MONTREAL — Launched in 2016 with a focus on music with Jewish thematic content, the biennial Azrieli Music Prizes (AMP) have expanded to include commissions for Canadian and international works. There are no stylistic restrictions on either, although the latter are expected to promote intercultural understanding.
The four premieres (three world, one North American) performed Oct. 15 by the Orchestre symphonique de Montréal and its attendant chorus certainly comprised a wide array of sonorities, most of them modern in character. I left the Maison symphonique reflecting on how too much diversity can produce its own species of sameness.
The forces specified this year were orchestra and chorus, with or without soloists. First up was the winner of the 2026 Azrieli Commission for International Music, de l’encra escafada, a 13-minute cantata by Adrian Mocanu, a Romanian-Ukrainian composer in his 30s. The title is Occitan for “from faded ink,” this being a reference to a fragment of poetry by a trobairitz — a female troubadour.
Scraps of sound from the choir and barks from the orchestra (including four faint violas da gamba stationed near the stage apron) occasionally suggested an aviary, but of melody, harmony, and counterpoint there was not a trace. The use of a nearly dead language assured that no words were understood (projected subtitles notwithstanding). Mocanu took care of the rest.
Next up was Letter from Across the River by Dalit Hadass Warshaw, a 52-year-old New Yorker of Polish descent. The text mixes languages (English, Yiddish, and Hebrew) and sources (the Scriptural story of Jacob and an account of a hazardous wartime river crossing undertaken by the composer’s great-grandfather). Baritone Noam Heinz did most of the narrative heavy lifting, and very well, while soprano Hila Plitmann (singing, remarkably, from memory) was tasked with the punishingly high part of Jacob’s angelic opponent.
The harmonic idiom was essentially tonal. Warshaw is an accomplished practitioner of the theremin, so room was made in an already rich texture for this electronic instrument. One wonders how many orchestras and choral societies considering the possibility of a performance will respond positively to the need to find a thereminist. Choral writing was engaging, the orchestration often magical, but with sporadic input from various participants, the 20-minute piece came across as a sequence of interruptions.
Warshaw’s piece was the winner of the Azrieli Commission for Jewish music. The winner of the Azrieli Commission for Canadian music was Height of Land by Nicholas Denton Protsack, 32, a British Columbian who completed his doctorate in New Zealand.
An 18-minute “anti-concerto” for chorus, orchestra, and solo cello, the score came armed with a formidable environmental exegesis and a prodigious array of choral techniques — singing least salient among them. Cellist Ariel Barnes was positioned along with eight choristers on a platform in the center of the parterre. Such are the demands of creating ecologically informed music.
The audience was invited to participate in the final minute by rubbing hands together. Sharon Azrieli, founder of the AMP and one of the evening’s MCs, compared the gesture to the fluttering of butterflies. There are many pieces inspired by nature in the contemporary repertoire. Now there is one more.
The program concluded with the winner of the Azrieli Prize for Jewish Music, which is awarded to an existing but substantially undiscovered work with a Jewish theme. This was Riddle by Hana Ajiashvili, 54, a Georgian-born Israeli. The source material is a 900-year-old text by the poet and philosopher Yehuda Halevi, who often expressed himself in riddles. Not that the 17-minute cantata is a joking matter, with its growls, tremolos, screams, pounding drumbeats, and menacing glissandos, to which soprano Hila Baggio added a kind of expressionistic top line. The composer intended to create a bridge between historical Jewish suffering and modern war and terror. Mission accomplished, although applause (elsewhere robust) was subdued. It was a weighty way to end a weighty evening.
It remains to be said that the Israeli conductor Asher Fisch held all this together — a veritable labor of Hercules. OSM chorus director Andrew Megill also deserves more than a nod for preparing vocal music of uncommon difficulty. And, of course, praise is owing the musicians and choristers, who had a full night of it.
If the concert conveyed an overarching message, it was that minimalism, so dominant in orchestral and choral writing for so many years, is no longer in the ascendant. These premieres were distinctly maximalist. The 2028 edition of the AMP will feature chamber music commissions for up to 15 musicians. Looking forward to it.
The 2026 concert was live-streamed and archived on various platforms, including Gramophone magazine. To watch, go here.
