Tag Archives: chen

Frustrating Gambler in Salzburg

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I don’t think I’ve been as frustrated by a video recording of an opera since I watched the 2007 recording of Unsuk Chin’s Alice in Wonderland.  This time the culprit is a recording of the 2024 production of Prokofiev’s The Gambler at the Salzburg Festival.  It’s a Peter Sellars production set in the Felsenreitschule and it’s fascinating on many levels.  The problem is that, as is wont, Sellars directs the video too and he seems to think people watch opera videos on their phones.  There’s been a welcome trend since the advent of HD cameras to, generally, show as much of the stage action as possible and ration extreme close ups.  Sellars takes the opposite approach and it drives me nuts.  Not only do I feel that I’m missing a lot; especially in the cavernous Felsenreitschule, but I just don’t need to know how fast Asmik Gregorian is moving her tongue when she’s going for fast vibrato.

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Another conducting masterclass

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Jennifer Tung

About a year ago I attended the Women in Musical Leadership‘s conducting masterclass with the TSO and Gustavo Gimeno at Roy Thomson Hall.  Last night I went back for this year’s version.  Three of last year’s participants; Jennifer Tung, Juliane Gallant and Naomi Woo were back.  Last year’s fourth participant, Maria Fuller, was off in Poland conducting Hänsel and Gretel which I think says a lot for the programme.  There were two new conductors; Monica Chen and Kelly Lin. Continue reading →

A Prism of Sound

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Saturday night’s concert by the Cantabile Chamber Singers, with their conductor Cheryll J. Chung, at Church of the Redeemer; entitled A Prism of Sound, was the last of their 2023/24 season and, I think, the first time I’ve seen this particular choir.  It was an all Canadian programme.  The first part consisted of works by various choral composers like Matthew Emery and Peter Togni and it was all tonal works for unaccompanied choir on, basically, liturgical texts.  It was pleasant enough but, for me at least, after a while one Ave Verum Corpus sounds much like the rest.  I surprised myself by really quite liking Emery’s Sweetest Love which was quite complex and rather overturned my previous impressions of his music.  I also enjoyed Eleanor Daley’s setting of an extract from the Song of Solomon; Upon Your Heart.  But maybe that’s because the text has special resonance for me.  No complaints about the performance though.  They are a very good choir.

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OPUS IV part2

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The second concert in the OPUS IV series, which took place on Tuesday evening at the Arts and Letters Club, had a similar structure to Sunday evening.  The concert was anchored around a major, well known, work.  In this case Beethoven’s Kreutzer Sonata with the rest of the programme featuring less familiar material.  It was given by the same five instrumentalists as Sunday; Stella Chen and Isabella Perron – violins, Matthew Lipman – viola, Brannon Cho – cello and Kevin Ahfat – piano.

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OPUS IV part 1

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Stella Chen

Last night at Trinity St.Paul’s we got the first of two concerts in the fourth iteration of the OPUS Chamber Music series.  Music director and pianist Kevin Ahfat had arranged an impressive group of young string players to join him in a varied and enjoyable programme.

From the United States we had violinist Stella Chen; a Queen Elisabeth Prize winner and Gramophone Young Artist of the Year, and up and coming violist Matthew Lipman.  There was Berlin based cellist Brannon Cho.  The local talent consisted of and violinist Isabella Perron, as well, of course as Kevin himself.

First up were Ahfat and Lipman with Rebecca Clarke’s Sonata for Viola and Piano of 1919.  It’s quite a substantial piece with more than a hint of Debussy, especially in the piano part.  The first movement is marked “Impetuoso” but it’s nothing like as frenetic as the second movement; “Vivace”, which is really densely scored.  There’s a lovely, lyrical and expressive concluding “Adagio” which culminates in a very involved final section in high romantic style.  Some gorgeous playing and great communication between the musicians here. Continue reading →

Travelogue

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Last night was the one of only two chances to see Bicycle Opera Project in Toronto this year.  (The other is tonight).  It was a show in collaboration with Toy Piano Composers’ Collective called Travelogue and featuring four new works around the broad them of travel. The show was run without an interval but with each composer introducing their own work by reading, e.g., post cards from their travels or, hilariously, in the case of the absent Tobin Stokes, recordings of the voicemails he left apologising for not having finished the piece yet.  Staging was, in the BOP way, minimalist but effective.

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Masterclass with Soile Isokoski

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Ms. Isokoski looking less down to earth than this morning

Ms. Isokoski looking less down to earth than this morning

This was a really interesting morning.  The TSMF runs a “fellow” program for singers and collaborative pianists and this morning, as part of that program, there was a masterclass with Finnish soprano Soile Isokoski.  There were eight singers and four pianists with seven German songs (Strauss, Schubert and Wolff) and one in Finnish prepared (and preparing a Finnish piece for an Isokoski masterclass reminds me of that Youtube thing of the kitten walking down a line of Alsatian guard dogs).  It was classic masterclass format.  Each singer sang their piece and then went over fine points; diction, legato, phrasing, breathing, emotion, colour, at Ms. Isokoski’s direction.  It was fascinating.

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Opera 5 do Hahn and Offenbach

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Opera 5’s latest show presents two rarely seen French one act operas.  First up was Reynaldo Hahn’s  1897 work L’île du rêve.  It’s one of those French officer falls in love with beautiful sixteen year old girl on tropical island and then “duty” calls and he dumps her and she dies of a broken heart pieces.  The only twist is that here he offers to take her back to France but the ruling princess advises her that, away from the island, she will lose her charms and he’ll come to despise her so she doesn’t.  A touch of French worldliness colouring this rather overdone plot device perhaps?  The staging, by Aria Umezawa, is fairly simple though clearly a lot of thought went into how to make the intimate scenes between the principals work.  There are also some rather beautiful projections involved.

O5-Offenbach & Hahn-L'ile 1 Continue reading →