The last concert of Soundstreams 2024/25 season took place at Hugh’s Room on Wednesday evening.  Marion Newman and Angela Park gave a recital called Ancestral Voices which premiered the piano version of the Bramwell Tovey song cycle of that name.  I had heard the orchestral version with Marion singing and Bramwell conducting the VSO at Roy Thomson Hall when the orchestral version was new.  It’s just as powerful in piano score; maybe more so as the singer can more easily convey the nuances of the text.  The selection of texts is clever; tracing an arc from an imagined Eden via environmental destruction and the Residential School system to, maybe, the seeds of Reconciliation.  The setting serves the text well and Angela made a really good substitute for an orchestra!

Another composer with a flair for picking great texts is Ian Cusson and the concert opened with his A Breakfast for Barbarians.  This sets gritty texts by Gwendolyn MacEwen about the seamier side of life in the Big Smoke; it’s Toronto of course, but it could be any big city really.  It made an interesting contrast with the essentially non-urban Tovey piece.  Thy are similar too in that the piano part doesn’t support the singer but rather contributes another voice.  It’s the way of modern song and I think it enriches the experience.  It has me wondering when the transition from the singer and piano basically aligned to this more complex thing started?  Second Vienna School?  I don’t know.  Anyway, terrific performances.

In between we got a selection from Canteloube’s Chants d’Auvergne which was just the change of mood needed.  One can’t go wrong with pretty shepherdesses… These were sung and played with just the light, bright quality they need.

Hugh’s Room really is a great venue for a song recital.  It’s just about the ideal size, the acoustics are good and it has a bar.  What more could one want?