Baritone Benjamin Appl and pianist Wolfram Rieger gave us Die schöne Müllerin with a twist at Walter Hall last night. The twist was a companion/introductory piece by David Lang called flower, forget me based on one of the Müller poems that Schubert didn’t set with fragments of other flower related Schubert song texts. If death is a major theme in the main cycle it’s an obsession in the new piece! It’s also very low for a baritone with some really difficult phrasing. One had to admire Appl’s skill in navigating its lugubrious depths but there was an almost tangible sense of relief in the audience when the duo launched into the sunnier and more familiar territory of “Das Wandern”.
Today at 4pm in The Music Garden (Harbourfront) there’s a free concert of music by Métis composers performed by Rebecca Cuddy and the Wood and Wire Quartet. Here’s the full program:
A Cup of Sins is a new CD release of works by Iranian-Canadian composer Parisa Sabet. If there’s a unifying theme it’s religious/cultural persecution in Iran and there’s a strong Bahai influence. The six pieces are scored for various combinations of voice, piano and small ensemble and add up to about an hour of very rewarding music.
Between Worlds is a collaboration between composer/cellist Margaret Maria and soprano/poet Donna Brown. It uses words and music to explore the tension between Thanatos and Eros via a symbolic journey from Sunset to Sunrise. The piece is in eight movements totalling a little over half an hour of music. The style and technique varies widely. Two poems “Sunrise” and “Sunset” are spoken over a sparse cello commentary. Others are sung but they too vary from a fairly conventional singing style backed up by complex, extended cello technique to a more declamatory style with metronomic accompaniment. To me it felt (in a weird way) “bardic”. By which i mean that the instrument was largely being used to emphasise the text in a way that Homer or the Beowulf poet might have related to. It’s also clearly a very personal statement about art, life and death and one’s reception of it is going to be impacted by how closely one can align with it philosophically.
Literally everything on my calendar for July is part of the Toronto Summer Music Festival. I 
Last night the Happenstancers presented a short but extremely enjoyable Pierrot themed concert at 918 Bathurst. The major work, unsurprisingly, was Schoenberg’s melodrama Pierrot lunaire for voice and chamber ensemble. It was presented in two parts. The first fourteen poems formed the first half of the programme which closed out with the concluding seven. It was extremely well done. Danika Lorèn was an excellent choice as the voice. She has the technique for Schoenberg’s tricky sprechstimme as well as the innate musicality and sense of drama the piece needs. The standard “Pierrot ensemble” is perfectly suited for the Happenstancers typically eclectic mixing of instruments. Here we had Brad Cherwin on clarinets, Rebecca Maranis on flutes, Hee-See Yoon on violin and viola, Sarah Gans on cello and Alexander Malikov on piano. Simon Rivard conducted. Skilful playing and well timed interplay between instruments and voice made for a most satisfactory experience. 
operaramblings 