January 27th marked the 79th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz-Birkenau by units of the red Army. The anniversary is commemorated as International Holocaust Remembrance Day. Yesterday it was recognised in Toronto by a performance by the Likht Ensemble at the Meridian Arts Centre in North York.
This year’s 21C Festival opened last night at Koerner Hall with Turkish pianist and composer Fazil Say performing some of his works with the help of a few friends. It was a pretty varied evening considering all the works were by one person. The opening pieces Gezi Park 2 and Gezi Park 3 are reflections on the Gezi Park protests of 2013. The first is for solo piano and is by turns dramatic and meditative. It uses a fair amount of extended piano technique and is highly virtuosic with great rhythmic complexity. In the second piece the composer was joined by a string quartet (Scott and Lara St. John – violins, Barry Scxhiffman – viola and Winona Zelenka – cello) and mezzo-soprano Beste Kalender. This work was both expressive and dramatic building on the musical language of the first piece with the additional textures of the strings (more extended technique) and a lot of rather beautiful vocalise from Beste. It’s an impressive piece.
operaramblings 