My review of Bilodeau/Bouchard’s La Reine-garçon at the COC is now up at Bachtrack.
TL:DR everything I want in a new opera pretty much.
Photo credit: Michael Cooper
La Reine-garçon at the COC ticks all the boxes
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Rediscovered Massenet
Massenet’s Grisélidis gets the Bru-Zane treatment. Review at La Scena Musicale.
Catalogue information: Bru Zane BZ105
Stravinsky with the TSO
The latest CD from the Toronto Symphony and Gustavo Gimeno features two works by Stravinsky and a Glenn Gould inspired piece by Kelly-Marie Murphy. The first piece is the 24 minute long suite from the ballet Le baiser de la fée which is a sort of pastiche of what Tchaikovsky might sound like if Tchaikovsky could orchestrate as well as Stravinsky! It’s well played but I don’t find it terribly exciting.
Murphy’s piece is another story. There’s a running joke about short pieces by contemporary composers at the TSO. They get called “garage pieces” because they get played at the beginning of concerts when half the patrons are still on their way up from parking. Murphy’s Curiosity, Genius and the Search for Petula Clark absolutely does not deserve the label. It was inspired by a road trip Glenn Gould took up north one time and it’s fascinating. There’s a restless energy to it and a kind of flirting with atonality coupled with lyricism and a lot of percussion. It’s kind of like a feral love child of Holst’s Mars; Bringer of War and a Shostakovich symphony crammed into ten minutes. Continue reading
歌曲 Kakyoku
Thursday lunchtime in the RBA saw Teiya Kasahara, Chihiro Yasufuku and Simone Luti perform 歌曲 Kakyoku: Journey in Japanese Song. It was an interesting contrast with Sam Chan’s exploration of Western representation of Asia and Asian in Western classical music the day before. This time all the music was by Japanese composers setting Japanese texts but (in some sense at least) in the Western classical style/tradition. In its way it forms part of the broader “modernisation” of Japan that took place after the Meiji Restoration.
Identität/個性
Wednesday’s lunchtime concert in the RBA was given by Ensemble Studio graduates Samuel Chan and Rachael Kerr, reuniting for the first time since ES days. Nowadays Sam is Fest at Theater Kiel and the recital was built around his attempt to probe his identity as a Chinese-Canadian performing Western opera for (mostly) Germans. Sam is a pretty deep, thoughtful kind of guy so it wasn’t surprising that this was an unusual and carefully curated recital. It was also quite wonderfully performed.
Sabine Devieilhe impresses in Stravinsky’s Le Rossignol
Olivier Py directed a production of Stravinsky’s Le Rossignol at the Théâtre des Champs Élysées in 2023 and a live recording was made for CD. The Nightingale is sung by soprano Sabine Devieilhe and she is very good indeed. She has pretty much the perfect voice for this role with its coloratura sections and very high tessitura. Her voice sounds suitably sweet all the way up and her coloratura is very precise. She’s very well backed up by an all French cast featuring the excellent tenor Cyrille Dubois as the Fisherman and the unmistakable Laurent Naouri as the Chamberlain. Jean-Sébastien Bou also impresses as a suitably tremulous Emperor and there’s a nice cameo from Chantal Santon Jeffery as the Cook. The minor roles are all well sung and French diction is notably good across the board. Continue reading
A Finnish Gerontius
Elgar’s The Dream of Gerontius is very well served on record but a new version with good soloists may still be worth a look. And there is a new one on the Ondine label featuring Christine Rice, John Findon and Rod Williams. There’s a rather staggering collection of choirs; the Helsinki Music Centre Choir, the Cambridge University Symphony Chorus, Dominante | Helsinki Chamber Choir and the
Alumni of the Choir of Clare College, Cambridge. All this plus the Finnish Radio Symphony Orchestra and conductor Nicholas Collon. Continue reading
Countertenor Lieder
Uncharted is a new CD from countertenor Aryeh Nussbaum Cohen and pianist John Churchwell. It appears to be the first time a countertenor has recorded a disc of classic German Lieder which is interestig and perhaps surprising. There are three sets on the record. It starts with Korngold’s Lieder des Abschieds Op. 14; four songs I was previously unfamiliar with but I’m glad to have heard them. The second set alternates mostly well known songs by Brahms and Clara Schumann and the last set is Robert Schumann’s Liederkreis Op. 39 with, appropriately, his “Der Nussbaum” to wrap things up. Continue reading
More Rivers
More Rivers is a CD of piano music by Frank Horvat played by Christina Petrowska Quilico. It’s a sort of sequel to Rivers a record of music by Ann Southam, released on Centrediscs in 2005. It’s a set of seven pieces of various lengths. “More Rvers 1 – for Ann” is the last piece on the album but it’s the longest piece of the set and sets up in various ways the others. The music is a kind of looping minimalism but with quite a lot of harmonic complexity. Different rhythms and speeds are encountered. As Frank says in the notes “some rivers are long, some are short, some have rapids, and some have calm water”. But all but the most benighted rivers flow and these pieces evoke natural streams; clean, pure and life giving. Played with great virtuosity, discipline and control by Christina it’s a very pleasant way to spend 65 minutes. Continue reading
Traditional Butterfly at the COC
The Canadian Opera Company opened it’s “new to Toronto” production of Puccini’s Madama Butterfly on Friday night. It’s a production that’s been around for a while having premiered in Houston in 2010. It’s almost entirely traditional. The one concession to critics of Puccini’s rather sordid tale is that Butterfly’s age is raised from fifteen to eighteen. The original concept was Michael Grandage’s but it’s revival directed here by Jordan Lee Braun.
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