A Left Coast is baritone Tyler Duncan and pianist Erika Switzer’s tribute to British Columbia and its music. Seven composers with birthdates ranging from 1908 to 1985 are featured on the disk. BC is a young country as far as western classical music is concerned though, of course, it has rich artistic traditions stretching far back into the mists of the north west.
It’s quite varied and, inevitably, I like some sets more than others. My top pick is Leslie Uyeda’s Plato’s Angel songs which set poems by Lorna Crozier. There’s a deep melancholy in the text that’s reflected in a dark, somewhat atonal musical idiom. I also really liked Jeffrey Ryan’s Everything Already Lost; the longest set on the record, setting quite sonically/musically evocative texts by Jan Zwicky with quite varied sonorities mixing elements of minimalism and onomatopoeia, especially in the piano part.
Last night saw the first of two performances of Haydn’s rarely performed 1791 work Orfeo: L’anima del filosofo. I know how much effort and indeed passion went into creating this production and the singing is pretty good. I wish I could say I enjoyed it but I can’t. There were just too many issues.
June is fast approaching and, as ever, it’s one of the odder months in the performance calendar. Here’s what has caught my eye (so far).
Spontini’s 1807 work La Vestale is the latest French opera to get the Palazzetto Bru Zane treatment. Ir’s extremely interesting as this work has a performance history not unlike the more famous Médée of Charpentier. It’s very much a tragédie lyrique in the same basic style as the works of Gluck, though with some compositional innovations that did not endear the composer to the Paris musical establishment. Indeed, but for the determined patronage of the Empress Josephine it likely would never have made it to the stage. Like Médée it was initially very successful before disappearing from the repertoire in the later 19th century. Also like Médée it was the subject of a mid 20th century revival, notably a 1954 La Scala production (in Italian) by Visconti featuring Maria Callas. Inevitably given the time and place it was given in a style that owed more to verismo than French classicism with a large modern orchestra, conventional (by 1950s standards) tempi and a rather more overblown singing style than was ever heard in early 19th century Paris. If it were revived again for major houses one imagines it would still get essentially the same treatment. Perhaps it will be the next international diva vehicle for Sondra Radvanovsky? 
