Musica Camerata Montreal

Musica Camerata Montreal

Musica Camerata Montreal. Association of professional musicians offering an annual series of chamber music concerts. Founded by Hans Nemenoff, businessman and music enthusiast, his wife, Imy, Robert Verebes, Charles Reiner, and Larry Combs, it presented its first concert 3 Mar 1971 at the Ermitage. A continually varied ensemble of piano, strings, and woodwinds of up to 16 musicians performs unusual program fare, including several Canadian works each season (Champagne, Contant, Kelsey Jones, Papineau-Couture, Prévost, Somers, Vivier, etc), including the premiere of Walter Boudreau'sIncantations V in 1986. The concerts have been held successively at Sir George Williams (Concordia University, 1973-4), in Christ Church Cathedral (1974-84), and at McGill University (Pollack Hall, 1984-5; Redpath Hall, 1986-), with summer concerts at the Pointe Claire Cultural Centre in suburban Montreal. Two Beethoven concerts in 1977 and three Schubert concerts in 1978 marked the 150th anniversaries of the composers' deaths. Musica Camerata's repertoire includes more than 250 works from the 18th to the 21st centuries. In 1990 Musica Camerata gave the world premiere of Saint-Saëns' Quartet in E Major, the manuscript of which had been discovered by the Montreal musicologist Sabrina Ratner. Musica Camerata has toured throughout Canada, the United States, Costa Rica, and Argentina. The ensemble recorded a Quartet for piano and strings by Anne Eggleston, Mobiles by André Prévost (1977, RCI 472; Mobiles reissued on 6-ACM 28), and the following CDs: Piano Quartets by Chausson and Fauré (1988, SNE 552), Salon Viennois (SRC/CBC Records MVCD112), Le Grand Tango (SRC/CBC Records MVCD1079), featuring music of Astor Piazzola and Juan Carlos Cirigliano, and Music of the Americas (R/C 2 9957).