variations; and two Canadian compositions, Pierre Mercure’s colourful Kaléidoscope of 1948 and Exil intérieur (2012) by Éric Champagne, a former OM composer-in-residence…. Quebec contralto Marie-Nicole Lemieux, who is well known in France, sings Berlioz’s “Les Nuits d’été” song cycle. Montreal-born Frenchman Jean-Guihen Queyras will play Saint-Saëns’s Cello Concerto No. 1 and the French pianist Alexandre Tharaud, a frequent soloist with Les Violons du Roy, is heard in Ravel’s Concerto for the Left Hand.”
Posted November 28, 2016
