Tag Archives: duparc

Valentine’s Haji

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Today’s noon recitalists in the RBA were Andrew Haji and Liz Upchurch.  We had been promised Britten’s Serenade but an absence of non-knackered horn players due to the COC’s Götterdämmerung run scuppered that and instead we got a very varied program of songs and arias on the theme of love and its travails.  Four Brahms songs kicked things off and produced some very fine lieder singing.  Beautiful throughout with fine phrasing, characterisation and diction there was more.  The final “wonnewoll” of Wie bist du, meine Königin was a thing of floaty beauty and there was a real sense of ecstasy in Mein Liebe ist grün.

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Artsong reGENERATION

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The Academy Program is an important part of the Toronto Summer Music Festival.  It allows selected young artists; singers, collaborative pianists and chamber/orchestral musicians, to work with experienced professionals in an intensive series of coachings, masterclasses etc culminating in a concert series.  This year the mentors for the vocal/collaborative piano component were pianist Craig Rutenberg, who has worked everywhere and with everybody, and mezzo-soprano Sasha Cooke; a last minute replacement for an indisposed Anne Schwannewilms.  I didn’t make it to any of the masterclasses, though word on the street is that they were exceptional, but I did make it to yesterday’s lunchtime concert in Walter Hall.

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Christopher Purves in the RBA

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British baritone Christopher Purves was the lunch special at the Four Seasons Centre today.  Along with the amazing Liz Upchurch he gave us a most enjoyable program of Handel, Duparc and Mussorgsky.  The two Handel arias were drawn from Handel’s two very different takes on Ovid’s Acis and Galatea.  The first from the later (1718) English version “I rage, I melt, I burn!… O ruddier than the cherry tree” is a mostly comic furioso recitative and aria sung with great drama and not a little comedy by Chris but it was rather eclipsed by the next number taken from the earlier (1708) Aci, Galatea e Polifemo.  Polyphemus’ aria “Fra l’ombre e gl’orrori” is just nuts but very beautiful.  It ranges from the D below the bass staff to the A above it and is a continuous series of insane intervals accompanied by a really simple and very beautiful piano part.  It’s amazing anybody can sing it all let alone as well as it was done here.

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Philippe Sly and Julius Drake at Walter Hall

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Phillippe-SlyUp and coming Canadian bass-baritone Philippe Sly was joined last night by veteran collaborative pianist Julius Drake for a program of chansons and lieder at Walter Hall.  The 490 seat hall was almost full which is rather nice to see for a song recital in Toronto.  The first half was devoted to chansons by Duparc, Ropartz and Ravel.  I was struck by the restraint of Sly’s singing.  It was conversational and not operatic at all but very expressive.  I think that takes a lot of guts in a young singer.  He let the words and music do the talking and didn’t exaggerate.  This was perhaps best shown in the drinking song from the Don Quichotte songs of Ravel.  He was very funny but sounded like a drunk, not somebody overacting the idea of a drunk.  Continue reading →