Today’s noon hour concert at Metropolitan United Church featured soprano McKenzie Warriner and pianist Christine Bae. Ellita Gagner was also scheduled to sing but, unfortunately, she was not able to do so due to illness. So we got a hastily reorganised programme.
Tuesday night’s Toronto Summer Music concert in Walter Hall featured Quebec soprano Elisabeth St-Gelais with Louise Pelletier on piano. The first part of the concert consisted of songs by Brahms and Strauss. I’m not a huge fan of Brahm’s Zigeunerlieder, Op.103 which are very much an example of Germans misunderstanding just about everything about Hungarian folk music let alone gypsies. The texts are cliché ridden and the music isn’t much better. Ms. St-Gelais sang then with a full pleasant tone and some attention to the text but she really needs to work on her German diction.
Wednesday’s lunchtime recital in the RBA featured Simone Osborne; currently appearing as Norina in Don Pasquale, and pianist Rachael Kerr. It was a well curated selection of songs apparently, at least partially, inspired by sleep deprivation singer and pianist both have small children!). There were three sets of four songs. One in each set was by a Canadian composer backed up by two others that were thematically related.
So the first set featured birds. Godfrey Ridout’s arrangement of She’s Like The Swallow was supported by Viardot’s Grands oiseaux blancs and Grieg’s “Ein Schwan” from Sex digte af Henrik Ibsen. It worked. The Ridout got a reasonably folk song like treatment, the Viardot was dramatic and the Grieg was just beautiful. A good start. Continue reading
Metropolitan United Church that is. Not the other place. Anyway, it was a very pleasant Thursday lunchtime recital in which Maeve was accompanied on piano by Helen Becqué. It was essentially a “turn of the century” (as in around 1900) programme.
The first set was Debussy’s Ariettes Oubliees. The six songs are very Debussy. Maeve sang them idiomatically, in excellent French and with a fair amount of variation in emotional intensity from quite restrained to exuberant. She does “exuberant” rather well. Equally excellent and idiomatic playing from Helen who also provided a bit of a break between song sets with pieces drawn from the Preludes Op. 12 of Luise Adolpha Le Beau.
Last wednesday’s RBA recital was given by mezzo-soprano Jingjing Xu; the 2022/23 Wirth Vocal prize winner, and Christopher Knopp; piano. It was one of the most impressive performances by a singer at this stage of her career (just finished her master’s) that I have heard in quite a while. Mr. Knopp is pretty impressive too and it’s obvious that they have worked together quite a lot.
It’s an interesting idea for a CD to couple an exuberant early Strauss tone poem with a extremely introspective Mahler song cycle and that’s what L’Orchestre Symphonique de Montréal have done for their upcoming release with conductor Rafael Payare. I’m not especially familiar with Richard Strauss’ Ein Heldenleben Op. 40 but it sounds suitably Straussian and it gets a full blooded treatment from Payare with the solo violin part played quite beautifully by Concertmaster Andrew Wan. Continue reading
It’s an interesting idea for a CD; couple the well known (and original) orchestral version of Richard Strauss’ Vier letzte Lieder with the less well known piano version (the first three songs are arranged by Max Wolff and Im Abendrot by John Gribben). It’s exactly the sort of bold, slightly off the wall idea one might expect from Asmik Grigorian. So how well does it work?
I’m just not convinced by the piano version; where Gregorian is partnered by Markus Hinterhäuser. The vocal part, especially when compared with Strauss’ other songs for voice and piano just seems to be written for singing with an orchestra. It’s not as intricate and subtle as some of the other songs and with piano it seems a bit one dimensional and over dramatic. It’s not helped on this record by very slow tempi (for example, the piano version of Im Abendrot here runs 8m44 versus 7m16 for the orchestral version) and a “boomy” acoustic. The singing is OK but the overall effect is ponderous.
Wednesday’s lunchtime’s concert in the RBA was a recital by baritone Önay Köse, currently singing Banquo at the COC, accompanied by pianist Stephen Hargreaves..There were three sets of four songs; the Ibert Quatre chansons de Don Quichotte. four pieces from Wolf’s Italienisches Liederbuch and the Brahms Vier Ernste Gesänge.
Last night’s concert at Trinity Saint Paul’s by the Amici Ensemble and friends. was titled From Strauss to the Orient. Unsurprisingly, the first half of the concert was Strauss. The first piece was the Duett Concertino for clarinet, bassoon, strings and harp; arranged by Serouj Kradjian with piano replacing harp. Besides the Amicis (Serouj – piano, Joaquin Valdepeñas – clarinet and David Hetherington – cello) were guests Kathleen Kajioka and Timothy Ying – violins, Barry Shiffman – viola, David Lalonde – bass and Michael Sweeney – bassoon. It’s an interesting piece. The clarinet and bassoon basically carry on a conversation across three movements with the strings and piano as a sort of “backing band”. The overlapping ranges but very different colours of the two woodwind instruments are both pleasing and intriguing. It was nicely done. It’s always a delight to watch a chamber ensemble that is obviously communicating and having fun!
Decca have just released a 3CD set of previously unreleased recordings made by the late Jessye Norman between 1989 and 1998 with various orchestras and conductors.
The first is a series of extracts from Wagner’s Tristan und Isolde recorded in Leipzig in 1998 with Kurt Masur conducting the Gewandhaus Orchestra. Besides the Prelude there’s most of the Isolde/Brangäne scenes from Act 1 (Hannah Schwarz is Brangäne). Then comes the huge Act 2, Scene 2 duet; “Isolde! Geliebte! – Tristan! Geliebte!” etc, with Thomas Moser as Tristan, and finally, and inevitably, the “Liebestod”. It all sounds really good with the duet properly ecstatic and the “Liebestod” very moving. It’s a studio recording made in many takes so that challenging final scene doesn’t have to be sung after many hours on stage which no doubt contributes but it’s all very fine and a good record of Jessye in the role.
operaramblings 