Last night’s Soundstreams Koerner Hall presentation; Magic Flutes was an interesting experience. Aside from interesting (mostly) contemporary flute pieces it was very much an experiment in different ways of staging a concert. I’m all for breaking down the conventions of Mahlerian solemnity and I think experimentation is great. It’s in the nature of taking risks though that some things don’t quite work.
Last night Christina Haldane gave her first DMA recital at Walter Hall. The inspiration was a painting by Manet and the programme was almost entirely made up of chansons from the late 19th and early 20th centuries; Offenbach, Charpentier, Duparc, Debussy and Berlioz. The exception was the cycle The Living Spectacle by Erik Ross which closed out the first half. I could have used more variation of mood and style.
Remembrance is a new CD, on the Harmonia Mundi label, from the Choir of Clare College and their director Graham Ross to be released October 21st in time for poppy season. The main event is a performance of Duruflé’s Requiem given here in the composer’s organ reduction. It’s recorded in Lincoln Cathedral with its great Father Willis organ. It’s a very polished performance with a fair bit of drama. There’s some lovely singing and cello playing from mezzo Jennifer Johnston and cellist Guy Johnston in the Pie Jesu and bass Neal Davies also makes a couple of trenchant contributions. It’s not one of the most performed requiems but definitely worth a listen. Continue reading
Considering we begin with a holiday weekend it’s a busy week. Tuesday sees Dimitry Ivashchenko and Rachel Andrist in recital in the RBA at lunchtime with a program of Russian song that, inevitably, includes Mussorgsky’s Songs and Dances of Death and works by Rachmaninov, Borodin, and Tchaikovsky. At 7.30pm that evening Christina Haldane is giving a DMA recital in Walter Hall. This isn’t your usual student gig. Christina has covered at Salzburg and the Royal Opera and made main stage appearances in several European countries. Both recitals are free.
On Wednesday Soundstreams have a concert called Magic Flutes with a series of contemporary pieces featuring five flute virtuosi, harp, viola, a bunch of percussion and Carla Huhtanen. It’s at 8pm at Koerner Hall. Further details.
VOICEBOX:Opera in Concert has announced details of their upcoming season. There are four shows:
All performances are at 2.30pm in the St. Lawrence Centre’s Jane Mallett Theatre.
I went to the first show of Soup Can Theatre’s presentation of Brecht and Weill’s The Threepenny Opera at the Monarch Tavern yesterday. It was an interesting take. Three performers took all the roles in a much shortened concert version. Quite a few numbers were cut and the dialogue was replaced by a very compressed spoken linking narrative. This was a fund raiser and I think it’s fair to say that there was probably minimal if any rehearsal involved which showed in a presentation that had some nice individual touches but not a lot of cohesion.
Things are still a bit slow on the Toronto opera front. That said, today Soup Can Theatre are doing a concert version of The threepenny Opera at the Monarch Tavern. Three actors; Christine Jeffries, Sarah Thorpe and Scott Garland, will sing all the roles. There are three performances at 4pm, 6.30pm and 9pm. Tickets are $13. More details at http://soupcantheatre.com.
Then Thursday night sees the opening of the COC’s season with Sondra Radvanovsky in Bellini’s Norma. There are eight performances. By some weird scheduling quirk there is a nine day gap before the second on the 15th. That’s also the night I have media tickets for so there won’t be a review until after then. Sondra is singing the first four shows with Elza van den Heever coming in for the second half of the run. Word is that it’s an inoffensively bland production but we’ll see.
There must have been a lot of cash slopping around in the music world in Mahler’s day. Imagine taking a new work to a symphony management today and saying “I’ve got this hour and a half long piece that needs a star mezzo and three choirs for about ten minutes. Fancy giving it a shot? Oh and it needs a bazillion players in the brass section.” Anyway that’s Mahler’s 3rd symphony for you and the TSO did it last night with Jamie Barton as soloist and the ladies of three choirs plus a children’s chorus. All in all it had far too much of the Mahler I don’t much care for; repetitively bombastic, and not enough of the kind I do; the bits with a kind of ethereal transcendent beauty. And it really goes on a bit. The last movement in particular has so many climaxes, and anti climaxes, that, at the end, the audience weren’t sure that it was really, finally over. I’ll take the 2nd or the 8th or one of the shorter pieces over this one anytime.
The tenth season at the Four Seasons Centre opened with the, by now traditional, lunchtime concert by the COC’s Ensemble Studio. Six of the eight singers and one of the two pianists are new recruits which is unusual and more of a chance to level set than see how anyone has developed.
By an odd coincidence two season announcement pressers hit my in box today; Toronto Operetta Theatre and Les Ballets Trockadero de Monte Carlo. Toronto Operetta Theatre have four shows:
All performances are at the St. Lawrence Centre for the Arts.
operaramblings 