Yesterday was slightly bizarre in that I was at two concerts of contemporary, or at least very modern, music. The first was at lunchtime in The RBA where the Array Ensemble presented two works by female Canadian composers; Linda Catlin Smith’s Hieroglyphs and Barbara Monk Feldman’s Love Shards of Sappho, both for soprano and chamber ensemble. Continue reading
Yesterday saw the first free concert of the season in the Richard Bradshaw Amphitheatre. It was a chance to see the 2015/16 Ensemble Studio; two new singers, one new pianist and six singers and a pianist from last year. The format was one aria per singer with few surprises. We also got to hear the core quartet casting for the Ensemble Studio performance of Le Nozze di Figaro later in the season. No surprises there either; Il Conte – Gordon Bintner, Iain MacNeil – Figaro, La Contessa – Aviva Fortunata, Susanna – Karine Boucher. That leaves four tenors for the other roles…
Today’s lunchtime concert in the RBA was a preview of Against the Grain’s upcoming show Death and Desire. It’s a staged mash up of Schubert’s Die Schöne Müllerin and Messiaen’s Harawi: Chant d’amour et de mort; a settong of texts, rather weird ones at that, by the composer. As director Joel Ivany said, mixing Messiaen and Schubert might seem “a bit bizarre” but these two texts seem to work together remarkably well and the juxtaposition seems almost inspired. I’m glad too that the original intention of performing the two pieces back-to-back has been replaced by a mash up. Today we got to see and hear the first half of the show.
The on/off saga of the Ensemble Studio’s promised Janáček’s The Diary of One Who Disappeared came to an apparent conclusion yesterday. It had been postponed at least once and even this morning the COC website is advertising a complete performance with two soloists and a small chorus.
It didn’t happen. What we got was a recital by Owen McAusland singing some excerpts from the Janáček plus Vaughan William’s The House of Life and Britten’s Les Illuminations. It was his last performance as a member of the Ensemble Studio during which time, among many other things, he sang several main stage performances as Tito covering for a sick Michael Schade.
There may be cheerful songs in Russian but I’m not sure I have ever heard one. Certainly there were none on offer at the Four Seasons Centre today when Ekaterina Gubanova and Rachel Andrist offered up a recital of Tchaikovsky and Mussorgsky works. There’s a reason why one of three Russian words I can recognize is “Schmert”. Depressing as the texts may have been these were truly wonderful performances. Gubanova has a dark, very Slavic colour though she can brighten it when she chooses and she’s utterly fearless singing with great passion and, yes, there was a high C in there.
This morning I went to the COC website to see what Josh Hopkins would be singing at lunchtime. Bottom line, he wasn’t. His recital had been replaced by a hastily put together program of pieces to be sung by Owen McCausland, Karine Boucher and Aviva Fortunata. Given that Liz Upchurch said it was pieces they were looking for an audience for I’d guess it’s audition/competition rep that they are working on and therefore, to some extent, work in progress.
Today’s lunch time concert in the RBA was a lieder recital by two Ensemble Studio members; bass-baritone Gordon Bintner and tenor Andrew Haji. Both singers sang settings of texts by Heinrich Heine. Bintner, accompanied by Jennifer Szeto kicked off with selections from Schubert’s Schwanengesang to be followed by Haji and Liz Upchurch with Schumann’s Dichterliebe.
OK so who noticed that Barbara contains RBA twice? A perfect fit one might say and so it proved. In a short late afternoon concert Ms. Hannigan, joined by the TSO Chamber Soloists (Jonathan Crow, Peter Seminovs, Teng Li and Joseph Johnson) and Liz Upchurch, showed her chops as one of the day’s best interpreters of modern vocal music. First up was the String Quartet No.2 by Schoenberg. This is a most unusual quartet in that the players are joined by a soprano soloist for the third and fourth movements. It’s also unusual in that, although it predates Schoenberg’s full blown serialism, the first three movements are tonal (just) but the last is a full on experiment in atonality. None of this makes it easy to play or sing!
Today saw the annual lunchtime concert in the RBA in which members of the COC Ensemble Studio collaborate with visitors from the Atelier lyrique de l’Opéra de Montréal. There were three singers from each program but rather unusually only one of them was female; soprano France Bellemare. Naturally I was rather focussed on the visiting singers as the three Toronto participants; Gordon Bintner, Clarence Frazer and Andrew Haji are very much known quantities. Of the visitors it was very much Ms. Bellemare who shone. She has a very accurate, lovely rich voice with perhaps still some work to do on the top of her range but very easy to listen to and she’s musically and dramatically convincing too. Her version of Micaëla’s Je dis que rien ne m’épouvante was very competent though I’m not sure it’s ideal rep for her. The Song to the Moon from Rusalka though fitted her like a glove. This was really lovely singing. She also did very well in duet with Clarence Frazer in Lippen schweigen from Die Lustige Witwe or The Merry Widow or La Veuve Joyeuse as all three languages were used! She can waltz too though perhaps not as well as Clarence. Ladies, if you need a dance partner consider Mr. Frazer. She also shone in the final number; the Libiamo from La Traviata. I confess when I saw the program and saw that she would be partnered by Andrew Haji I rather expected her to be sung off the stage. She wasn’t. She held her own with a tenor who will sing this role on the COC’s main stage next season. No mean feat. This young lady is definitely one to watch.
On a bright, sunny winter’s day there are few more inviting places to be than the Richard Bradshaw Amphitheatre positively glowing in the sunlight. When one’s reason for being there is a recital by Jane Archibald with the redoubtable Liz Upchurch at the piano one feels doubly blessed. It was one of the best performances of the many I have attended in that space. 
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