Tag Archives: strauss

The Living Spectacle

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spectacle-300x286The Canadian Art Song Project branched out last night with a ticketed concert at The Extension Room.  The opening number was the latest CASP commission; The Living Spectacle by Erik Ross to words by Baudelaire translated by Roy Campbell.  Like a lot of modern song the three movements were all quite piano forward and hard on the singer.  The second text, The Evil Monk, certainly brought out the darker and more dramatic side of Ambur Braid’s voice while the third, The Death of Artists, was cruelly high even for someone with Ambur’s coloratura chops.  She coped very well and Steven Philcox’ rendering of the piano part was suitably virtuosic.

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New Voices

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newvoicesNew Voices is the latest CD from the Brooklyn Art Song Society.  It features songs by Glen Roven, Michael Djupstrom, James Kallenbach and Herschel Gerfein.  What most struck me was the retro feel of all four composers’ works.  We are in a tonal sound world with occasional jazz/folk inflections and the piano line is clearly written to support the voice.  One might be listening to, say Ned Rorem.  I say this because it’s such a contrast with the songs being written by contemporary Canadian composers with their chromaticism, experimental and frequently changing time signatures and often almost adversarial relation between voice and piano.  Which one prefers, of course, is a matter of taste.

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A lunchtime of Mozart, Strauss and Dvořák

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Rachel_KrehmSo there’s another free (well almost, $5 suggested donation) lunchtime concert series.  It’s Music Mondays at The Church of the Holy Trinity in Trinity Square (A most worthwhile institution which has long taken a leading role in the fight for social justice in Toronto and, on top of that, I used to play rugby with a former incumbent).  As it happens yesterday saw the last concert of the 2015 season featuring the Canzona Chamber Players, conductor Evan Mitchell, and soprano Rachel Krehm.  The Canzonas are a pretty big band, 53 players yesterday, for a chamber group (I guess they have big chambers in Canzona) and could be very loud in the rather resonant church acoustic.

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September approaches

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Rachel-66-pinwheel2It’s almost September which means there may even be stuff to write about soon.  Here’s what’s in my calendar so far.

August 31st at 12.15 pm there’s a concert in the Music on Mondays series featuring soprano Rachel Krehm and an orchestra conducted by Evan Mitchell performing Dove sono by Mozart, selections from Strauss Op 27 and Dvorak’s 8th Symphony.  It’s at Holy Trinity Church near the Eaton Centre. PWYC suggested $5.

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The Solti show

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The recording of Richard Strauss’ Die Frau ohne Schatten made at the Salzburg Festival in 1992 is very much Sir Georg Solti’s show.  The conducting is superb and the Vienna Philharmonic, of course, respond for Solti.  From the opening, shattering cords through the various orchestral interludes to the final ensemble and chorus Solti is utterly convincing in his command of tempi and dynamics.

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Masterclass with Soile Isokoski

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Ms. Isokoski looking less down to earth than this morning

Ms. Isokoski looking less down to earth than this morning

This was a really interesting morning.  The TSMF runs a “fellow” program for singers and collaborative pianists and this morning, as part of that program, there was a masterclass with Finnish soprano Soile Isokoski.  There were eight singers and four pianists with seven German songs (Strauss, Schubert and Wolff) and one in Finnish prepared (and preparing a Finnish piece for an Isokoski masterclass reminds me of that Youtube thing of the kitten walking down a line of Alsatian guard dogs).  It was classic masterclass format.  Each singer sang their piece and then went over fine points; diction, legato, phrasing, breathing, emotion, colour, at Ms. Isokoski’s direction.  It was fascinating.

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Toronto Summer Opera

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vampyrThere’s not a lot of opera in Toronto in the summer but Summer Opera Lyric Theatre has announced it’s 29th season of performances by young and emerging artists in Toronto.  This season there are three offerings:

  • First up is Marschner’s Der Vampyr.  There are four performances on July 31st (8pm), August 2nd (2pm), 5th (2pm) and 8th (8pm).
  • Ambitiously enough, this is followed by Strauss’ Ariadne auf Naxos on August 1st (2pm), 4th (8pm), 6th (8pm) and 8th (2pm).
  • And finally, another rarity, von Flotow’s Martha.  Again four performances on August 1st (8pm), 5th (8pm), 7th (8pm) and 9th (2pm).

All three shows are directed by Bill Silva-Marin and will be performed in the Robert Gill Theatre at the University of Toronto.  Single tickets are $28 ($22 students/seniors) or $60 for the lot.  Tickets are available by phone at 416-366-7723 or online at www.stlc.com.

The Play of Daniel

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The Play of Daniel (Danielis ludus) is a 12th or 13th century Latin liturgical play from Beauvais in nothern France.  It appears in the liturgy for January 1st, The Feast of the Circumcision, and appears to have been an attempt to channel the traditional post Christmas disorder into more acceptable channels.  It was probably performed by the sub deacons of the Cathedral; young men in minor orders.  Alex and David Fallis have run with this setting and tried to create a piece that would evoke the same sort of reactions from a 21st century audience as the original did for those who saw it in Beauvais.  That’s a huge ask but, to my mind, they succeeded admirably.

Belshazzar - Olivier Laquerre (l) Noble – Bud Roach (r)

Belshazzar – Olivier Laquerre (l) Noble – Bud Roach (r)

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Ariadne goes to war

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Katherina Thoma not unreasonably chooses to set her 2013 Glyndebourne production of Ariadne auf Naxos in a country house in the south of England (though I suppose equating the Christies with a rather boorish Viennese bourgeois might be thought a touch unkind).  She also chooses to set it in 1940 which sets us up for an almost Marxian dialectic not just between high art and low art but between art and life; especially where life and death are concerned.

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Mild und Leise… occasionally

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The TSO’s program last night was too tempting to miss; Adrianne Pieczonka singing Strauss and Wagner and a Beethoven 7th plus Gianandrea Noseda conducting.  So I went.

_DSC5922Things started off with Casella’s Italia.  This is a sort of mash up of Pucciniesque bombast and Neapolitan popular tunes.  I’m surprised it never featured in a Warner Bros cartoon.  Perhaps it did.  In any event Nosada is probably the ideal conductor for it; infusing it with a kind of manic energy.  Next up were the Strauss Vier letzte lieder.  Here manic energy is exactly what’s not needed and Nosada seemed to have some difficulty adjusting.  Too often Adrianne Pieczonka’s beautiful singing was covered by an over loud orchestra.  Roy Thomson Hall is tricky but George Benjamin showed exactly how to manage the acoustic last weekend.  Nosada wasn’t so successful.

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