Here are a couple more season announcements.
The 2023/24 TSO season is the usual mix of symphonic, vocal and lighter fare. Several concerts caught my eye. The first is the return of Sir Andrew Davis on November 8th and 9th 2023 with a programme that includes Fauré’s Requiem. Later that month, on the 22nd, there’s the first of two concerts featuring Emily D’Angelo. She’ll be singing the Berg Seven Early Songs with Michael Tilson-Thomas on the podium. That programme also includes Mahler Symphony No. 5. She’s back on May 1st and 2nd 2024 with the music from her excellent enargeia CD. Gustavo Gimeno conducts a programme that also includes Brahms Symphony No.1 and a new work by Alison Yun-Fei Jiang. On Sunday June 16th in North York there’s a programme that includes a new piece by Ian Cusson created as part of the Art of Healing project with CAMH. Gimeno conducts a programme that also includes Bartok and Mozart. Full details of the season are here. Continue reading
So to Eastminster United last night for the opening concert of the Toronto Bach Festival. We got three concerti bookended by (I think) a sinfonia from one of the cantatas; an excuse to show off the trumpets and timpani recruited for Sunday’s oratorios, and an arrangement of the Air on the G String. Festival director John Abberger contributed a scholarly programme note on the general issue of Bach concerti. Bottom line, there aren’t very many of them but they can be rearranged for a pretty wide range of instrumental options. Last night we got the Concerto for Oboe BWV1056, Concerto for Flute, Violin and Harpsichord BWV 1044 and the much better known Brandenburg Concerto No. 1 BWV 1046.
The 5th Annual Toronto Bach Festival will take place from May 29th to 31st. All the details are at 
The fourth annual Toronto Bach Festival runs May 24th to 26th. There are four concerts and a lecture. Here’s the line up:
I’m not sure that I had ever heard anything by Heinrich Schütz before this afternoon but I’m glad that I have now. His St. John Passion formed the first half of the closing concert of the Toronto Bach Festival at St. Barnabas on the Danforth this afternoon. Written in 1666, towards the end of his life ,it’s steeped in the Lutheran tradition. There’s no orchestra. The main burden of the Gospel is taken by the Evangelist as narrator in a style not very far from the Anglican traditional style of singing metrical psalms. The emphasis is on the text; indeed on The Word. Members of the chorus contribute in similar style as Jesus, Pilate and so on. The narrative is interspersed with polyphonic choruses with sparse organ accompaniment perhaps hinting at an even older tradition where the meaning of the words mattered less.
Here’s the news that’s arrived in my inbox this week.
There have been quite a few announcements in the last couple of weeks or so. Here’s what’s coming up.
operaramblings 