Tag Archives: szabo

Eros and Thanatos

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Against the Grain’s Death/Desire opened last night at the Neubacher Shor Contemporary Gallery.  It’s structured around Schubert’s Die Schöne Müllerin cycle with the songs of Messiaen’s Harawi: Chants d’amour et de mort interpolated, though not in the usual order.  Thus there are two characters; The Man, singing the Schubert; who is very much the conventional questing lover of 19th century poetry, and The Woman, singing the Messiaen (mostly) who is something very different from the young girl of Wilhelm Müller’s texts.  The piece is staged with both characters on stage most of the time and interacting in ways that reflect the music and don’t.

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Doundou tchil

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Today’s lunchtime concert in the RBA was a preview of Against the Grain’s upcoming show Death and Desire.  It’s a staged mash up of Schubert’s Die Schöne Müllerin and Messiaen’s Harawi: Chant d’amour et de mort; a settong of texts, rather weird ones at that, by the composer.  As director Joel Ivany said, mixing Messiaen and Schubert might seem “a bit bizarre” but these two texts seem to work together remarkably well and the juxtaposition seems almost inspired.  I’m glad too that the original intention of performing the two pieces back-to-back has been replaced by a mash up.  Today we got to see and hear the first half of the show.

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Bluebeard’s Castle/Erwartung

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Robert Lepage’s 1993 double bill production of Bartok’s Duke Bluebeard’s Castle and Schoenberg’s Erwartung was the iconic director’s first foray into opera and it has been argued tht it put the COC “on the map” as a serious international opera company.  It was revived last night with François Racine directing.

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Soundstreams announces 2015/16 season

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Adrianne-eventToronto contemporary music outfit Soundstreams have announced their 2015/16 season. Highlights from an operaramblings perdpective include a chance to hear Adrianne Pieczonka sing music ranging from George Crumb to The Beatles.  That one’s at Koerner Hall on September 29th and will also feature Kristina Szabó.  In November there’s the previously announced run of Boesman’s Julie at the Bluma Appel.  I’m eagerly awaiting casting information on that.  There’s also a concert dedicated to James MacMillan, including his Seven Last Words from the Cross.  That one is at Trinity St. Paul’s on March 8th next year.  There’s a 80th birthday bash for Steve Reich at Massey Hall on April 14th next year and for real masochists there’s a concert featuring multiple types of squeezebox music at Trinity St.Paul’s on February 10th.  Full details and ticket information can be found here.

Addicted to purity and violence

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In George Benjamin’s Written on Skin The Man, The Protector, is described as “addicted to purity and violence”.  One could perhaps say the same about the score.  Seeing it presented in a minimally staged version at Roy Thomson Hall last night perhaps emphasised those aspects compared to watching a fully staged version (review of Katie Mitchell’s production at the ROH here).  Being able to see the conductor and orchestra made the combination of a traditional orchestra with older instruments; viola da gamba, glass harmonica etc (and lots of percussion) more obvious.  The music can be very violent but it can also be incredibly quiet and it’s a measure of Benjamin’s skill as a conductor that through these extreme changes of dynamics he rarely, if ever, covered his singers.

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Bejun Mehta, Christopher Purves and Barbara Hannigan in the ROH production

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Thank you for flying Current Air

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aiWhen I saw Brian Current’s Airline Icarus this summer in a staged version by Tim Albery I thoroughly enjoyed it but had this nagging feeling I wasn’t completely getting it.  First time through with the CD I had the same reaction.  It was only when I printed out Anton Piatiogorsky’s libretto and listened with that in front of me that I began to feel I was finally understanding this somewhat enigmatic work.  I realized it’s a structural thing.  The first two parts of the piece are essentially realistic.  It’s a black comedy involving a sort of anti-love triangle between a businessman (Geoff Sirett), a flight attendant (Krisztina Szabó) and a businesswoman (Carla Huhtanen) played out along with the terror of an academic (Graham Thomson) flying, ironically, to Cleveland to deliver a paper on the Fall of Icarus.  It’s inventive and funny but then something happens.  It’s very ambiguous but Current’s notes tell us that it’s inspired by the 12 -15 minutes between KAL007 being hit in the wing by a Soviet missile over Sakhalin in 1983 and its eventual destruction.  The mood changes with a nervy ensemble piece about hubris and technology followed by an ecstatic aria from the pilot (Alexander Dobson) before a deceptive return to “normality” and fade out.  It’s quite disturbing in its lack of resolution.

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Tapestry Briefs: Booster Shots

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briefs-web-bannerLast night I saw the second performance of Tapestry’s latest compilation of short works.  As before it was a mix of excerpts from works in progress and potential projects plus stand alone short scenes developed during the LibLab.  This year there was an additional refinement.  The works were staged in different parts of the building (part of the Distillery complex) and samples of the local goodies were provided at strategic points along the way.

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Galicians I

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stephania

Stefania Turkewich

Yesterday, for the second time inside a week, I found myself at a musical event celebrating a nation and a nationalism not my own.  It’s a rather weird experience (1).  The first had been a performance of Dvoràk’s Jakobin, not reviewed here as I was reviewing for Opera Canada, and yesterday was the launch of the CD set Galicians 1; the fourth instalment of the Ukrainian Art Song Project.  This latter is the lovechild of British Ukrainian bass-baritone Pavlo Hunka.  Indeed it’s almost an obsession.  He has tracked down scores for 1000 largely unknown art songs by Ukrainian composers and has plans for them all to be recorded by 2020.  The latest bunch are by Galician composers Denys Sichynsky, Stanyslav Liudkevych, Vasyl Barvinsky and Stefania Turkewich.  The party line reason for the neglect of this music is, unsurprisingly, persecution under both Tsarist and Soviet regimes.  This was mentioned in at least one of the many introductions and speeches of thanks yesterday and provoked a loud “Absolute rubbish!” from the rather scholarly looking gentleman two seats to my right.  It does rather look a bit more complicated with composers holding prestigious conservatory posts but eventually falling foul of someone in the apparatus and getting sent to a labour camp for obscure reasons.  I don’t think that was unique to Ukrainians.

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Upcoming events

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vh-headshotThis evening at 7.30pm at Trinity St. Paul’s The Talisker Players have their first concert of the season entitled Songs of Travel.  Virginia Hatfield  will be performing the French baroque work Le Sommeil d’Ulisse by Elisabeth Jacquet de la Guerre and the rarely performed Algoma Central by Louis Applebaum. Also featured is baritone Geoffrey Sirett in Ralph Vaughan Williams’ Songs of Travel and Vally Weigl’s Songs of Love and Leaving. Also on tomorrow.

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