Thursday’s noon hour concert at Metropolitan United featured soprano Teresa Tucci with pianist Ivan Jovanovic in a varied programme of opera arias, art song and musical theatre numbers.
Teresa Tucci at Metropolitan United
Reply
Tag Archives: faure
Fauré Requiem at Metropolitan United
Last Thursday lunchtime’s Noon at Met concert was given by the UoT’s Schola Cantorum conducted by Daniel Taylor with Jonathan Oldengarm at Met’s very impressive organ. The music was Fauré’s rather unusual Requiem op.45. I say unusual because it’s much more gentle and lyrical than most, not least because there’s no Dies Irae. That’s cut except for the Pie Jesu section. Also it finishes with the hopeful In Paradisum from the Burial Service. Apparently this is because Fauré was most definitely not an orthodox Catholic rather lying somewhere on a spectrum from theist to agnostic but obviously still aware that we all die and we all grieve.
Baudelaire with a twist
British soprano Mary Bevan and pianist Roger Vignoles gave a recital of French chansons in Walter Hall on Monday night. The concept was that the songs were paired; one being a setting of Baudelaire by a male composer and the other song by a female composer of the the same period. With two exceptions all the composers were French and with one exception from roughly the fin de siècle. So Duparc, Déodat de Séverac, Fauré Debussy and de Bréville were paired variously with the predictable; les sœurs Boulanger and Pauline Viardot, and less predictable; Mel Bonis, Marguerite Canal, Amy Beach (American) and Jeanne Landry (Canadian and much later).
Fauré music for the stage (mostly)
This recording from the National Symphony Orchestra of Ireland and their conductor Jean-Luc Tingaud contains 65 minutes of music; mostly written for the stage, though there are some songs for voice and orchestra.
The first set is based on the incidental music that Fauré wrote for an English language production of Maeterlinck’s Pelléas et Mélisande given in London in 1898. There’s a four movement suite and a bonus in “Mélisande’s song” from Act III Scene 1 sung here by Tara Erraught. It’s really tuneful, pleasant music that evokes the piece well. I particularly liked the third movement “Sicilienne” which features a wistful harp melody and the song which is sung with beauty and clarity. Continue reading
Ryan Davis and friends
To another excellent Confluence Concerts production last night at Heliconian Hall. This one was curated by Confluence’s Young Artistic Associate Ryan Davis; composer, violist and electronic Wunderkind. He was joined by a very talented group of young musicians; Kevin Ahfat (piano), Bora Kim (violin), Daniel Hamin Go (cello) and Jonelle Sills (soprano) plus the vocal talents of Confluence stalwart Suba Sankaran. The programme was built around English and French romantic music plus Ryan’s own compositions influenced by that tradition.
Voices of Mountains
The COC’s latest on-line offering is now available on-line. It’s called Voices of Mountains and the video is just shy of an hour long. Only about half of that is music though. The rest is introductions, artist statements and a 10 minute piece about the Land Acknowledgement installation created for the lobby of the Four Season Centre by Rebecca Cuddy and Julie McIsaac. It looks very interesting but, of course, one can’t visit it.
Cantilena
Cantilena is a CD of art songs by various composers arranged for soprano, harp and cello. It’s an interesting twist on music that one is likely to be fairly (sometimes very) familiar with in the usual voice and piano format. It’s a generous disk with nineteen songs in all. The composers featured are Debussy, Duparc, Fauré, Massenet, Tosti, Tedeschi, Richard Strauss, Gregory and Villa-Lobos. The performers are soprano Gillian Zammit, harpist Britt Arend and cellist Frank Camilleri. Arend and Camilleri are principals with the Malta Philharmonic Orchestra.
Arts Anyway – Dinosaur Edition
The latest Arts Anyway webstream is up on Youtube. This edition features two varry varry posh dinosaurs introducing Alexander Hajek singing Fauré and Rebecca Cuddy singing two of Ian Cusson’s settings of texts by Marilyn Dumont. I think this is the kind of music and the kind of engagement that I miss most hunkered down here in the KittenKondo. I can live without Mozart or Wagner (just about) but artsong, especially artsong that speaks to what matters to us most today… not having that hurts. Keith Lam’s interviewee is also Rebecca Cuddy.
The Way I See It
The first of Amplified Opera’s series of three shows in the Ernest Balmer Studio took place last night. The series explores the idea of “otherness” in opera. The Way I See It , directed by Aria Umezawa, explores how the opera and wider world treat the visually impaired and how we (in the broadest sense) can not just accommodate but incorporate their insights and perspectives into our performance practice.
Russell Braun and Carolyn Maule at Mazzoleni Hall
Yesterday’s Mazzoleni Songmasters concert featured Russell Braun and Caolyn Maule in a generous and varied program anchored on Schumann’s Dichterliebe; a setting of sixteen poems by Heine. It was framed by three Mendelssohn songs and a varied and intriguing second half program.
Russell is a singer at the height of his powers. He has a lovely instrument and perfect control of pitch, dynamics and tone colour. He’s also a sensitive and musical human being. Throw all that at text and music as rich as Dichterliebe and the result is inevitably quite wonderful. One could just luxuriate in an emotional journey through the highs and lows of romantic love and a physical one up and down that magical river, the Rhine. The Mendelssohn was rather lovely too.
operaramblings 