Festival founder Denis Brott reunited with fellow cellist and former classmate Ron Thomas and guests from the Boston Chamber Music Society for three pieces and spine-moulding at St-George church to open the Montreal Chamber Music Festival. The program was conservatively diverse, opening with Menotti’s Suite for Two Cellos and Piano, which Brott helped première in 1973. It moves with Menotti’s typical efficiency but its hasty, crammed sounds reminded me of a study and not the work of a 62-year- old with 16 written operas. The Arioso seemed different — focused — it developed without the other movements’ sense of the exam is tomorrow.
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