Le Festival de Lanaudière presents

A Heavenly Vision

July 16, 2021 at 8:00pm
Fernand-Lindsay Amphitheatre

The Festival de Lanaudière is adding a concert to its programming and will launch the 2021 edition by offering an unexpected reunion with Kent Nagano, on Friday, July 16, at 8 p.m. For this event, Maestro Nagano will conduct the Orchestre symphonique de Montréal in Gustav Mahler’s Symphony No. 4, also featuring soprano Hélène Guilmette, and Claude Debussy’s Prélude à l’après-midi d’un faune. The concert marks the first performance of this symphony by Mahler in the Festival’s history. The conductor will lead the OSM before a live audience for the first time since February 2020!

Kent Nagano returns to the province specifically to give this concert at Festival de Lanaudière. “Kent Nagano’s visit, which would have seemed unlikely days ago but was made possible by a partial reopening of borders, attests to his deep and friendly attachment to the Festival and its audience,” stated Artistic Director Renaud Loranger. “His performance with the OSM of Mahler’s Third Symphony in 2019 is vividly etched in our memories. This opening night promises to deliver powerful emotions.”

Artists
Orchestre symphonique de Montréal
Kent Nagano, conductor

Kent Nagano is renowned for his clarity, elegance, and intelligence in performance. He enjoys a steadfast international reputation, engaging with a vast repertoire spanning the Baroque era to contemporary music, championing little-known works while bringing new ideas to the performance of the established repertoire. In 2015, he was appointed General Music Director of the Hamburg State Opera and Principal Conductor of the Hamburg Philharmonic Orchestra. From 2006 to 2020 Maestro Nagano was Music Director of the OSM and was appointed Conductor Emeritus in 2021. From 2000 to 2006, he served as Music Director of the Deutsches Symphonie-Orchester Berlin – of which he is Honorary Conductor – and from 2006 to 2013 of the Bayerische Staatsoper in Munich. In 2019 he was appointed Honorary Conductor of Concerto Köln, the Baroque orchestra with which he is working on the Wagner Readings project.

Born in California, Kent Nagano spent his early professional years at the Boston Opera and subsequently as Assistant Conductor to Seiji Ozawa at the Boston Symphony Orchestra.

Maestro Nagano was named Commander of the Ordre de Montréal, Grand Officer of the Ordre national du Québec, Companion of the Ordre des arts et des lettres du Québec, in addition to receiving the Governor General’s Meritorious Service Medal.

Hélène Guilmette, soprano

Acclaimed for her brilliant timbre, refined musicianship and remarkable stage presence, since 2004, Quebec soprano Hélène Guilmette leads a spectacular international career. On the opera stage, she has appeared in Munich, Nice, Toronto, Lyon, Brussels, Montreal, Paris, Strasbourg, Amsterdam, and Tokyo, among other cities. She has performed in recital and in concert in Europe, South America, Asia, and Australia. She has sung under the direction of several highly acclaimed conductors and stage directors, and will soon perform at Covent Garden in London, with the Opéra de Montréal, in Paris, and in Seattle.

Works
Claude Debussy, Prélude à l’Après-midi d’un faune (Prelude to the Afternoon of a Faun)
Gustav Mahler, Symphony No. 4 in G major

Tickets are going fast. To purchase your tickets visit: www.lanaudiere.org