Viva la Mamma (also known as Le convenienze ed inconvenienze teatrali) may be Donizetti’s most intentionally silly opera (though some of the “serious” operas rival it for silliness). It’s a farce and should be treated as such which is exactly what Maria Lamont’s production for UoT Opera, currently playing at the Elgin Theatre, does.
Wednesday’s recital in the RBA was given by UoT Opera. It consisted of a series of arias/scenes drawn from the operas of Mozart, Haydn and Beethoven creatively staged by Mabel Wonnacott. It was lively and a lot of fun and the vocal standard was very high, especially for so early in the academic year.
There’s a story behind violinist Christopher Whitley’s new solo album Describe Yourself. Entering the 2017 Canada Council for the Arts. Musical Instrument Bank Competition, he found himself required to offer a Canadian composition. The chosen piece was Jeffrey Ryan’s Bellatrix. He was successful and so this album is played on a 1700 Taft Stradivarius and it opens with the aforesaid Bellatrix. Continue reading
A Left Coast is baritone Tyler Duncan and pianist Erika Switzer’s tribute to British Columbia and its music. Seven composers with birthdates ranging from 1908 to 1985 are featured on the disk. BC is a young country as far as western classical music is concerned though, of course, it has rich artistic traditions stretching far back into the mists of the north west.
It’s quite varied and, inevitably, I like some sets more than others. My top pick is Leslie Uyeda’s Plato’s Angel songs which set poems by Lorna Crozier. There’s a deep melancholy in the text that’s reflected in a dark, somewhat atonal musical idiom. I also really liked Jeffrey Ryan’s Everything Already Lost; the longest set on the record, setting quite sonically/musically evocative texts by Jan Zwicky with quite varied sonorities mixing elements of minimalism and onomatopoeia, especially in the piano part.
Found Frozen is a new CD from Centrediscs featuring songs by Jeffrey Ryan. The centrepiece of the disc is his Miss Carr in Seven Scenes. It’s a setting of extracts from Emily Carr’s notebooks for mezzo-soprano and piano performed here by Krisztina Szabó and Steven Philcox. I’ve heard them do the piece twice live, including the premier, and I really don’t have much to add to what I wrote then. It’s a terrific piece.
The first set on the disc though is Found Frozen. It’s a setting of three poems by Helen Hunt Jackson about Death and Remembrance. It’s scored for soprano and piano and sits quite high much of the time. The piano part is busy and somewhat minimalistic. It’s sung by Danika Lorèn with Steven Philcox again at the piano. It’s very good singing indeed. There are long sustained notes that are navigated with aplomb and her diction is excellent, even in the very high passages.
I found out yesterday that Vancouver based composer Jeffrey Ryan has won the 2021 Art Song Prize from the National Association of Singing Teachers (a US based body) for his song cycle Everything Already Lost. This is believed to be a first for a Canadian composer. Now, readers with good memories might recall that I was decidedly impressed by Ryan’s Miss Carr in Seven Scenes which was the 2018 CASP commission so, obviously, I was keen to check out the new work.
So last night’s Venice to Constantinople web cast didn’t come off due to the general inability of people to get together right now. However Beste Kalender and Ryan Harper did manage to produce a short video. You can see Beste singing a piano accompanied version of Hahn’s À Chloris followed by three songs by Komitas recorded by Beste with Sinfonia Toronto and Nurhan Arman. The three songs are Cinar Es (Tall as a poplar tree), Tahsin Incirci (Varna Songs) and Al Ayloughs (My Red Shawl). It’s a nice way to spend fifteen minutes. The video can be found here.
This year’s Canadian Art Song Project commission is a setting of poems by EJ Pratt by Dean Burry entitled Sea Variations. It was given its first performance yesterday in the Richard Bradshaw Amphitheatre by Michael Colvin and Stephen Philcox. The texts all deal with the moods of the sea and seem curiously archaic for the 1920s when they were written. They are much more reminiscent of, say, Matthew Arnold than Yeats, let alone Eliot. They have a certain power though and anybody who knows the North Atlantic will easily appreciate why they might appeal to fellow Newfoundlander Burry.
Last night’s early evening free “shuffle” concert at Heliconian Hall featured Krisztina Szabó and Stephen Philcox. They started out with Xavier Montsalvatge’s Cinco canciones negras; a lively collection of Spanish songs featuring scenes from Cuban life. The songs, very much French influenced, varied in mood from quite sombre to wild and were presented with skill and wit. The main event though was the reprise of two works that Philcox and Szabó premiered in March at Walter Hall; Miss Carr in Seven Scenes by Jeffrey Ryan and Four Short Songs by John Beckwith. I reviewed that March performance here and really don’t see any reason to revise my opinion about the works or the performances except to note that last night, of course, Krisztina sang all the Beckwith songs.
Last night, at Walter Hall, the Canadian Art Song Project presented their latest commission; Miss Carr in Seven Scenes by Jeffrey Ryan. The overall standard of the CASP commissions since Lawrence Wiliford and Steven Philcox launched the endeavour has been very high. The Ryan piece maintains that.
operaramblings 