Today’s noon hour concert at Metropolitan United Church featured soprano McKenzie Warriner and pianist Christine Bae. Ellita Gagner was also scheduled to sing but, unfortunately, she was not able to do so due to illness. So we got a hastily reorganised programme.
It was very varied programme which showed off McKenzie’s quite broad range pretty well. “Chacun le sait” from La fille du régiment and “O zittre nicht” from Die Zauberflöte demonstrated excellent coloratura, a nicely controlled upper range and some sustained power. “The Presentation of the Rose” from Der Rosenkavalier also featured excellent high notes and the ability to navigate Strauss’ twists and turns. Some really good playing from Christine here too. Perhaps one has to hear this on piano to fully appreciate just how weird some of Strauss’ instrumental writing is!
Two contrasting art songs followed. Auf dem See is pretty straightforward Schubert and was nicely handled. Ligeti’s Der Sommer is one of those deceptively simple songs that one could easily trip over. These two didn’t. It was very controlled. Then came some rather lovely Golijov; his Lúa Descolorida, which is really lyrical in that way that Golijov manages even when dealing with less pleasant subject matter than a hymn to the moon.
When one’s husband is a composer one has to sing his music so we got Tristan Zaba’s Finishing Songs. These are settings of poems by e.e. cummings and are really easy to listen to even though quite complex with an interesting interplay of voice, piano and quite a lot of silence. The final number was McKenzie’s own arrangement of “Thyme ’tis a Pretty Flower” which rather demonstrated that you can take the girl out of Saskatchewan but you can’t take Saskatchewan out of the girl.
It was a most pleasant short concert and should you feel like watching it, it’s available on the Metropolitan United YouTube channel. The Noon at Met series has some pretty interesting programming and it’s a lovely space with excellent acoustics. It deserves to be better known.
operaramblings 