Tag Archives: mendelssohn

Back to Koerner

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davonetinesBack to the Royal Conservatory yesterday for the first time since the plague struck.  Ironically the programme, which had originally featured the Dover Quartet with Davóne Tines, had to be rearranged at less than 24 hours notice due to one of the Dovers testing positive for COVID.  What we got instead was two mini concerts.  In the first half the New Orford Quartet performed works by Caroline Shaw and Mendelssohn and in the second Davóne Tines, with Rachael Kerr, performed excerpts from his Recital No. 1: MASS. Continue reading →

To the Distant Beloved

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I’m late to the party on this one.  I had set aside time on Sunday to watch Russell Braun, Carolyn Maule and Miriam Khalil’s recital from Koerner Hall (one of the Mazzoleni Songmasters series) when first broadcast.  For whatever reason I couldn’t get it to mirror onto the big screen in a watchable way so I ended up watching it on my laptop yesterday.  So it goes.

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reGENERATION week 2

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The second set of reGENERATION concerts of the Topronto Summer Music Festival took place yesterday at Walter Hall.  The song portion, unusually, consisted of 100% English language rep, mirroring the Griffey/Jones recital earlier in the wee.  The first concert kicked off with tenor Eric Laine and pianist Scott Downing with five songs from Finzi’s setting of Thomas Hardy; A Young Man’s Exhortation.  It was good.  Laine has a nice sense of style and very good diction.  The high notes are there though sometimes, especially at the end of a line, they don’t sound 100% secure.  There was some quite delicate accompaniment from Downing too.

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Russell Braun and Carolyn Maule at Mazzoleni Hall

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8b440c574ff48428011373a5639b_GalleryYesterday’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.

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Across the Channel

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Having been tipped off that yesterday’s RBA noon concert was to be a vocal recital rather than, as previously billed, a chamber concert I made the trip through the snow to catch it.  Three of the Royal Conservatory’s Rebanks fellows were singing with Helen Becqué at the piano and assorted staff and alumni added for the final number.  Attendance was a bit sparse perhaps unsurprisingly given the weather and the evident confusion.  That was a shame because it was an interesting, varied and well presented concert combining well known works with some much less well known fare.

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Lineage

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lineageLineage, performed last night at the Heliconian Club, is the latest show from Adanya Dunn, Brad Cherwin and Alice Hwang who brought us Evolving Symmetry in September.  Lineage featured German music from Schubert to Rihm so much more in my sweet spot than the French theme of the earlier show.  It was intriguingly constructed with three sets each of a pieces from Mendelssohn’s Lieder Ohne Worte and a Rihm song setting.  In between we got first Berg and then Webern, Schoenberg and Schubert.  It sounds bizarrely eclectic but the contrast between quite experimental pieces and more obviously accessible fare was very satisfying.  Also the sense that there is both a thematic unity and a tendency to experiment in a lot of German music regardless of period.

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