Tuesday night at Heliconian Hall was the time and place for a concert curated by, and largely performed by, Confluence Concerts’ young associate artists; the KöNG duo. KöNG consists of two Toronto-Hong Kong percussionists; Bevis Ng and Hoi Tong Keung, pursuing doctoral studies in Toronto. They were supported on some numbers by Ryan Davis (viola) and Ben Finley (double bass).
The concert was very much in two parts. The first half was a series of fairly short pieces on the theme of “dreams”. Perhaps designed to be impressionistic and to leave far from clear memories. First up was the slightly jazzy, very complex My Missing Harbour by Fish Yu. It blended tuned percussion and both string instruments in a largely tonal, slightly shimmery sound world.
There’s a story behind violinist Christopher Whitley’s new solo album Describe Yourself. Entering the 2017 Canada Council for the Arts. Musical Instrument Bank Competition, he found himself required to offer a Canadian composition. The chosen piece was Jeffrey Ryan’s Bellatrix. He was successful and so this album is played on a 
Frank Horvat’s Fractures is a very interesting new CD. It sets eleven texts for soprano and piano on the themes of fracking, environmental degradation and climate change. It’s a tough listen; not because it’s preachy or hard on the ear but rather because there is a degree of irony in the texts, the music and the performance that somehow makes the situations described even more horrible.
The latest Palazetto Bru Zane’s retrieval from the valley of lost things is Louise Bertin’s Fausto of 1831. It’s unusual in two respects. First of all it’s written by a woman (and quite a young one – she was 26) and secondly it’s an Italian language opera by a French composer written for the Théâtre-Italien in Paris; a theatre which produced mainly operas by Mozart and Rossini (its long time artistic director) with a few from other contemporary Italian composers such as Bellini and Donizetti; some composed for Paris, some imports. 
The new CD from husband and wife team Magdalena Kožená and Sir Simon Rattle consists of four sets of folk songs arranged for mezzo-soprano and orchestra; all of them pretty well known. There are the Five Hungarian Folk Songs of Bartok, Berio’s Folk Songs (all eleven of them), Ravel’s Cinq mélodies populaires grecques and Montsalvatge’s Cinco canciones negras.
Tuesday’s lunchtime concert in the RBA consisted of works by Cecilia Livingston chosen and performed by members of the COC’s Ensemble Studio. It was a fairly varied programme considering it was all works by one composer.
Tarot is a new recital CD from tenor Timothy Stoddard and pianist Ellen Fast featuring recent works by American composers. There are four song cycles on the record. The first, Mortally Wounded, features settings by Mark Markowski of eight poems by Lorca in English translation. These are interesting and treat Lorca’s quintessentially Spanish themes sympathetically. The music is basically tonal but complex with flamenco inflected rhythms. It’s beautifully sung and played with diction so good that the absence of texts and translations is not worrisome. 
operaramblings 