Ottawa seems to have become a summertime music festival hot-spot.  I
was recently reading about Chicagoan devotees who save up through the
year to spend a few days every summer at the local Blues Festival, which
wound down a few days ago.  A Jazz Festival is already underway here,
and the famous fortnight-long International Chamber Music Festival begins
on July 26th.

Publicity about classical music being what it is -- in my view,
responsible for rampant ignorance about CM, and poor attendance figures
-- just this morning I learned that a one-time organ series of events
will begin filling many of the region's churches tonight.  Organ concerts,
conferences, and even competitions (!?) are slated to put to use most
of the area's 250 instruments, as well as many local brass and other
accompanist musicians.  http://www.rcco-ottawa.ca/

Along with Ottawa's Chamber Music Festival, this Organ Festival is
probably the only local music event that lives up to its name.  Purists
have long been grumbling that the Blues appellation is not deserved by
many of the Bluesfest's headliners -- including Sting, Ray Charles, and,
this year, Cheryl Crow -- though their musicianship's beyond dispute.
http://ottawa-bluesfest.ca/

Similarly, last night my two youngest and I could overhear strains of
the open-air Jazz Festival on our way home after a CM recital-concert.
The place of the horny mambo/pachanga in a jazz festival was spurious
to my mind, not just dubious; and yet music is music, gloriously, and
better to have it than not.  In any case, people always do show up,
clearly not caring much about any mislabelling.
http://www.ottawajazzfestival.com/en/default.asp

Our (free) National Arts Centre concert had been played by the Orchestre
de la francophonie canadienne, made up of players under the age of 30.
Works by Olivier Larue, Chausson, Ravel and Tchaikovsky were preceded
by a recital on the same stage of Cesar Franck's Piano Quintet.  This
featured the evening's soloist, occasionally fiery violinist Lara St
John, and members of the orchestra: its first violinist (Renee-Paule
Gauthier), first cellist (Gwendolyn Smith), the Orchestre's conductor
on viola (Jean-Philippe Tremblay), and Jean Desmarais on piano.

My guess is that this work's special challenge is the ensemble playing:
maintaining musical coherence in a work that any lapses in attention
would turn into a very messy musical porridge.  It was met very successfully:
the players managed admirably, to me, with a special mention for Desmarais'
pianism, which gave the performance a high level of poetry.

But this is no review, just a few scattered notes.

Next Friday I'll be attending the next NAC concert, this time with my
eldest -- so keeping distractions to a minimum.  The program is more
appealing to me, and led by someone I've been wanting to hear: Simon
Streatfield, conducting the National Youth Orchestra of Canada.  The
tickets have run out sooner, as the program is unusually exciting:
Britten's Sinfonia da Requiem, Stravinsky's Firebird Suite (1919),
John Burge's Sonic Adventure, and Lutoslawski's Concerto for Orchestra.
Radical, for Ottawa.

A brief aside: anyone who's considered the Lutoslawski series on the
Naxos label, or who still has a small Lutoslawski collection, do take
the plunge with their Volume 5: Concerto for Orchestra; 3 Poems by Henri
Michaux; Mi-Parti for Symphony Orchestra; and the Overture for Strings.
It probably includes some of his most approachable music, and at 70+
minutes it's well worth the outlay.  The liner notes sniff about how
some of these works were composed under Stalinist-type pressures, but
to me this is no unmitigated disaster.  Like his Dance Preludes and the
Paganini Variations for 2 pianos, two other meaty Luto favourites, it's
led to some fabulous music.  (Mind you, one also _needs_ his symphonies,
the Partita, Chain 2, etc.)

Talking about good, affordable CDs: a second double CD in EMI's 'British
Composers' line has now come into my collection, the 1st being of
orchestral works by Havergal Brian, conducted by Mackerras and Groves.
This new double is of Britten's earlier and later works, by Rattle and
the Birminghams, including the Sinfonia da Requiem.  At *less than* Naxos
prices, this line of EMI doubles shouldn't go unnoticed.

Getting back to Ottawa: The real treat to come, of course, is the Chamber
Music Festival.  Now the biggest gathering of such performances on the
planet, I hear.  No doubt globe-trotting Janos will report on some
recitals from this year's proceedings.  Hope so.

Players include Marc-Andre Hamelin, Emma Kirkby, Ida Haendel, and Joel
Quarrington (dbl-bassist), and some of the best String Quartets going:
the Emersons, Tokyos, Borodins, the St Lawrence, etc.  Those with passes
will be catching works by Jolivet, Shostakovich, Ligeti, Poulenc (Babar),
Janacek (Concertino), Stravinsky, Ysaye, Srul I Glick (yes!), RM Schafer,
Golijov, several names I don't recognize ...and plenty of Bach, Mendelssohn,
Schubert, Telemann, Corelli, Handel, etc.  http://www.chamberfest.com/

I hope to catch a 28th of July recital of 2-violin works by Spohr,
Leclair, Rozsa and Bartok.  Bartok's Piano Quintet is also being played
(with Dohnanyi's Sextet), and in another recital there's a piece by him
for viola and piano.

Here's hoping some live music comes to grace your neighbourhood.  If not,
you know where to come...

Bert Bailey