The Gazette (Montreal)
April 19, 2005 Tuesday
Final Edition

Russians, famous or otherwise feature in I Musici season: Work of
unknown Galinin kicks off season and is included on chamber
orchestra’s CD

Mother Russia and her former satellites will play a large role the
2005-2006 I Musici de Montreal season announced yesterday by Yuli
Turovsky.

The downtown series, divided between Pollack Hall and the Theatre
Maisonneuve of Place des Arts, opens on Sept. 22 with a program
featuring the Piano Concerto of German Galinin, a virtually unknown
Russian composer who ended his days in an insane asylum. Ukrainian
virtuoso Sergei Salov does the honours. This program also includes
Beethoven’s Fifth – a major continuation of Turovsky’s anticipated
cycle of that composer’s symphonies.

Next comes Shostakovich’s substantially vocal Symphony No. 14, a work
first performed in the presence of the composer by an orchestra,
including Turovsky as a cellist. Tchaikovsky is the focus on Dec. 8.
Turovsky is the soloist in the Rococo Variations and the arranger of
the String Quartet No. 1.

On Jan. 25, the young German violinist David Garrett is the soloist
in Paganini’s Violin Concerto No. 2. Also heard will be Otto
Joachim’s Concertante No. 1 and the Symphony for Strings and Timpani
by Edvard Mirzoyan, an Armenian student of Shostakovich. The annual
one-act opera on March 22 will be Menotti’s The Old Maid and the
Thief. The series concludes on May 11, 2006, with a night of
Stravinsky (Apollon Musagete), Shostakovich (Piano Concerto No. 1
with Simon Trpceski) and Keith Jarrett (Elegy).

Russian music is not overlooked in the Ogilvy Series, which opens on
Sept. 8 and 9 with arrangements of Mussorgsky’s Pictures at an
Exhibition and Borodin’s String Quartet No. 2. A theatrical show with
eastern European folklore content, Cesar & Drana, follows on Oct. 6
and 7. Canadian music will be heard on Dec. 15 and 16 and the Italian
baroque on Feb. 23 and 24. Turovsky explores Op. 1 compositions by
Barber, Nielsen and Dvorak on March 30 and 31 and the Bach family on
April 27 and 28, 2006.

There are four West Island concerts and four children’s concerts, all
with Catherine Perrin as hostess. There are two CDs on the agenda,
one comprising Piano Concertos by Galinin and Galina Ustvolskaya as
played by Salov and Shostakovich’s String Quartet No. 3.