The last Koerner Hall concert of this year’s Toronto Summer Music riffed off the Vienna Phil’s traditional New Year extravaganza with lots of Johann Strauss waltzes and the cheesiest fake Magyar (mezzo) soprano arias from operetta.  I was skeptical when I first saw the programme but it turned out to be extremely enjoyable; partly on account of excellent musicianship and partly because everyone involved was having so much fun.

The first half, despite bouncy MCing from Jennifer Mak, was somewhat sedate.  The strings of the TSM Festival Orchestra led by Jonathan Crow produced a crisp and elegant Eine kleine Nachtmusik.  Violinist Yura Lee and pianist Jonathan Mak combined nicely in Kreisler’s Alt-Wiener Tanzweisen and Přihoda’s arrangement of waltz music from Der Rosenkavalier.  The first half closed with the Mozart concert aria “Ch’io mi scordi di te” with mezzo-soprano Simone McIntosh as soloist and full (albeit quite small) orchestra.  It’s been a while since I’ve heard Simone live but this was really good; smooth and powerful, and the orchestra was excellent too.

The second half was definitely more at the somewhat cheesy end of the spectrum; albeit played with great style and good taste.  Inevitably we got Strauss, J’s Radetzky-Marsch (with much bouncing from Ms.Mak) and also his Rosen aus dem Süden.

This was followed by four operetta arias from Simone and orchestra.  These were all, despite being written by Hungarians, based on 19th century Austrian ideas about the Magyar and Roma (if, indeed, they realised they weren’t the same thing).  They are very silly but give the singer lots of opportunities to show off her singing and her moves.  There were a couple of comparative rarities; Kálman’s “Heia, Heia, in den Bergen” from Die Csárdásfürstin and Lehar’s “Hör’ ich Zymbalklänge” from Zigeunerliebe along with chestnuts like the “Vilja Lied” and “Meine Lippen, sie küssen so heiß”.

This set was my main reason for coming and I wasn’t disappointed.  Simone’s voice is in great shape.  There’s plenty of power and it’s really smooth from a dark, smoky bottom register to very clean top notes.  She also has considerable agility.  And not just with voice.  She was also bouncing around energetically and hamming it up a bit.  But then ham goes rather well with cheese!  The orchestra was really good too.  And to add a touch of class (and sanity!) she encored with a really touching account of “Morgen” with super playing of the violin solo by Jonathan.

The final set was some very well played Johann Strauss.  There was the Kaiser-Walzer which went on almost as long as Franz-Joseph and the well known “Wein, Weib and Gesang” plus an encore which tempted Simone and Jennifer back on stage to join in the fun!  All in all, very enjoyable.

Photo credit: Lucky Tang