Kent Nagano and the Orchestre symphonique de Montréal are happy to be continuing its collaboration with Decca by releasing Danse macabre, an album that constitutes the second project in the OSM’s new partnership with the prestigious record company.

Danse macabre follows on the heels of L’Aiglon, the lyrical drama by Honegger and Ibert that the OSM and Kent Nagano recorded as a world premiere and that has received numerous honors since its release in March 2016, including an ECHO Klassik award.

A new recording conducted by Kent Nagano, Danse macabre will win over both newcomers and seasoned music lovers. All six works presented on the CD are linked by a common theme: Halloween. And although they were not all composed specifically on the occasion of that holiday, the works exploit elements characteristic of it, including death, witches, skeletons and demons.

“The late 19th and early 20th centuries witnessed great advances in technology, and a simultaneous rise in concern for matters of secular spiritualism – a trend we may observe in our current technological age,” points out the OSM’s music director, Kent Nagano. “This cyclical enthusiasm for the supernatural and the occult tends to pervade popular consciousness and artistic production no matter how advanced and rational the society. As such it is a theme that transcends nationality, culture and time. The great variety of works in this recording, from the swirling magic of Dukas’s Sorcerer’s Apprentice to the uniquely American humor of Ives’s Hallowe’en, represents the OSM’s effort to offer a unique window onto a compelling historical period in classical music, but also a point of commonality connecting to the world we inhabit today.”

The album was recorded in the course of three concerts presented on 29 and 30 October 2015 at Maison symphonique de Montréal. The Orchestre symphonique de Montréal and Kent Nagano perform works by Dukas, Dvořák, Mussorgsky, Balakirev, Saint-Saëns and Ives.

Press release