“For 14 years at the helm of the Orchestre symphonique de Montréal, Kent Nagano was applauded for both his outreach and his risks. He officially leaves the post of music director this month,” writes Arthur Kaptainis in Friday’s (8/7) Montreal Gazette. “It would be easy to assemble a long list of public-spirited projects either agreed to or invented by this media-savvy maestro since his ascent to the music directorship in 2006: Mahler’s First Symphony at midnight in a riverfront Molson warehouse; Concerto for Radio Host and Orchestra, featuring Radio-Canada broadcaster René Homier-Roy as spoken-voice soloist; the Concert à l’aveugle, featuring the Electric Candlelight Concerto of John Anthony Lennon…. Sometimes the music was bundled with social awareness. In Nagano’s first season, we heard The General, an oratorio interweaving theatrical music by Beethoven with words based on the Rwanda memoirs of Roméo Dallaire. Later came post-tragedy outreach concerts in Montreal North and Lac-Mégantic. An unapologetic exponent of the classical canon—just read his memoir/manifesto Classical Music: Expect the Unexpected—Nagano was aware of the need to spread the word.… The hype would be worthless in the absence of something musical to say…. The fame is justified.”
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