Shostakovich from the Leningrad Philharmonic

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Back when I was first getting acquainted with the music of Dmitri Shostakovich perhaps the most widely available recordings of the symphonies were the ones by the Leningrad Philharmonic conducted by Yevgeny Mravinsky on the Melodiya label.  They were quite distinctive; blaring brass, and in some ways sounding rather crude.  Was that what the conductor/composer wanted?  Was that how the orchestra played?  Or was it an artefact of the recordings?  As many of them are now available in various remasters from assorted labels I could dig a bit bit deeper and maybe I will but meanwhile what has come my way is a remastered release from two concerts the Leningrad Philharmonic; conducted by Arvids Jansons (father of Maris), gave in London in September 1971 and which were broadcast on the BBC.

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Opera Revue at Granite Brewery

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Last week I caught Opera Revue’s last Toronto show of the year at Granite Brewery.  The usual gang; Danie Friesen, Alexander Hajek and Claire Elise-Harris, were joined by tenor Ryan Downey for, what else, a holiday themed show.  There was a mix of secular  and sacred Christmas music plus a few parodies.  And the Grinch put in an appearance.  So a pretty typical OR show and, as always, a welcome opportunity to hear some music performed well in an informal setting, beer in hand.

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Ensemble Studio do the standards

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Last Tuesdays’s concert in the RBA featured four singers and two pianists from the Ensemble Studio in a concert of highly recognisable opera arias.  I guess with Barber of Seville and Rigoletto coming p on the FSC stage that was a bit inevitable.  It was though very well done with all four singers not only singing well but really conveying a sense of character.

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Where Her Music Blooms

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Wednesday’s concert in the RBA was a challenging programme of song by contemporary women composers presented by soprano Ariane Cossette and pianist Brian Cho.  Kaija Saariaho’s Quatre instants sets four related poems by Amin Maalouf.  In some ways it’s in the same sort of psychological space as their L’amour de loin; love at a distance, love requited and unrequited, love sensual and quasi-spiritual, but musically it’s very different.  It’s much more abrasive and (mostly) less lyrical.  Sometimes its really busy and quite angry.  It’s also very, very complex and often quite loud, demanding great skill and stamina from both performers.  The piano part features loads of trills and arpeggiation and the vocal line has awkward intervals and even screaming.  It was handled really well.

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C’est nous les dieux, ni yw y duwiau

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HORIZON:MADOG is a new chamber opera with music by Paul Frehner and a trilingual libretto by Angela J. Murphy.  In a not too distant future where the world has been devastated by flooding and electro-magnetic storms, Madog; a descendant of the legendary Welsh prince, leads a movement for a more eco-friendly, less tech dependent future.  He hears (scratchily) a radio broadcast from Wales promising, essentially, a tech fix, which he regards with scorn, and, in his dreams, his ancestor urging him to action.  A plan emerges. Continue reading →

A most unusual cello recital

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Anyone familiar with the work of cellist Peter Eom, who performed on Wednesday in the RBA, would not have been expecting a collection of Bach and Britten pieces.  They might have been surprised though by the floor layout, which featured six “cello stations”.  Peter’s introduction stated that his recital was titled Primordial because he wanted to suggest rituals, dreams and surrealism and he wanted us to take the recital on whatever terms we, or our subconsciousnesses, chose but to experience it as a single whole played end to end.

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Rogers v. Rogers

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Michael Healey’s Rogers v. Rogers directed by Chris Abraham opened at Crow’s Theatre on Wednesday night.  It’s a sort of follow up to The Master Plan in that it’s Toronto based and deals with corporate greed and incompetence coupled to governmental ineptitude and general inability to keep up with the corporate world.  It’s different in that it’s two related stories mashed together and, more notably, in that Tom Rooney plays all the characters.

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The Futures Market

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The Futures Market is a new on-line opera by Douglas Rodger (librettist) and Njo Kong Kie (composer) featuring Teiya Kasahara, Derek Kwan, Keith Lam and Wesley Hui.  Some readers may remember Njo Kong Kie as the composer of the music for Mr Shi and His Lover a few years ago and probably just about all Toronto opera people will be familiar with the singers.

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María de Buenos Aires

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Astor Piazzolla’a opera-tango María de Buenos Aires has been recorded, perhaps surprisingly, many times.  The latest version comes from the Orchestra Filarmonica della Calabria and conductor Filippo Arlia with Ce Suarez Pas as María.

It’s a strange piece full of the sort of weird imagery one associates with South American magical realism and then some.  The plot concerns a poor young girl in a very gritty Buenos Aires.  She becomes a singer then a prostitute,  Then she dies and her ghost wonders the city until she forced to give birth ti a daughter, also María, and so ending her role in the eternal cycle (“Forgotten are you among all women”) that will be carried on by her daughter.  Her journeys and her resurrection are directed in some strange way by a spoken word character El Duende (The Goblin).  Along the way she meets all kinds of strange people and others; a sparrow, a thief, a psychoanalyst, noodle kneaders, wizard bricklayers and much more.  It’s really creepy. Continue reading →