Tag Archives: zelenka

Fazil Say and friends

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This year’s 21C Festival opened last night at Koerner Hall with Turkish pianist and composer Fazil Say performing some of his works with the help of a few friends.  It was a pretty varied evening considering all the works were by one person.  The opening pieces Gezi Park 2 and Gezi Park 3 are reflections on the Gezi Park protests of 2013.  The first is for solo piano and is by turns dramatic and meditative.  It uses a fair amount of extended piano technique and is highly virtuosic with great rhythmic complexity.  In the second piece the composer was joined by a string quartet (Scott and Lara St. John – violins, Barry Scxhiffman – viola and Winona Zelenka – cello) and mezzo-soprano Beste Kalender.  This work was both expressive and dramatic building on the musical language of the first piece with the additional textures of the strings (more extended technique) and a lot of rather beautiful vocalise from Beste.  It’s an impressive piece.

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Bach from Confluence

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The first concert of the Confluence season is now available (free) on the Confluence Youtube channel.  It’s the first of three concerts featuring the Bach Suites for Cello, presented in partnership with the Toronto Bach Festival.  This first concert features the well known Cello Suite No. 1 in G Major BWV 1007, played rather beautifully by Winona Zelenka and an equally satisfying version of Cello Suite No. 3 in C Major BWV 1009 played by Michelle Tang.  Both these pieces are played on modern cell but it looks like the second and third concerts will feature less conventional forces.  The concert was recorded at Heliconian Hall with a small live audience and looks and sounds excellent.

michelletang

Tafelmusik vocal competition

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Winner - Kim Leeds

Winner – Kim Leeds

This was a vocal competition with a twist.  The repertoire was all baroque and the prizes were the soloist spots in upcoming performances of Zelenka’s Missa Omnium Sanctorum.  To some extent that dictated the format with three bass-baritones, three tenors and three altos (two mezzos and a countertenor) competing and a prize winner in each triad.  Each singer had to offer the appropriate piece from the Zelenka Mass plus a piece of their choice by each of Bach and Handel.  I did wonder whether I would get through an afternoon of twenty seven baroque vocal pieces but aided by free pizza and cookies I made it.  At least, for once, I was at a singing competition where nobody would be singing Pierrot’s Tanzlied.

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Rival Queens

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Isabel-bayrakdarianRival Queens is a collaboration between Tafelmusik and Isabel Bayrakdarian showcasing music written for Faustina Bordoni and Francesca Cuzzoni; star divas of the 18th century who fought out a bitter rivalry on stage in London in 1726-28.  The great composers of the sage, most notably Handel, all composed for them and wrote works that brought out their respective, and quite contrasted, strengths.

In the first half of the program Bayrakdarian focused on works for Bordoni.  There were arias from Handel’s Alessandro (one of the works both divas performed in), Bononcini’s Astianatte and Hasse’s Cajo Fabricio.  These are pieces requiring extremely secure technique.  They lie fairly low in the soprano range (maybe modern mezzo territory) but have long, long, intricate coloratura runs which Bayrakdarian navigated with apparent ease.  The arias were rounded out with orchestral pieces by Handel and Zelenka.

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