Tag Archives: braun

The ur Nixon

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1.maoI found it a bit shocking that John Adam’s Nixon in China wasn’t released on DVD until after the MetHD broadcast in 2011.  I was even more shocked when I found out that the original 1987 Houston production had been recorded and broadcast on PBS.  Just recently, thanks to a kind reader of this blog, I’ve been able to watch that original broadcast.  It’s TV from 1988 recorded on VHS and then digitized so the picture quality isn’t state of the art but the sound is surprisingly good. Continue reading →

Jeunesses Musicales

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symoon Last night I was fortunate enough to be at a musical evening organised by Jeunesses Musicales Ontario.  The umbrella organisation has come a long way since being founded during WW2 as an anti-Nazi youth movement (*).  In Ontario it’s main activity is promoting musical events for young people and providing performance opportunities for young artists; notably an annual song recital tour.  You may recall that I wrote about the kick off of the latest one in which Simone Osborne and Anne Larlee are performing across Canada with a show that includes a specially commissioned piece by Brian Current.   Continue reading →

Toronto Symphony 2015/16 season

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The Toronto Symphony announced its 2015/16 season line up this morning.  From a choral and vocal music perspective the items of most interest were:

  • A “semi-staged” Mozart Requiem to be directed by Joel Ivany.  That’s scheduled for January 21st to 23rd next year with soloists Lydia Teuscher, Allyson McHardy, Frédéric Antoun and Philippe Sly.  Bernard Labadie will conduct.  I’m very curious to see what Joel does with this.
  • Handel’s Messiah in the extremely non-baroque Andrew Davis orchestration.  He will also conduct.  The soloists are Erin Wall, Liz DeShong, Andrew Staples and John Relyea.  This one is being recorded live for the Chandos label.  It runs December 15th to 20th this year.
  • Barbara Hannigan appears as both soprano and conductor.  On October 7th and 8th she has a program of Nono, Haydn, Mozart, Ligeti and Stravinsky.
  • Russell Braun shows up with Erin Wall for a performance of Vaughan-Williams Sea Symphony on October 21st and 24th and again during the New Creations Festival where he will sing Brett Dean’s Knocking at the Hellgate.
Barbara Hannigan 05 - copyright Musacchio Ianniello Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia

Barbara Hannigan – copyright Musacchio Ianniello Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia

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Tcherniakov’s Don Giovanni

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Last night Dmitri Tcherniakov’s much anticipated production of Don Giovanni opened at the Four Seasons Centre.  The production is basically a known quantity.  This is its fourth run overall and it was recorded for TV and DVD in Aix-en-Provence; which is a lengthy way of saying that nobody should have been very surprised by what they saw last night.  Inevitably some were.  Rereading my review of the DVD I find I have nothing much to add to what I said there about the first act and the overall concept so I’m going to pretty much going to repeat it here.

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Galicians I

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stephania

Stefania Turkewich

Yesterday, for the second time inside a week, I found myself at a musical event celebrating a nation and a nationalism not my own.  It’s a rather weird experience (1).  The first had been a performance of Dvoràk’s Jakobin, not reviewed here as I was reviewing for Opera Canada, and yesterday was the launch of the CD set Galicians 1; the fourth instalment of the Ukrainian Art Song Project.  This latter is the lovechild of British Ukrainian bass-baritone Pavlo Hunka.  Indeed it’s almost an obsession.  He has tracked down scores for 1000 largely unknown art songs by Ukrainian composers and has plans for them all to be recorded by 2020.  The latest bunch are by Galician composers Denys Sichynsky, Stanyslav Liudkevych, Vasyl Barvinsky and Stefania Turkewich.  The party line reason for the neglect of this music is, unsurprisingly, persecution under both Tsarist and Soviet regimes.  This was mentioned in at least one of the many introductions and speeches of thanks yesterday and provoked a loud “Absolute rubbish!” from the rather scholarly looking gentleman two seats to my right.  It does rather look a bit more complicated with composers holding prestigious conservatory posts but eventually falling foul of someone in the apparatus and getting sent to a labour camp for obscure reasons.  I don’t think that was unique to Ukrainians.

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Upcoming worthy causes

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elizabethkNovember 17th sees the second annual Elizabeth Krehm memorial concert.  It’s at Metropolitan United Church at 8pm and will feature Beethoven’s 9th sympony.  The soloists will be Rachel Krehm, Erin Lawson, Adrian Kramer and Jeremy Bowes with the Canzona Chamber Players and a choir drawn from the Univox Choir and friends of the Krehm family.  Evan Mitchell conducts.  Admission is by tax receiptable donation to St. Michael’s Hospital where Elizabeth spent the last month of her life.

On 28th November, at Runnymede United Church a starry cast are donating their services for a charity performance of Bach’s Weinachtsoratorium.  The beneficiaries will be the Toronto Symphony Volunteer Committee Education Program  and Open Table Community Meal at Runnymede United Church.  Johannes Debus will conduct the Bach Consort with soloists Monica Whicher, Vicki St. Pierre, Lawrence Wiliford, Colin Ainsworth and Russell Braun.  Tickets are $50 in advance or $60 on the door.

The Revengers’ Comedy

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Last night, the COC opened its 2014/15 season with Verdi’s Falstaff; a work I was not familiar with and one that turned out to be a bit of a surprise.  It’s not your usual Verdi.  It’s his last opera, composed when he was 80, and is not at all typical of his earlier work.  There are hardly any “big tunes” or even conventional arias.  The odd chorus harks back to an earlier style but much of the music is quite dark; heavy use in places of the lower pitched instruments, especially for a “comedy”.  Don’t take that as a criticism though.  It’s a musically and dramatically tight, even compact, work that is both incredibly funny and also something more disturbing.  Perhaps it’s as much about mortality as love.

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Another announcement – Ukrainian artsongs

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stephaniaSunday, November 2nd at 3:00 p.m. in Koerner Hall,  bass-baritone Pavlo Hunka launches the world premiere of Galicians I: The Art Songs, the latest recording in the Ukrainian Art Song Project (UASP). Hunka will be joined in performance by renowned Canadian opera singers Russell Braun, Krisztina Szabó, and Monica Whicher. They will be accompanied by pianist Albert Krywolt and featured artist, violinist Marie Bérard.  The concert will feature the world premiere performance of selected art songs by four of Ukraine’s Galician composers.

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Natalie Dessay showcase

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Le miracle d’une voix is a compilation of scenes from various recordings in which Natalie Dessay featured made between 1993 and 2003.  It’s especially interesting in that a couple of pieces feature more than once.  There are three Les oiseaux dans les charmilles; Olymia’s aria from Les contes d’Hoffmann and two Grossmächtigen Prinzessin from Ariadne auf Naxos.  Thrse demonstarte what I have always believed to be Dessay’s greatest strength; her ability to recreate a character to fit in a particular production.  The two Zerbunetta arias illustrate this perfectly.  In the first, a Salzburg production from 2001, Zerbinetta is a depressed, heavy drinking, prostitute who celebrates a kind of deeply sad sisterhood with Ariadne before being dragged off by a very sleazy Russell Braun.  In the second, from the Palais Garnier in 2003, she’s a bubble headed tourist in bikini and wrap who pesters poor Ariadne all around what looks like a Mediterranean building site.  They are completely different characterisations but both highly effective.  The same is true of the three Olympias who range from very conventional doll to inmate in some sort of asylum or home.

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Another classic re-release

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For the longest time the classic 1995 Glyndebourne recording of Janáček’s Věk Makropulos was the only video option.  It’s now been re-released on DVD and Blu-ray in a completely remastered version.  I watched the Blu-ray and it’s as well restored as the companion recording of Peter Sellars’ equally classic Theodora.  As it’s drawn from a Channel 4 broadcast the picture is 4:3 and it’s presented here formatted for wide screens in what is, apparently, called “pillarbox” mode in the UK.  At any event, the picture is excellent; certainly the equal of many more recent recordings, if not quite of the best HD quality.  The sound, stereo only, is decent but  a bit “boxed in” and the voices often seem to balanced a long way back.

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