Tag Archives: stravinsky

Stravinsky with the TSO

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The latest CD from the Toronto Symphony and Gustavo Gimeno features two works by Stravinsky and a Glenn Gould inspired piece by Kelly-Marie Murphy.  The first piece is the 24 minute long suite from the ballet Le baiser de la fée which is a sort of pastiche of what Tchaikovsky might sound like if Tchaikovsky could orchestrate as well as Stravinsky!  It’s well played but I don’t find it terribly exciting.

Murphy’s piece is another story.  There’s a running joke about short pieces by contemporary composers at the TSO.  They get called “garage pieces” because they get played at the beginning of concerts when half the patrons are still on their way up from parking.  Murphy’s Curiosity, Genius and the Search for Petula Clark absolutely does not deserve the label.  It was inspired by a road trip Glenn Gould took up north one time and it’s fascinating.  There’s a restless energy to it and a kind of flirting with atonality coupled with lyricism and a lot of percussion.  It’s kind of like a feral love child of Holst’s Mars; Bringer of War and a Shostakovich symphony crammed into ten minutes. Continue reading →

Sabine Devieilhe impresses in Stravinsky’s Le Rossignol

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Olivier Py directed a production of Stravinsky’s Le Rossignol at the Théâtre des Champs Élysées in 2023 and a live recording was made for CD.  The Nightingale is sung by soprano Sabine Devieilhe and she is very good indeed.  She has pretty much the perfect voice for this role with its coloratura sections and very high tessitura.  Her voice sounds suitably sweet all the way up and her coloratura is very precise.  She’s very well backed up by an all French cast featuring the excellent tenor Cyrille Dubois as the Fisherman and the unmistakable Laurent Naouri as the Chamberlain.  Jean-Sébastien Bou also impresses as a suitably tremulous Emperor and there’s a nice cameo from Chantal Santon Jeffery as the Cook.  The minor roles are all well sung and French diction is notably good across the board. Continue reading →

The Soldier’s Tale reimagined

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Sankofa: The Soldier’s Tale Retold is the latest and, probably, the last show from Art of Time Ensemble.  It’s a bold and successful attempt at updating Stravinsky’s iconic work.  The music is all Stravinsky but Titilope Sonuga’s libretto is new.  It preserves the basic triad of Narrator, Soldier and the Devil but moves them to WW1 Canada.  Our soldier is a Black Canadian of West African extraction who is trying to join the Canadian army, which rejects him because of his skin colour.  His faith in his heritage, symbolised by the spirit bird Sankofa, with a little help from the Devil leads to the formation of the 2nd Construction Battalion, a non-combat unit, which was the only way Black Canadians could serve.  He survives the war and returns from France to find that the same battles must be fought over (and over, and over) again.

Ordena Stephens-Thompson & Olaoluwa Fayokun_Sankofa_ The Soldier_s Tale Retold_Art of Time Ensemble_photo by John Lauener

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Oedipus Rex

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A video recording of Stravinsky’s Oedipus Rex is a bit of an oddball really.  It’s quite short (55 minutes) and it’s an oratorio rather than an opera.  I guess it could be staged but the version recorded at the Maggio Musicale Fiorentino in 2022 isn’t.  It’s a concert setting, in concert dress, with music stands.  There’s not even minimal blocking.

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Mavra/Iolanta

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The 2019 production from the Opernstudio der Bayerischen Staatsoper (basically their young artists programme) was a bit unusual.  Director Axel Ranisch created a kind of mash up of Tchaikovsky’s Iolanta and Stravinsky’s very short opera Mavra.  Iolanta is about a blind princess who doesn’t realise she is blind.  It’s only when she meets her future husband, a French count Vaudémont, that she realises this.  Her father the king employs a Moorish doctor to try and cure her, which fails, but believing that if she doesn’t pretend to be sighted her suitor will be executed she fakes it and is given to him in marriage.  He alone realises she is still blind and puts out his own eyes in sympathy (this is pretty hard to watch!). In the process they both realise that God’s creation is much greater than human eyes can perceive.

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Gimeno and Hannigan

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To Roy Thomson Hall last night for the first time in over two years to see Gustavo Gimeno conduct (my first time) with Barbara Hannigan featuring in a major premiere in the first half.  The concert kicked off with a 3 minute piece by Julia Mermelstein; in moments, into bloom.  It was over too quickly to register much of an impression with me.  I certainly enjoyed the Stravinsky Scherzo fantastique that followed.  This seems to be Gimeno’s type of music and he had excellent control of rhythm, dynamics and colour which augured well for The Firebird coming up after the interval.

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LoveMozart

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Last night saw the third and final concert in the inaugural West End Micro Music Festival.  Sadly we had missed number two because of TTC snarl ups but we got there fine last night.  The first half of the programme was Mozart and Stravinsky but presented in an unconventional and very effective way.  The movements of Stravinsky’s Three Pieces for Clarinet and Three Pieces for String Quartet were alternated with an arrangement for clarinet and string trio of Mozart’s adagio from K370 and two of the fragments from K516.  It was really cool; one each of the  Stravinsky clarinet and string pieces, followed by some Mozart.  Rinse and repeat!  There were a couple of fairly dark pieces but mostly this is quite playful music and the musicians; Emily Kruspe and Eric Kim-Fujita (violins), Maxime Despax (viola), Sebastian Ostertag (cello) and Brad Cherwin (clarinets) were obviously having a lot of fun.

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A new beginning?

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Last night the Music Director designate of the TSO, Gustavo Gimeno, conducted a concert of 20th century classics.  It was the first chance to see him with the orchestra since his appointment.  First up was the Sibelius Violin Concerto in D Minor.  It’s a curious work with relatively little dialogue between soloist and orchestra.  Rather there’s a very Sibelian orchestral piece kind of sandwiched with a highly virtuosic violin part but it works in an odd sort of way.  It was also very well played with all the necessary virtuosity from soloist Jonathan Crow and an orchestral sound which while often dark and brooding was also quite transparent.

TSO June 28 Photo Credit Jag Gundu

Photo: Jag Gundu

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Not Sam

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Off I went to the Four Seasons Centre to see Samuel Chan and Stéphane Mayer perform some Schubert.  Sadly Sam was indisposed so what we got was a hastily, but very well, constructed program featuring some of the other singers in the Ensemble Studio.

Things kicked off with the increasingly impressive Anne-Sophie Neher in an accomplished rendering of Mozart’s “show off” piece Exsultate jubilate, in which she showed very decent control in the rather fiendish runs.  She was back later with “The Presentation of the Rose” from Der Rosenkavalier which sounded suitably Straussian and sufficiently girlish at the same time.  Nicely done. She made a third appearance with one of Adèles’s arias from Le comte Ory.  This didn’t quite do it for me but it was fun to hear Stéphane playing around with the very Rossiniesque accompaniment.

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L’Histoire du Soldat

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Most music lovers have probably heard the music from Stravinsky’s L’Histoire du Soldat in either orchestral or chamber arrangement but it’s rare for the work to be given in its full staged form but that’s how it was presented (more or less) last night at Koerner Hall by the Toronto Summer Music Festival in association with LooseTEA Music Theatre.  That form includes a narrator, an actor (originally three actors, nowadays usually just a single actor/narrator) and dancer.  Plus, of course, the band; violin and bass, clarinet and bassoon, cornet and trombone, piano.

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