Category Archives: Performance review – RBA

Lieder Nachmittag

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Thursday’s RBA concert featured members of the Ensemble Studio singing German Lieder.  First up were tenor Angelo Moretti and pianist Kimly Wang with Beethoven’s An die ferne Geliebte.  Although this is probably the first true “song cycle” in German I feel it doesn’t get done nearly as often as the better known Schubert and Schumann cycles and it’s really pretty interesting.  I think it was also my first time hearing Angelo sing in German and he’s really very good.  This was a well articulated, rather beautifully sung set with equally skilled accompaniment. Continue reading →

Midday mélodies: Canada meets France

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Tuesday’s concert in the RBA was given by students from the France-Canada Academy of Vocal Arts currently being hosted by the UoT Faculty of Music. The music was a range of mélodies, all in French, by French and Canadian composers.

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Payadora in the RBA

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Last Wednesday’s lunchtime’s concert in the RBA was given by Payadora Tango Ensemble with guest vocalist Elbio Fernandez.  I’ve been following pretty much every musical initiative from the dynamic duo of Rebekah Wolkstein and (Grammy winner) Drew Jurecka for a while now.  From the Venuti String Quartet, to Schmaltz and Pepper (of course) to Justin Gray’s Grammy winning Immersed and Wednesday’s avatar Payadora Tango Ensemble.

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Luca Pisaroni in the RBA

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Bass-baritone Luca Pisaroni is currently appearing as Basilio in The Barber of Seville at the COC.  On Tuesday he gave a noon hour recital in the RBA accompanied by Hyejin Kwon.  There were two halves to the programme; Schubert’s Schwanengesang D.957 and a set of six Italian songs by Francesco Paolo Tosti.

Despite having seen Pisaroni live twice before in recital I’d never heard him sing German Lieder so the Schubert was especially interesting.  It was good.  He can be as dramatic or as lyrical as he needs to be with quite a range of dynamics and colour.  “Der Atlas” was powerful and emphatic while “Das Fischermädchen” was really rather lovely.  “Der Doppelgänger” was very controlled with any temptation to over sing it resiosted.  I also noted some really interesting piano playing in “Die Stadt”. Continue reading →

Simply Mozart

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Thursday’s noon hour in the concert was a really great idea; combine the COC Ensemble Studio with the COC Orchestra for an all Mozart concert.  Mozart’s Symphony No.35 in D major (Hafner) was split into into its four movements with pairs of arias inserted between the movements to create what Johannes Debus, conducting, described as an opéra imaginaire.  It worked really well.

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Pictures from the Private Collection of God

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Tuesday’s lunchtime recital in the RBA, the first of 2026, was given by Israeli mezzo-soprano Michal Aloni and pianist Alona Milner.  All the music, most of it Hebrew language art song, was by composers who either emigrated to Palestine/Israel or who were born there.  In their excellent introductions Michal and Alona enumerated three waves or generations of composers:

  • Those who were trained in Europe in the early 20th century who left Germany (or parts adjacent) for obvious reasons after 1933 such as David Zehavi and Paul Ben-Haim.
  • Those who emigrated later; often as children, whose musical formation was in the new state like Yehezkel Braun.
  • Those who were born and/or educated in Israel somewhat later represented here by Stella Lerner and Aharon Harlap.

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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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