The fourth annual Toronto Bach Festival runs May 24th to 26th. There are four concerts and a lecture. Here’s the line up:
Friday, May 24th at 8pm – Brandenburg Five
The program includes two cantatas: the early Tritt auf die Glaubensbahn, and Du wahrer Gott und Davids Sohn, plus Julia Wedman as soloist in Bach’s Concerto in A minor for violin. A brilliant night of illuminating music. Soloists for the cantatas are Hélène Brunet, Daniel Taylor, Nick Veltmeyer and Joel Allison. John Abberger directs the Toronto Bach Festival Orchestra.
Suzanne Farrin’s Dolce la morte sets poems by Michelangelo inspired by his relationship with Tommaso de’ Cavalieri dealing with the joy and complexity of desire and spiritual fulfillment. They are really intense poems and Farrin has scored them for counter tenor and seven piece chamber ensemble. The music is complex and intriguing. The vocal line consists mainly of long, high legato lines that play around with pitch in a variety of ways. The instrumental accompaniment is often also quite high and somewhat drone like with percussive insertions and places where the strings sound uncannily like another voice. It’s haunting and quite disturbing and definitely the sort of music one doesn’t fully “get” on first hearing but which makes one want to come back to it.
There are familiar elements and some less familiar ones in Tapestry’s announcement of their 40th anniversary season. Tap:Ex, Songbook and the LibLab are all there and there are also four new commissions. The innovation lies in the fact that the LibLab will be a bilingual collaboration with Opéra de Montréal and in the return of two previously performed works which, I think, is a first for the company.
operaramblings 