Tag Archives: rba

UoT Opera season opener

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As has become the norm, UoT Opera opened their concert season with a free “preview” of their spring show in the RBA at noon today.  It was a series of Mozart scenes which were given semi-staged today but will, in the fullness of time, form a staged and costumed performance.  It’s always an interesting event because it’s so early in the academic year.  It’s the first chance to try and talent spot and see how things develop over the rest of the cycle.  As such, it’s often a bit rough but today really wasn’t.  It was a surprisingly high quality across the board effort which augurs well.  That said, it was all ensembles and nobody was asked to pull out vocal fireworks so maybe not the sternest test imaginable which makes star picking that bit trickier.

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Next week

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nathaliepaulin_365sq.jpgThe Mazzoleni Songmasters series opens this afternoon at 2pm in, surprise, Mazzoleni Hall at the conservatory.  Nathalie Paulin and Monica Whicher present Welcome and Adieu; a program of English and French songs and duets.  Collaborative pianists are Robert Kortgaard and Peter Tiefenbach.

Tuesday at noon in the RBA sees the students of UoT Opera present an all Mozart program. It’s semi staged and the program is duets and ensemble numbers so not your usual fare.  Free of course but probably one one will need to arrive early for.

Norma and Ariodante continue at the COC as does Dido and Aeneas at Opera Atelier.

 

Quartet for the End of Time

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Messiaen’s Quartet for the End of Time is a work of astonishing power and unique provenance.  It was written after Messiaen’s capture in June 1940 at the POW camp Stalag VIII-A in Görlitz in what is now Poland.  First performed for POWs and guards in 1941 it is, most unusually, scored for piano, clarinet, cello and violin because that’s what the professional musicians among the POWs played.  What always strikes me about this work, familiar since my early teens, is how it combines Messiaen’s transcendent and deeply optimistic faith with a kind of passionate statement about the state of the world rooted in Revelations.  The contrasts are there throughout the work’s eight movements but nowhere more clearly than at the end when the power and even fury of Danse de la fureur pour les sept trompettes and the Fouillis des arcs-en-ciel, pour l’Ange qui annonce la fin du Temps dissolve into the lyrical serenity of Louange à l’immortalité de Jésus.  And, of course, there is birdsong in the haunting clarinet movement Abime des oiseaux.

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Coming up

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es1516The lunchtime concert series in the Richard Bradshaw Amphitheatre kicks off on Tuesday with the traditional opener; a concert by the members of the COC Ensemble Studio.  It’s always a good opportunity to level set for the season ahead.  Noon in the RBA.  Then on Wednesday and Thursday at 8pm the TSO are doing Mahler 3 with Jamie Barton as soloist.  I was tremendously impressed with Jamie’s Koerner Hall recital and am quite excited to see what she can do singing with an orchestra.

Season’s end

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The final concert of the year involving members of the Ensemble Studio took place yesterday in the RBA.  First up were Charles Sy and Hyejin Kwon with Britten’s Les Illuminations.  This is a formidable challenge for both singer and pianist and we were treated to a performance of real intensity and maturity.  Charles seemed to be sufficiently in technical command of the material to let himself go a bit and have some fun with the more ironic bits of Rimbaud’s rather extraordinary text.  His French diction was more than good enough for this, even in the places where the notes pretty much fall over themselves.  There were some very pretty sounds where needed and real intensity, particularly in Parade.  Hyejin was excellent too.  The piano part is no mere support in this piece.  It’s challenging and demands real partnership with the singer.  All in all, it was a performance that made one forget that these two have only been in the program for a year.

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Over the rush

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babi-yar-kiev-056-718x905The crazy late April/early May rush seems to be pretty much over.  This coming week there are only a few performances of note.  On Tuesday in the RBA at noon Aviva Fortunata and Iain MacNeil perform Strauss’ Four Last Songs and Vaughan Williams’ Songs of Travel.  Thursday sees the opening of Against the Grain’s A Little Too Cozy at the CBC’s Studio 42.  Then on Friday 13th, the TSO are doing, appropriately enough, Shostakovich’s 13th Symphony which sets Yevtushenko poems about the Babi Yar massacres.

Carmen and Maometto II continue at the COC, as does Against Nature at The Citadel.

CASP 2016

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It’s been four years since the initial Canadian Art Song Project concert in the RBA.  Since then they’ve commissioned a number of works and started a recital series that has included innovative presentations such as the performance of Brian Harman’s Sewing the Earthworm given in November.  A work premiered that night; Erik Ross’ The Living Spectacle formed the conclusion to yesterday’s concert but first came a series of works performed by students from the University of Toronto.

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Georgian Romance

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Hearing Anita Rachvelishvili sing Carmen on the main stage of the Four Seasons Centre, it was obvious that she had a huge voice with really interesting colours.  The full scope only became apparent to me hearing her in recital in the RBA today.  It’s an extraordinary instrument that can go from a very delicate pianissimo to very loud indeed  without any obvious change in quality.  There’s no steeliness or squalliness as the volume ramps up.  Just the same colours and rich tone.  A blow by blow account of a concert that included music in Georgian by Tabidze, Russian by Rachmaninov, French by Fauré and Spanish by de Falla seems superfluous.  There was delicacy.  There was drama.  There was humour.  There was playfulness.  All in less than an hour.  And to cap it off there were encores; Mon cœur s’ouvre à ta voix from Samson et Delilah and, perhaps inevitably, the Seguidilla from Carmen.  Stephen Hargreaves was at the piano.  One wonders if he actually lives at the hall.  He covered a wide range of material from the delicate to the impressively percussive with his customary skill.

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Photo credit: Lara Hintelmann

More spring fever

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3b3790d131e56a6498103d0c82f97e9bThe very busy spring season continues for another couple or three weeks before we head into the summer lull.  This afternoon sees the final Songmasters concert of the season at the Royal Conservatory with the Hungarian-Finnish connection.  Soprano Leslie Ann Bradley, bass-baritone Stephen Hegedus, pianists Rachel Andrist and Robert Kortgaard and violinist Erika Raum will perform Kaija Saariaho’s Changing Light as well as works by Liszt, Bartók, Sibelius, and others.  That’s at 2pm in Mazzoleni Hall.

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