Tonight felt like a kind of affirmation of permanence in the face of change and disorder in the world.

The Tallis Scholars, conducted by Peter Phillips, joined forces with two University of Toronto ensembles –Schola Cantorum and Theatre of Early Music—conducted by Daniel Taylor. While the repertoire ranged from the renaissance to our own century, we were listening to unaccompanied choral music, using religious texts: Magnificat, Pater noster, Ave Maria and Nunc Dimittis, all in multiple settings.

As a student of the phenomenon of musical signification especially as it applies to religious texts it was a special experience to be able to compare different approaches to the same words, across different periods, the different strategies and styles applied to the same spiritual concept and similar words.

St Paul’s Basilica at Queen & Power was packed with eager listeners, attracted no doubt by Tallis Scholars’ wonderful discography, but also perhaps aware of the new kids in town, Taylor’s two ensembles that shared the program and are now also recording for SONY.

The crowded interior of St Paul’s Basilica in Toronto tonight

The acoustic plus the visuals are a dream come true for musicians presenting this kind of program. Where a theatre with spoken word must be dry (less than a second reverb) and an opera house aims to have less than 2 seconds of reverberation time (say 1.5), concert halls may be around 2 seconds or more. But this was quite a bit more, perhaps in the vicinity of 4 seconds of reverberation: ideal for a different sort of music that was composed with a reverberant church in mind.

For a few of the pieces we saw the combined forces, as in Praetorius’ Magnificat V to begin or Holst’s Ninc Dimittis to close the program. For most of the evening, though, we were listening to the Tallis Scholars, as many as ten singers, but sometimes fewer.

The thing to remember after listening to this precise sample is how different that sounded in the Basilica space where everything was super live and reverberant.  I daresay this is how this music was conceived.  While we’re in the midst of Lent, the music was nonetheless full of celebration, even jubilant at times.

Notice too that the singing is very direct and without excess vibrato (as you’d find in styles from later periods). The notes—especially the ones sung way up high—are totally exposed, and requiring nothing less than perfection of intonation.

I shall investigate further: through the magic of recordings.

The recent fad for films with live accompaniment is shining a light on artistry that has often languished in obscurity.  Oh sure, film music composers are well paid, especially someone like John Williams, composer of the score for Raiders of the Lost Ark: the film shown tonight in a partnership between TIFF & the Toronto Symphony.  But in a normal screening, or watching a film on TV, who notices the film’s music: other than a nerd?

(guilty as charged)

I hope this new way of seeing film catches on: which is to say, I hope that the TSO does a whole lot more of this, because I think they’re merely scratching the surface.  Tonight the energy was electric.  When conductor Steve Reineke referenced the TSO a couple of times he reminded me of the announcers at a ball game. It wasn’t “Your Toronto BLUE JAYS” but rather “Your TORONTO SYMPHONY”, and the cheer was every bit as boisterous and unanimous.

Conductor Steven Reineke

The partnership between the TSO & TIFF is very neighbourly.  When I see a film at the TIFF Bell Lightbox I park under Roy Thomson Hall, just a couple of blocks away.  Yes there will be more films at RTH next year, and maybe somehow the favour can be returned, if TIFF opens up to some sort of music there (as we saw recently from Against the Grain).

It’s worth itemizing differences, the ways in which live showings re-frame and re-invent the usual experience of film.  Reineke presented this to us as a concert, and in a real sense that’s what it was, accompanied by powerful visuals on the screen looming over the stage.  In the cinema, while the music may still be “there” in some sense, it comes from invisible sources on the film, and it’s recorded rather than live.  The liveness is a big deal. I heard a couple of fluffed notes that I cite not to complain, but rather to celebrate the magic of liveness, like the blemishes on the face of a model: before they’re photo-shopped out of the image.

In this live context, the dynamics are totally different.  While we have the spoken voices available –and they can turn the volume up ridiculously high to ensure we hear every deathless word from Harrison Ford or Karen Allen—those are always going to feel canned, fake, artificial, when compared to the music.  And what the TSO played is mostly much louder than what you get on the DVD or in a normal cinema, where the levels are all adjusted and mixed to suppress the orchestra except at a few climactic moments, such as when the heads are melting.  But this was like an oratorio, as the music-making took the space and made something celebratory out of the film.  Even the silly set-pieces –I hate the truck chase, with all those killed soldiers, although I quite like the chase scenes through the market place, complete with a quasi-Egyptian music for atmosphere—can become serious when the orchestra is playing with such intensity.

And that’s another thing that is truly different.  In Raiders–that is in any film presented in the usual way– normally you are hearing recordings of music made from sessions assembled into a quilt, bits of music patched together.  But live? Those brass players only have the mouth they brought to RTH for the 7:30 beginning, even though they have several powerful sequences that they must somehow survive, lips intact.  Nevermind Reineke, who worked his butt off, with only the occasional silence studded through the two hours of the film, the players had a very full evening’s work.

I am hopeful that this kind of programming will bring a new audience to the TSO, intrigued and bemused by the familiar and the popular.  I am reminded of another critical frontier, namely the question of popular operas, lambasted in some quarters even though they are a guaranteed success at the box office.  The most notorious of these is coming to the Canadian Opera Company, namely Puccini’s Tosca, the opera that Joseph Kerman & George Bernard Shaw are both known to have loathed.  Nevermind their objections, they represent a similar issue to what we see in Raiders, a popular entertainment. It’s as though the critical acclaim is in inverse proportion to box office success.

And yet what Puccini accomplished in Tosca or what John Williams pulled off in his score for Raiders is far from easy.  If it were so simple to replicate lots of other composers would do so: and Williams wouldn’t be a multi-millionaire, in demand for what he does in films such as Jaws or Star Wars.

But at least TIFF & the TSO have discovered the magic of these live concert-showings.  The effects were heightened tonight, the snake music snakier, the love music more romantic.  And the closing credits, when we hear that main theme –a march, ringing out from the whole orchestra—was like that popular song played at the close of a rock concert, where everyone knows the tune, and explodes into rapturous applause at its conclusion. When I went to the washroom afterwards it was uncanny how almost every single person –not kidding!–was humming or singing that march tune aloud: infected with Williams’ ear-wurm.

As with Tosca we’re talking about something well-known that can’t miss, can’t fail.  When everyone knows what’s coming that doesn’t invalidate the experience, but rather makes it almost like a public ritual, comparable to hearing the national anthem or a hymn.  We see something similar when we get to the Hallelujah Chorus and everyone stands (however lame that might be), every note and word known to everyone present.

I’m looking forward to more of the same, more films with live orchestral accompaniment from the TSO, and yes, Tosca from the COC.  Serious art has its place, but that doesn’t mean we should avoid the works that move us, the works we know and love, music that is so well written that it can’t miss.

There are several different currents flowing through Roy Thomson Hall right now, and each one is inspiring the Toronto Symphony and their audience in different ways.

• We’re hearing two minute Sesquis: original little jewels to commemorate the Canadian Sesquicentennial.
• We’re encountering core classics alongside new pieces
• We’re meeting brilliant young artists to inspire both the orchestra & the audience, possible candidates to lead the TSO in the future.

In the first half we were treated to Karen Gomyo’s precise & passionate reading of the Beethoven Violin Concerto.

Violinist Karen Gomyo with the TSO conducted by Robert Trevino (photo: Jag Gundu)

Gomyo pushes the envelope with her dynamic range, beginning some of her phrases very softly, letting her tone crescendo through phrases, sometimes seeming to erupt with emotion. Her commitment was hypnotic drawing the audience into the drama of this titanic work.

For the second consecutive week I watched a new face lead the TSO. Last week it was conductor Hannu Lintu, leading a Beethoven symphony and a brand new work. Tonight it was Robert Trevino as the conductor, ably leading the TSO through the newest of the 2 minute fanfares to Canada’s birthday—a contrapuntal piece with palindromic tendencies from Cheryl Cooney—to lead off. Trevino followed Cooney’s Sesqui with the Beethoven violin concerto and concluded with the 1947 version of Petrouchka.

Conductor Robert Trevino (photo: Irene Haupt)

Where Lintu let his baton do his talking –leading a stirring performance—Trevino showed us the most affable podium manner this side of Peter Oundjian, explicating the Stravinsky score in such an unpretentious way as to highlight the comedy in the story of this ballet.

Robert Trevino, the charismatic story-teller, before he picked up the baton to conduct (photo: Jag Gundu)

Dare I say it, that this is what the TSO desperately needs?! I wasn’t the only one laughing, but more importantly, when the various comic bits came up in the score, people guffawed and giggled with genuine recognition.

And the performance! This isn’t easy music. Recalling the google doodle that you may have seen a couple of days ago, commemorating the 150th birthday of Sergei Diaghilev, there were three consecutive important ballet premieres from Stravinsky with the Ballets Russes:

• Firebird in 1910, with a big romantic score that was mostly tuneful and caused no scandal
• Petrouchka in 1912, where the edginess of the music corresponded to a grotesque story of puppets and magic. For my money this is the most surprising and original of the ballets from Stravinsky, with its use of folk music and mechanical patterns suggestive of non-humans moving, apt for the humans portraying puppets in this ballet
• Le Sacre du printemps in 1913, famous for its riot, although the riot may have been as much for its actions & dance as for the music, admittedly a bit noisier and more dissonant than Petrouchka

I should perhaps also mention that Sunday’s concert for the TSO also includes Debussy’s Prelude á l’après-midi d’un faune: an 1893 composition that was also made into a ballet by Diaghilev in 1912. In tonight’s concert Debussy’s piece was not included. I’m not sure why they give us the shorter program Saturday. Petrouchka is full of amazing solos, much of it highly challenging music. I wish I knew who the piano player was, as their playing was especially good, one wonderful soloist among many (in the slower section resembling a piano concerto): but the others get their names listed in the program. Trevino was undaunted by the varied time-signatures, keeping the orchestra together, while gradually building the intensity and tempo to a scintillating conclusion.

I hope we see him again.

Judging by the way the Toronto Symphony are responding to their current series of guest conductors, I have to wonder. Are they better than we realize? Perhaps it’s unrealistic to expect so much excitement from a resident music-director. Or then again, maybe this is a glimpse of what’s possible. Tonight I was again blown away, and I don’t know if it’s fair to credit the visitor or the people in this orchestra.

Thomas Dausgaard was the latest guest conductor to work magic on the podium of Roy Thomson Hall tonight in a program including Schumann’s cello concerto, Mahler’s 10th Symphony & another Sesqui (the two minute fanfares commissioned especially in celebration of Canada’s Sesquicentennial), this time by Christine Donkin.

Guest conductor Thomas Dausgaard (photo: Jag Gundu) leading the TSO

We began with the most accessible Sesqui yet, at least among the ones I’ve heard. I was reminded of the Simpsons theme by Danny Elfman, an upbeat and vibrant two minutes of pattern music and broad melodies from the brass. Nevermind conservatories and academic approaches. And I wasn’t the only one blown away by Donkin’s direct and crowd-pleasing approach to music.

Joseph Johnson, the TSO’s principal cellist, then took the spotlight playing Schumann’s cello concerto.

Cellist Joseph Johnson, conductor Thomas Dausgaard and the TSO, joyfully finishing (photo: Jag Gundu)

It’s unfortunate that the comments in the program –calling the piece “enigmatic in its refusal to embrace virtuosity for the sake of virtuosity”—put such a negative spin on a piece of music that was and is decades ahead of its time. You may as well mock a person for not being a conformist, even though the originality of this piece is surely part of its charm. Johnson brought his gleaming honey sound to the lyrical moments, a performance that was unmistakably popular with his peers in the orchestra. Aside from the joy he brought to the performance, I believe these concerts employing the TSO soloists –for example when principal horn Neil Deland plays a horn concerto or concertmaster Jonathan Crow plays Scheherazade—are wonderful opportunities to build the chemistry of an ensemble, with benefits far beyond what we hear on that occasion.

After intermission came Mahler’s 10th in Deryck Cooke’s realization, the major work of the evening if not of the year so far. This is the first time I’ve heard the piece played live, although I’ve heard a few recordings over the years.

I prefer Dausgaard’s approach, which is to say, fast rather than slow, transparent –with inner voices showcased—rather than opaque, and only moderately loud most of the way, making the climaxes much more dramatic. If you give us too much loudness too soon, you have nowhere to build. And so for example in the first movement, when we get that unforgettable loud chord, a passage roughly ¾ of the way through the first movement, one that’s imitated if not repeated in the last third of the last movement, Dausgaard gave it to us softer than I’ve ever heard it played. Oh I’m not saying it was pianissimo, it was still powerful and forte, but not the ear-splitting loudness we sometimes get. In fact, the sound built from there, to the most dissonant sounds in that movement that were genuinely ff or even fff. The dance-rhythms, though, were very light, very clearly accentuated, the pace quick and energetic. And so we dodged the lugubrious depressive effect some get with Mahler, even if their performances are also legitimate and fascinating to hear, thinking especially of Klemperer, who was my Mahler conductor of choice during my youth. I listened to a recording of the opening movement this morning conducted by Leonard Bernstein, who has been my favourite Mahler conductor; Dausgaard gave us a pace every bit as energetic and vibrant.  For over an hour we were treated to bold confident attacks and precise playing with nary a fluff or mistake, wonderfully together and often at a breakneck pace.  To repeat what i said already, this was among the most impressive playing I’ve heard all year from the TSO.

Wonderful as this reading was, there were times when I thought I detected places to quibble with Cooke, places where I thought Mahler must be cringing if he were listening. The middle movement is stunningly beautiful: but seems to end so abruptly I can’t help thinking that Mahler would have added something or repeated something. The simple tonalities we hear in places during the final ten minutes of the work seem to me to be sketches rather than Mahler’s last word, which is troubling when this movement IS supposed to be Mahler’s last word. Here perhaps the problem is that –for one little stretch—Daugaard gets the orchestra to play in a way that –for better or worse–calls attention to something that’s missing in the score.  I believe it’s inevitable that we notice some shortcomings in this, which is in effect a kind of paraphrase, and only genuine Mahler in the first movement. After so much complexity, after an hour that kicks down the door to the 20th century and stomps all over conventional tonality, it seems so odd to suddenly step back from the brink, to be employing harmonies less adventurous than anything since perhaps his first symphony. I have to think that in these passages Cooke’s version shows us that Mahler had sketched but not really finished his thinking, that if he had heard it, he’d change it. But this symphony is at a disadvantage, because it hasn’t been programmed and played for a hundred years like the other symphonies, but only was completed by Cooke in the 1970s; orchestras likely will find other options, other ways to play through this score that seem more coherent. Or maybe the fault is mine and the way i am listening..? Yet I didn’t notice so much of a disconnect at the end of Nezet-Seguin’s recording, although now i need to re-listen to it. But I think the wonder of Mahler –any of this symphonies—is how many different good interpretations are possible in the same work.

I look forward to Dausgaard’s next visit.

Although I missed Robert Lepage’s 887 the first time it came to Toronto in 2015 (during the Pan Am Games) I’m glad I was able to see it today with Canadian Stage at the Bluma Appel, in a short run that ends Sunday April 16th.

Don’t miss it.

Robert Lepage and Ex Machina: 887 (Photo: Érick Labbé)

887 has been all over the world, but speaks with a particular edge to a Canadian audience, especially in 2017. Last night I saw the latest Sesqui: 2 minute compositions in the Toronto Symphony’s Canadian Mosaic series. While the Truth & Reconciliation Commission has shifted the consciousness in this country, to at least make some gestures in the direction of the Indigenous peoples and their cultural holocaust, 887 is a treasure trove of memory to remind me of an earlier version of the national dialogue, comprised of two founding cultures.

887 is a play that is at once, a meditation on memory, an auto-biographical testimonial by Robert Lepage himself, a funny two hours, and a highly political study of recent history. Several times I thought I saw the kernel, the main well-spring of Lepage’s inspiration: and yet so thoroughly are the different threads sewn together that I can’t really say for certain.

• There’s the poem “Speak White” by Québecoise Michelle Lalonde, a text with which we’re teased throughout as Lepage shares the challenge trying to memorize the poem (and we wonder just how much of it he will eventually retain), which he has been invited to read at an event. As we shall discover, the poem is like the cri de coeur of an underclass seeking equality. This year especially the poem is must reading for any Canadian.
• There’s the Québec motto inscribed on their license plates, namely “je me souviens”, or I remember. But what do we –or does Lepage—actually remember?
• I couldn’t help thinking that at one time separatism was such a threat to confederation that every day we heard something in the news, about possible referenda, about the polling numbers for the Parti Québecois. As Lepage gives us his one-man show, I felt the subtext could have been that collective memory lapse, as the once powerful and threatening movement seems to have faded away to nothing.
• And memory is personal for Lepage. The set is ostensibly a model of his childhood apartment home, but in a real sense it’s a model of himself, of his brain and his influences (and while this thought may seem wacky or strange to say, at one point Lepage made it literally so, allowing the diagram of the apartment to morph into cerebral hemispheres, complete with a bit of explanation about what the different mental apartments might be good for).
• When he briefly alluded to his grandmother and her struggles with dementia, I wondered if I was the only one in the place suddenly uncontrollably crying –stifling sobs actually—in the way we were suddenly at a bedside. It’s still killing me hours later that the ambiguity of what we were seeing and discussing let the association come up. I thought I heard someone else audibly crying too at that moment. Mercifully we segued to a childhood scene of theatrics, the study of memory both enacted and analyzed.
• And there’s probably more.  Lepage joked about the whole process of memorizing, which may have been a personal subtext for the show.

The whole question of how and what we remember makes up 887, from the beginning as Lepage muses over phones and phone numbers, how he can’t recall his own phone number, to questions of future memory –posterity that is—in the question of how he will be remembered via “cold cuts”, the pre-made obituaries for famous people.

Lepage is of course the consummate theatre artist, one of the country’s great exports, thinking of opera productions via his company Ex Machina, with whom he collaborates on this occasion as well for a total theatre experience. The literal design concept underlying 887 reminds me a bit of what we’ve seen in Needles and Opium the Met Opera Ring and Damnation de Faust. In Needles & Opium we watched a rotating box, the addict inside struggling to cope with a moving horizon that simulated the altered reality. For the Ring we saw a big expensive machine that both simulated and symbolized a world in flux, protean, changeable.  In Faust Marguerite sings of the flaming ardor of her love, as we watch her image begin to turn into flames on a huge screen behind her.

In this instance we’re in the presence of memory, watching Lepage go down memory lane with his family, with his neighbours, his city and his explanation of the memories: which is who he has become and who he continues to be. It’s fabulously rich and rewarding.

One could easily underestimate this man who captivates us with his deadpan story-telling skills, who kept me and everyone else laughing for much of the show. He’s up there for the whole show, joking about his ability to memorize lines, while he speaks for two hours. Maybe there’s some sort of prompter (recalling his joke about a prompter’s box, one of the great things he may have wanted to borrow from the opera house), but even so on a purely physical level this is a magnificent display. As I write this it’s, oh, 6:46 pm, and Lepage will be getting up there again at 8 pm, for another two hours in two languages (have no fear, when he starts speaking French he mercifully offers surtitles, or in other words he does indeed “speak white” for most of this show in an anglo city).

For those of us as old as Lepage or older, certain moments will push buttons differently from those who are younger or those who aren’t Canadian of course. Seeing the moment when De Gaulle says “vive le Québec libre” from this perspective is illuminating. The flag debate is also there.

We are less than two weeks from the opening of Peter Hinton’s revisionist take on Louis Riel with the Canadian Opera Company. While Riel was Métis –half French & half indigenous (perhaps Cree, I do not know)—the opera’s focus reflects the cultural assumptions at the time of its composition; the chief anxiety was Québec, an increasingly alienated francophone culture providing the subtext for Mavor Moore’s libretto. As far as I can tell Hinton is seeking to redress the balance –to reconcile the French side of Riel with his Native side—but it’s very important to recognize just how volatile Canada’s conversation was in the 1960s and 70s. Now, when the PQ are dead in the water one could easily forget.

I’m grateful that Lepage reminds us.

Today I had the pleasure of hearing the Toronto Symphony in an afternoon concert, repeating most of last night’s program. The energy is different in the middle of the day especially mid-week. The matinee extends a win-streak of wonderful playing with guest conductors over the past few weeks, as Andrey Boreyko seemed to know exactly how to inspire this orchestra.

The program of four pieces was augmented by a wonderful bonus:

• Mark Bélanger’s Wink from Drummondville to Toronto
• Christos Hatzis’s The Isle is Full of Noises
• Franz Liszt’s Piano Concerto #2
• The bonus: a brief encore composed by pianist Lucas Debargue, sounding like a soft-rock Rachmaninoff prelude
• Johannes Brahms’s Symphony #3

Although not in strictly chronological order, the concert felt like a gradual trip to the past.  The newest piece on the program in its TSO premiere was Bélanger’s Sesquie, a two minute romp full of whimsy and broad gestures that made me giggle aloud. As the title suggests, the composer was having a lot of fun and thank goodness this was one of those times when the joke was totally intelligible. Bélanger seemed to be colouring with big fat crayons, employing a brass choir then an answer from the woodwinds, and something subtler still from the strings. What I think we’re seeing with these two minute gems is that the limitations of the commission –a two minutes fanfare after all—serve to inspire the composers rather than limiting them.

Conductor Andrey Boreyko with composer Christos Hatzis (photo: Jag Gundu)

Christos Hatzis’s The Isle is Full of Noises was premiered about 4 years ago by the Orchestre Symphonique de Montréal as part of a Shakespeare-themed program, this piece inspired by The Tempest. I don’t know about you, but I love encountering program music where the composition is intelligible as an expression of the idea it is meant to signify. Hatzis begins with the sounds of human breathing, an activity that naturally comes first in this kind of organic sound-poetry. We work from darkness to light, from abstract to concrete, from disorder to order, as seemingly random or dissonant sounds organize and cohere in a buildup towards a melodic and tonal affirmation at the end. And just as Prospero’s island is sometimes a bit threatening but ultimately a safe place for good people and not so terrible even to those who are evil, so too with the sounds, that never threaten but do surround us safely. I can’t help feeling that for Hatzis –especially after his Juno-award (just a few days ago) for Going Home Star—the possibilities are unlimited. Much of the time we seemed to inhabit a sonic world reminding me of early Stravinsky –perhaps corresponding to his word “impressionistic” in the composer’s program note—as in The Firebird ballet score, but with the occasional addition of unexpected sounds from a different rule-book just to keep us honest. I was thrilled to see how well the audience received Hatzis’s music.

I am not cheating the proper chronology in portraying Liszt’s 2nd piano concerto as the next newest sounding piece, given that Brahms, who came later, always seemed to want to cheat the calendar and emulate a more conservative style & sound; more on Brahms in a moment.

Before I speak of Liszt, let me say simply that Lucas Debargue is an extraordinary and charismatic pianist. Yes, he played the concerto accurately as far as I could tell; as it’s not a concerto that I’ve ever played through—because I don’t like the music very much—I couldn’t tell during some of the thunderous sequences whether he was really playing it right or not. But the sound was magnificent, a big full sound whether in slow forte passages or fast ones. In the lyric middle section we heard an achingly beautiful sound, the legato dripping from his fingers.

Pianist Lucas Debargue, conductor Andrey Boreyko and the TSO (photo: Jag Gundu)

I said “charismatic” because a big part of his appeal lies in his body language, a head that bobbed so much it verges on self-parody, although when you play this well: you can move any way you like! At times he gave us that Glenn Gould style liquid body language, where he is channeling the music without regard for anything else, and totally in the moment of the creation. Boreyko met him halfway with a powerful sound from the orchestra. And I can’t help mentioning a magnificent solo from cellist Joseph Johnson, perhaps just a bit bolder in his playing after his showcase last week in the Schumann concerto, perhaps precisely the kind of payoff one would hope for.

After the interval came the most moving reading of Brahms’ 3rd Symphony that I have ever encountered. Boreyko’s approach was deliberate, understood in a very good way. The conductor’s baton was used to begin and end, but was set aside for the subtler places, namely the two inner movements and the conclusion of the symphony: where we had a chance to hear inner voices in a transparent series of solos. In the big moments the orchestra were wonderfully tight, very clear in their articulation. In the places where the orchestra pauses, Boreyko fully indulged those moments as though for a big collective breath. In additional to so much wonderful solo work in the brass, woodwinds & percussion, we heard exquisite yet restrained sounds from the trombone choir invoking the mystical implications of the instrument that Brahms likely sought, particularly at the end.  The TSO faithfully executed Boreyko’s lucid reading, a profound interpretation of this the most elusive and difficult of all of Brahms’ symphonies.

In addition to the two well-known passions by JS Bach (the ones based on the gospels according to St Matthew and St John) there’s also the Passion according to St Mark that we know to have been performed at least twice in Bach’s lifetime. Although the complete musical score has been lost, the availability of the libretto makes it possible to reconstruct the work, BWV 247.

Today I experienced an overwhelming performance at lovely St Barnabas Church, of the St Mark Passion in the reconstruction by Simon Heighes (1995), a preview of what will be presented by the Second Annual Bach Festival on May 28th. And it was overwhelming because I was seated in the front row, a few feet from the tiny orchestra and the soloists, surrounded in the luxurious sounds of some of the best singers & players in this country.

Oboist John Abberger, Artistic Director of the Toronto Bach Festival

If you have any curiosity about this work, if you have the desire to hear good singing & playing, you must take advantage of the opportunity in May. The intimacy of the music requires a space like this one, where you can hear every note clearly, where you can make eye contact with performers wearing their hearts on their sleeves. There are three concerts in the series featuring the vocal talents of Brett Polegato, Asitha Tennekoon, Daniel Taylor (indisposed today unfortunately), Ellen McAteer, Agnes Zsigovics, Jan van der Hooft, Ryan Cairan, Jessica Wright and Larry Beckwith; and  an orchestra comprised of Julia Wedman, Patricia Ahern, Emily Eng, Matt Antal, Felix Deak, Matthew Girolami, Joëlle Morton, Marilyn Fung, Christopher Bagan, Marco Cera, Alison Melville, Anthea Conway-White and directed by oboist John Abberger. I mention them all because everyone had moments of great beauty. In a work played by such a small ensemble, there were exposed passages giving everyone their moment to shine.

Some of the music is familiar, although I don’t know whether it’s Bach’s choice in the original or Heighes’ in his reconstruction, to re-purpose music that we’ve heard before elsewhere. I recognized a couple, for instance, the tune we sing as the Passion Chorale but to different words. We also encounter JS Bach’s setting of Luther’s “A Mighty Fortress Is Our God”, based not on Mark but Psalm 46, so I’m not sure how that manages to get into the piece: even if it’s guaranteed to turn on the waterworks when I hear it sung so perfectly.

Tenor Asitha Tennekoon

The two singers with the largest workload soldiered along without much glory until near the end. Both Asitha Tennekoon as the Evangelist and Brett Polegato as Jesus have large amounts to sing, but mostly in soft recitatives. But in the second part, each gets an aria and it’s worth the wait. The sopranos McAteer and Szigovics soar gloriously throughout the afternoon both from the chorus, and then emerging for their own solo fireworks.

Don’t miss the opportunity to hear the St Mark Passion when it comes again May 28th.

Tonight was the first of two farewell concerts for the Toronto Symphony before a two week tour taking them to Tel Aviv & Jerusalem, and then Prague for a residency that Conductor Peter Oundjian spoke of, to honour Karel Ancerl, who was the TSO’s Music Director from 1969-1973 (the year of his death). I can’t be objective about such things, having been very young at the time but I do recall a couple of amazing concerts and a live recording I had of the TSO playing Beethoven. The naïve expectation among my friends (when people speculated about the name of the new concert hall) was that it would be Karel Ancerl Hall, but this was before it became standard practice to name halls for donors rather than leaders.

Tomorrow’s concert (at 2:00 pm please note!) includes:

• Jordan Pal’s Iris, a colourful TSO commission heard earlier this season in its world premiere
• Schumann’s piano concerto played by Jan Lisiecki (a work he recorded recently ), who was the TSO’s soloist in their January 2016 tour of Florida;
  and
• Bartók’s Concerto for Orchestra.

Oundjian also mentioned Dvorak’s 7th Symphony as a work to be played on the tour.

Tonight’s program included the following:

• Oscar Morawetz’s Carnival Overture,  a great choice for the visit considering that Morawetz was born in what is now the Czech Republic, was a Canadian for most of his life, and just had his 100th birthday in January.
• Pierre Boulez’s Le soleil des eaux, a challenging work with soloist Carla Huhtanen plus chorus. Tonight we heard Soundstreams Choir 21 although they are not accompanying the tour.
• Nicolai Rimsky-Korsakov’s Scheherazade, a work that’s becoming their calling card, recalling that the TSO played on the 2016 Florida tour and that they’ve recorded it

Pleased as we can be with the TSO’s ongoing commitment to new Canadian compositions in this Sesquie-season, it’s worth noting that each program has at least one Canadian piece on offer even if they’re not much more than what R Murray Schafer called “un pièce du garage” (and I quote from My Life on Earth and Elsewhere)

A commission from the Toronto Symphony Orchestra followed that from the MSO a year or so later. The contract read: ‘It is agreed that the work shall have a minimum duration of approximately seven(7) minutes and no longer than ten (10) minutes.’ That is, the work was to be what Canadian composers call a ‘piece de garage’, intended for performance while the patrons were parking their cars.

Neither piece exceeds ten minutes, but yes at least it’s something, and forgive me if I seem to be asking too much.

Morawetz’s overture is a lively affair, coming from the very beginning of his career, before his emigration, and therefore of special interest for the concerts in the Czech Republic.

Soprano Carla Huhtanen (photo: Tobin Grimshaw)

The Boulez that followed was a fascinating study in 12 tone composition, delicate and lyrical without any unpleasant dissonance that I can recall. Carla Huhtanen is a wonderful ambassador not only for Canadian music but especially for the modernist composers such as Boulez. Her voice has a kind of acuity whether she’s singing baroque & classical music for Opera Atelier, or pushing the envelope with music from recent times, a wonderfully precise intonation and clarity of tone.

Vanessa Fralick, Associate Principal Trombone of the Toronto Symphony

And speaking of Opera Atelier, Soundstreams Choir 21 were prepared by David Fallis, who just last week led Opera Atelier’s Médée, and who will again go back to early music for Toronto Consort’s staging of Cavalli’s comedy Helen of Troy next weekend. While the Boulez is not a long work, it’s a very unique sounding work. I don’t find it matches the surrealism of the text, being instead much more random, a smattering of colours and tones rather than being able to reference images or moods that one might call surreal. But wow it’s intriguing all the same.

To conclude the TSO gave us a piece I heard three times in Florida on the 2016 tour, a series of marvellous performances. The live experience of the TSO playing Scheherazade isn’t at all what you get on their CD (which has a more conventional interpretation), as Oundjian fully exploits the potential theatricality of the piece in a live performance. When, for example in the 2nd movement, we get the portentous exchange of solos from trombone and trumpet, instead of doing it as written, Oundjian plays up the contrast, getting Vanessa Fralick to play it super slow and loud, while getting the trumpet’s answer to be a comically tiny cartoony echo, like something from vaudeville. It’s brilliantly wacky, and not the only example. Concertmaster Jonathan Crow is given several opportunities to draw out the schmaltzy drama in his solos, as if to call attention to the story-telling.  I think it’s fair to say that the audience gave them a wild send–off with some of the biggest applause i’ve heard all year, leading Oundjian to joke about wanting to take us along on the tour.

I wish…!

After tomorrow afternoon’s concert, the TSO leave on their tour Sunday for two weeks, returning towards the end of the month.

Tafelmusik are finishing their 2016-17 season with a series of concerts this weekend at Koerner Hall: that portend great things for next year. And maybe that’s what they wanted to do, leaving us all hot and bothered in anticipation of the season to come after the summer’s over.

Clever!

Tonight’s program was a clever reconciliation between two of Tafelmusik’s myriad personalities. Consider that sometimes:

• They play in the pit for Opera Atelier
• They work with Tafelmusik Baroque chorus, especially when it’s time to do the Messiah,
• They started out with a heavy emphasis on the baroque
• But they also play classical (tonight we heard Haydn & Mozart) and even romantic (next year we’ll be hearing more Beethoven, but have ventured deeper into the 19th century than that: as we shall see).

The baton has been passed, in this curious triumvirate who lead this orchestra, even though the conducting is mostly done without a baton:

• David Fallis leads when they play opera as they did just a couple of weeks ago at the Elgin Theatre (and he’s the only one with a baton), and again when they’re in Versailles on the Opera Company’s imminent tour
• The choral repertoire is under the capable leadership of Ivars Taurins
• Jeanne Lamon retired, and now we’ve had opportunities to see her successor, Elisa Citterio leading while also playing the violin

The two aspects of Tafelmusik heard tonight were the classical symphony side, in a Haydn Symphony led by Citterio followed by Mozart’s incomplete choral masterwork, his Mass in C Minor, led by Taurins.

Yes it sounds great. But I can’t help seeing it all as a brilliant exercise in kaizen, continuous improvement, pushing the orchestra to ever higher levels of achievement and enlightenment. Under Taurins they’re led by a choral conductor whose gestures seem to equalize all parts of the score, treating each entry –whether instrumental or vocal—with the same sense of importance & drama, with the same loving care. Under Citterio they’re led by one of their players, listening and following one another as though a big loud symphony were chamber music. In each situation one watches and listens differently.

They’re learning and growing every time they play.

Need I add, that tonight’s concert was stunningly beautiful from beginning to end, a masterful piece of programming executed with care & love.

We began with Citterio leading Haydn’s Symphony #98. The passions in this work seem to erupt, the orchestra powerful and brassy at times. The performance was very tight, but still loosy—goosey as far as any sense of tension or discomfort. Hm, that doesn’t sound very technical does it? but this orchestra seems very happy working with Citterio, very eager to respond. And Haydn fits this ensemble rather well, whether in the soft & lyrical moments early on, or in the occasional sturm und drang with which we’re presented. As the season approaches its end –and they prepare to fly off to Europe—this is a very self-assured band who know who they are. I don’t think it’s my imagination that they love playing with Citterio, and the feeling seems to be mutual.

Soprano Julia Doyle (Raphaelle Photography)

After the interval it was Taurins turn along with the Tafelmusik baroque choir and soloists Julia Doyle, Joanne Lunn, Asitha Tennekoon and Joel Allison, in the Mozart. The orchestra sounded truly heavenly throughout, the chorus matching them. In the dark “qui tollis peccata mundi” it was a delight to watch Taurins bringing out inner voices, signalling both the performers and the audience to help us navigate the contrapuntal complexities.

Doyle was especially fine in her solos in the Kyrie and the “Et incarnatus est”, her pitch pristine, her phrasing angelic.  But much as I love Tennekoon’s light fluid voice, I’m not sure whether he’s over-parted in this fach, or that the sopranos were simply too loud, and forgot themselves in competing with one another, both in the trio & the quartet. I giggled to myself imagining if one of these had been Constanze Mozart (given that the composer’s wife sang one of those soprano parts). But in a sacred piece such as this I would have expected more attention to balance, more restraint. It’s not opera. Hm or maybe it could have been fixed had the singers been given the acoustical “sweet spot” at the front of the stage, rather than relegated to a place with the chorus. But I’m being a perfectionist, reflecting on a concert that flirted with perfection.

Music Director Designate Elisa Citterio (photo: Monica Cordiviola)

The concert was unforgettable in so many ways. I’m sure I’m not the only one thinking “see you in September”, wanting to hear more, and eager to hear Tafelmusik again with Citterio. Their chemistry seems to be very good. If you can’t wait until the autumn this wonderful program is repeated Saturday night at 8 pm & Sunday afternoon at 3:30.

Toronto Consort Artistic Director & conductor David Fallis

Francesco Cavalli’s Elena received its Canadian premiere tonight at the Jeanne Lamon Hall in a partially staged performance that was still more than enough to charm the audience in attendance. As my companion observed it was a nerdy bunch, ready to laugh at every little gag, no matter how obscure, the loyal followers of The Toronto Consort and their Artistic Director David Fallis, whose sensibility and musicianship seem to be such a key component of the local music scene.

He was surrounded by an all-star cast of baroque specialists, beginning with Consort members Michele DeBoer as Elena and Laura Pudwell as Ippolita, and guests Kevin Skelton as Menelao, Vicki St Pierre as Peritoo and Bud Roach as Iro.  There were no weak spots in the cast, that included some wonderful singing.  St Pierre and Pudwell showed off their darker colours to great effect, while DeBoer’s higher voice had what seemed to be the biggest part by far.

Michele DeBoer

Elena is a comic opera, one of the first to survive. The story isn’t quite what we’re accustomed to, as we’re not confronted with the horrors of the Trojan War but instead watching Menelaus dressing up as a woman to attempt to seduce Elena (aka Helen) by posing as a wrestling coach. However much scenery or illusion one puts into a staging of this opera, and Toronto Consort used very little set or costuming beyond a hint of Wonder Woman for Menelaus’s amazon outfit plus a golden fleece brought in by Castor & Pollux, the plot is pretty silly, as a series of figures from the heroic age of Ancient Greece are busy trying to seduce one another.

Cavalli deserves to be better known. As with his other operas, his style is a very fluid one, allowing swift progress in the plot. While there are some airs, we’re not yet at a point in opera’s development where the music stops the action for very long, although we did enjoy lovely displays of virtuosity from the singers. The dramaturgy is recognizably baroque with a desire to embellish and to show off skill in the singing & the playing. But because the scale of the work is small – fewer than 10 musicians—the singers were never in danger of being drowned out. I can only speculate on how close we came on this occasion to what would have been heard back in the 17th century, especially given that the original employed castrati, whereas this version juggled the vocal parts a bit.

I was most intrigued by Bud Roach’s character Iro, who is identified as a court buffoon, seeming to echo the tradition of servants such as Harlequin from the Commedia dell’Arte, which was known to have been an influence upon Cavalli. He made his entrances through the theatre, not unlike a Shakespearean clown, in his ability to shatter any possible fourth wall. Roach was diametrically opposite from the rest of the cast in his approach, both in his willingness to look and sound more like a comedian than an opera singer, but also in carrying his own guitar that he played. I wish someone would undertake a fully staged production someday. Not only does Cavalli’s music & story-telling deserve this, but so do we, because these operas are so good.

Elena will receive encore performances Saturday May 13th at 8 pm & Sunday May 14th at 3:30 pm in the Jeanne Lamon Hall, on Bloor St West. More than a mere historical curiosity, this is a work full of beautiful music that’s worth hearing.

After an exciting tour to Israel and Europe, the Toronto Symphony are back in Canada.

“Back in Toronto eh” could just as easily be “back in Toronto A” given what we heard tonight, a program consisting of a pair of works in A. They’re back home geographically and back home to the same note you always hear when an orchestra tunes up, whether it’s plunked out on the piano –as it was for the piano concerto—or intoned by an oboe, as is more usual.

The orchestra were led in the concerts over the past two nights by their conductor laureate, Sir Andrew Davis, an avuncular figure whose familiar presence on the podium has been a steadying hand on the tiller, a constant for audiences & players alike.

The Toronto Symphony, led by Sir Andrew Davis (photo: Jag Gundu)

And so the TSO are home: and welcome back.

The two pieces on the program showed us two different approaches from both Davis & the TSO even if the pieces aren’t so very different. Excuse me if I make too much of the contrast, when both pieces were delightful. But I was struck by how professional Davis was and is, how well he adjusted the orchestra to the different requirements in a concerto with a romantic virtuoso and a symphony played in a classical style.

We began with Grieg’s A minor concerto, played by Jean-Efflam Bavouzet. This was a reading in the romantic tradition, tempi entirely at the discretion of the soloist, and the orchestra following his every tempo change like Ginger Rogers dancing backwards in high-heels, always keeping up with Fred (or Jean-Efflam).

I merely meant by that comparison that they followed with amazing precision, and no slips.

Bavouzet’s touch emphasizes melodic lines, a wonderful ability to bring out voices and to thereby underline what Grieg was doing in his concerto. It’s always a thrill when a performance lays bare the composer’s structure, showing us the inherent drama in the score.  Davis followed diligently, helping to bring out the big moments such as the 2nd movement horn solos, as clearly—and in a kind of dialogue—as those of Bavouzet from the piano keyboard.

And so I wondered if Davis would conduct the Beethoven the same way, given that I’ve heard conductors bring out the romantic side, especially for a flamboyant work such as the Symphony #7 in A. By romantic, I mean for example, to play up the contrasts – as they did in the concerto—and to play fast and loose with tempo.

Beethoven isn’t that many decades away from Grieg, especially when I recall the way some people (for instance Leon Fleisher with George Szell & the Cleveland Orchestra, the recording of the Grieg + the Schumann concerti that I knew best) hewed closer to the classical rather than the romantic tradition, seeking to honour tempi, only making small rubati and avoiding the big crowd pleaser of a finish that you sometimes encounter.

But no, Davis and the TSO gave us something quite different when it came to the Beethoven. This was a performance with a different aesthetic, a kind of integrity. All repeats were honoured, and long passages building up were permitted to be inexorable and gradual rather than mistaking Beethoven for Tchaikovsky and suddenly speeding up for the big finish. This more painstaking approach to the long passages – both in the second movement, the scherzo and the finale made the drama authentic, which is to say, true to Beethoven.

The orchestra seem very relaxed, and in a wonderful groove, playing everything really well, sounding fabulous. I’m so glad they’re back.

I can’t be the only one who made the connection, watching the Toronto Symphony tonight at Roy Thomson Hall.   It felt like a special concert.

Sir Andrew Davis was just announced this week as the TSO’s interim Artistic Director for the next two seasons, while they search for Peter Oundjian’s successor.  Is it just a coincidence that tonight’s program included one of the works used to christen the new Roy Thomson Hall back in 1982, under a much younger Andrew Davis?  Of course William Walton’s Belshazzar’s Feast is larger than life, so no matter what’s happening at the time, there will be a sense of celebration in the air.  The programming was made weeks ago but I can’t help wondering, did they already have this planned?  Davis once again –just like the concert last week—seems very much in command, the TSO seeming as responsive as a sports car with brand new tires on a dry road.  And I am sure Davis had a much better time of it in 2017 than in the launch three and a half decades ago, after the renovations addressing the acoustical weaknesses of RTH.  Even if it’s just a coincidence, there was a genuinely festive mood to the concert, and they didn’t disappoint us.

Sir Andrew Davis (Photo: Jaime Hogge)

And speaking of decades, this was another of the concerts in the “Decades Project”, this one highlighting the decade of the 1930s.  Had I encountered this program three or more decades ago, I would have had a very different response than I did tonight, hearing music by Paul Hindemith, Alban Berg and William Walton.  At one time Hindemith & Berg seemed to be the future of music, while Walton would seem to be a stretch, as an exemplar of his decade.  Yet from the perspective of 2017, Walton seems every bit as influential: when you factor in film music.  Belshazzar’s Feast reminds me of a Bernstein, maybe a wee bit of Leonard but a whole lot of Elmer, thinking of film-scores such as The Ten Commandments or even The Magnificent Seven.  No there’s no logical reason why this Biblical cantata should resemble a film about bandits and gun-fighters, but Walton’s syncopated brassy sound has me thinking of Marlborough country, a sound heard in cinemas worldwide, and likely by far more people than have ever heard either Hindemith or Berg.

The TSO were joined by two choirs, namely the Toronto Mendelssohn Choir and the Huddersfield Choral Society, as well as baritone soloist Alexander Dobson.  Davis seemed to have a whale of a time leading the choirs and the TSO through this work with Biblical sources, that contains almost no spirituality that I could detect.  In this respect Walton’s score is true to his time, seemingly more intent on effects than in making a genuine connection with the religious meaning of the text.  I can’t help being reminded of the Pandemonium scene from Damnation de Faust, where Berlioz imitates what the minions of hell might sound like, when Walton gives us the rites of the Babylonians, plus a very lurid response from God, worthy of Cecil B Demille.  But if we cut Walton some slack –and let the orchestra have some fun playing this score—it’s an amazing thrill ride, ear candy if ever there was such a thing.  And thank you Andrew Davis for taking us along.

The first half of the concert was the more seriously musicological visit to the 1930s, a pair of contrasting works,  Hindemith’s Concert Music for Brass and Strings and Berg’s Violin Concerto.

I never understood why Hindemith didn’t catch on, a composer who always excites me with his command of orchestral colour and intriguing way of making old ideas new.  Concert Music for Brass and Strings is a playful exploration of sound that gave Davis reason to stretch a dozen brass players in an arc across the back third of the stage, sometimes barking sometimes snarling, always impressive, with roughly forty string players clustered at the front as if in refuge.  Hindemith always sounds to me like the sort of composer you would use to show off a sound system or to test a new concert hall, not unlike Belshazzar’s Feast, and Davis seemed to hold nothing back in putting them through their paces.

In sharp contrast to the Dionysian impulses in the Hindemith, Jonathan Crow unpacked the sweetest subtleties as soloist in Berg’s violin concerto.  Davis allowed details to be heard, restraining the orchestra for the most part while giving Crow space to play gently, in an interpretation sounding at times like chamber music for its delicacy.

When you stop and think about it, it makes sense. We “play” our instruments right? Then surely all instruments are in a real sense toys, broadening the implications of Toy Piano  Composers, a Toronto collective of music makers who just launched their first album Wednesday night.

And can we somehow retain the magic of a child in its first encounters with their toy, in their exploratory play?

Questions like that were running through my head at this truly extraordinary event at the Ernest Balmer Studio.  There was the usual drinking & schmoozing, which are also playful impulses, but drives to which I can’t surrender when I have to drive: home to Scarborough that is.  But I certainly wanted to celebrate along with them.

The name “Toy Piano Composers” is more than jest, especially when you hear the sort of music we heard in tonight’s programme, all compositions found on the CD.

• FISHER PRICE LAUGH & LEARN FUN WITH FRIENDS MUSICAL TABLE (Elisha Denburg – 2014)
• Strange Gazes and Birdsong (Fiona Ryan — 2013)
• clangor (Monica Pearce – 2013)
• Walking (Chris Thornborrow — 2013)
• Encore of FISHER PRICE LAUGH & LEARN FUN WITH FRIENDS MUSICAL TABLE

It sounds as cute as it looks

We began the Denburg piece with something coming out of a Fisher Price toy, automated or perhaps preset for sounds / voices to be pumped out when you push a particular button.  And so we heard the cutesy voice from the Fisher Price.  And WOW you couldn’t script it better, when the toddler sitting in front of me ANSWERED, because the magic of that toy spoke to him or her.  The entire audience was galvanized by the experience, which takes the entire thing to its most existential level.  But this dialogue between organic and artificial sums up the entire night, if not the album as well, on a fascinating interface. Yes there was some of the post-modern edginess of sampling but if this was angry hip-hop it was the crankiness of someone needing their diaper changed. In other words we were in a very safe and self-aware place.

Denburg’s piece is a kind of meditative conversation between the instruments playing a bit like robots –in the sense of Rossini rather than sci-fi, retro music constructed into fast runs with a kind of comical Barber of Seville frenetic- mechanical flavor. [spoiler alert] We get a whimsical bit of Eine Kleine Nachtmusik, counter-intuitively in the wrong key just to be even wackier.  Music is coming out of the instruments, and it’s not clear who is in charge, between the Fisher Price and the six players, who seem to be automated or robotic even as the whole thing is very playful and fun. I recall the magic in this very same space not so long ago (2014 as it turns out), when Tapestry gave us one of their workshops of incomplete works, in this case a bit of Nicole Lizée’s masterful adaptation (five minutes worth) from Capek’s R.U.R., the famous play that gave the world the word “robot”.  Both then and now, I feel that double-edged magic, that we are seduced by the automated music even as we are terrorized by the implications.

The next piece, by Fiona Ryan, also explored that threshold between the musical player and the more organic sound, this time from the realm of birdcalls generated artificially.  I am always grateful when “new music” finds a new way to explore realms that are genuinely beautiful, or to articulate a new kind of beauty.  When a flute seems to converse with one of those mechanical birdcalls, we’re in a funny area, perhaps a parody of one of those romantic virtuoso cadenzas such as you find in Norma or Lucia where the singer and an instrumentalist imitate one another, sounding a bit like birdsong, but mostly like a cadenza in a concert.  The discursive space this opens up is wonderfully thorny, as we may wonder just what this music really is, as far as its origin.

After the intermission – with lots more carousing, drinking and good cheer—we resumed with two more pieces.

clangor takes us to the interface of mimesis, where we are listening to sounds in a toy piano of all things, being juxtaposed with bicycle bells, and the lovely fading of those haunting sounds. While no one says anything is being imitated –as with the previous piece—I can’t help reading something into the sounds that resemble one another, close together in the composition, as though they’re voices learning from each other or perhaps even in conversation.   Again this is music for the investigation from first principles: as though one were a child.  And if we’re lucky that’s how we are able to hear.

And Walking is a powerfully virtuosic work, especially challenging for Daniel Morphy, the percussionist.  If I hadn’t seen it played live I would have wondered, but he was crisp & accurate throughout, bringing the audience to their feet for the biggest ovation of the night, admittedly for a work that challenged the entire ensemble as well
(The personnel from the CD: Pratik Gandhi, conductor, Tim Crouch, flute, Anthony Thomas, clarinets, Wesley Shen, piano/toy piano, Adam Scime, double bass.
Last night though,  special guests Stephanie Chua playing piano/toy piano/bicycle bells, and Suhashini Arulanandam on violin.).

As a bit of magic we heard an encore performance of the FISHER PRICE.

And so we heard four of the seven pieces on the CD (that was not only launched tonight but given to everyone who paid to get in).  I’ll give it a listen and tell you more in due course, particularly once I figure out how you can also buy a copy of the CD (that I received as part of my admission to the concert).

[to buy the CD try this link]

The Toronto Symphony’s Decades Project has taken the orchestra and its listeners on a gradual tour through history.  As we’ve progressed forward 10 years at a time we’re less and less able to escape, as more and more we confront the underpinnings of our own time, never more so than in last night’s visit to the 1930s, featuring Barber, Bartok and Weill, plus a world premiere of a short piece by Andrew Balfour.

While the first three items on the program were orchestral pieces, the stage configuration had us anticipating the fourth piece, to come after the interval:

• Kiwtetin-acahkos—Fanfare of the Peoples of the North, world premiere (Balfour)
• Adagio for Strings–1936 (Samuel Barber)
• Music for Strings, Percussion and Celesta–1936 (Béla Bartók)
• The Seven Deadly Sins—1933 (Kurt Weill / words by Bertolt Brecht)

I haven’t thought of Roy Thomson Hall as a stage before, but that’s precisely what we were invited to do through the first works we heard.   Theatre is often a matter of trade-offs, of pragmatic choices, and so we looked at the orchestra led by Peter Oundjian, a bit further away across an empty strip of real estate that glowed with the promise of what was to come.  Yet it was a positive in so many ways, as the concentration of the players upstage made for an interesting acoustic.  Because the players had a wall directly behind them and an open floor to bounce sound, I heard them with great clarity, even if the tightness of the spacing meant one couldn’t always see them too clearly.

When we came to the Brecht-Weill, we were in a kind of mixed medium space fitting for a hybrid that isn’t easily defined. It’s a sung ballet, but the TSO also employed some film mixed with the projection of surtitles, and deployed the performers in various spots around the auditorium.

Peter Oundjian leads the TSO while the two Annas Wallis Giunta and Jennifer McNichols take the stage at Roy Thomson Hall (photo: Jag Gundu)

The work was ahead of its time, possibly because the personnel weren’t there in the 1930s, the way they are now.  What would Brecht & Weill have made of Cats, or more relevantly, how might they have employed performers who were genuine triple threats in this work?   The TSO opted for opera performers plus one dancer, sometimes choreographed.  Hybrid works –and let’s not forget that opera and ballet are both hybrids –sometimes have us wondering about the parents and influences, as we wonder about the choice of emphasis.  Opera struggled for centuries with questions about text vs music, often with liberal sprinklings of dance & other spectacular effects.  The TSO deserve credit for their ambitious programming, once again turning to Joel Ivany & his collaborators as they did last season for the Mozart Requiem.

There’s so much richness in the work, that it challenges the viewer / listener.  I didn’t know where to look or on whom to focus.  One could simply watch and listen to Wallis Giunta singing and occasionally dancing as one of the two Annas; or watch dancer / choreographer Jennifer Nichols dancing and occasionally speaking as the other Anna.  There is so much going on in the work to begin with, and then when you add movement, acting on multiple places onstage (for instance, when both Annas are there to confuse us with the ambiguities of their similarity / difference), one can focus in many places, not to forget that one might simply listen, while watching the TSO and Oundjian working away upstage, not unlike the dance-band you’d see in an old Hollywood musical.

And nevermind the 1930s, there were many resonances with the recent past, meaning the creators:

• Ivany and Against the Grain Theatre did Seven Deadly Sins in a smaller space, about five years ago
• Giunta did some of this in a concert setting four years ago
• And I can’t help recalling two programs choreographed by Nichols, where she danced as a kind of doppelganger of a vocalist, once in 2014, and again with CASP in 2015

Our attention was torn between the dramatic elements, the choreographed elements, and the pure joy of watching and listening to Giunta interpret the songs, which was aided considerably by some sort of electronic support.  This freed the orchestra to play more or less at will –which was ordained once they decided to face Oundjian upstage, who was unable to really watch or follow; but the way the levels were set, the men were relegated to backup singer status at times.  Ivany’s staging brought out the dark humour in the text, which is (or should be) steeped in the class struggle of the 30s, now somewhat quaint in light of the current brouhaha south of the border.  Karl Marx seems as faraway as Frank Capra, a relic for our sentimental fantasies.  In other words I would have welcomed more political edge, but I suppose the danger in this medium is that one can slide into something bombastic & obvious, whereas Ivany and Nichols kept things very subtle.  The best moments gave us a kind of cabaret sensibility.  I can’t help thinking that this was a work created ahead of its time, that deserves to be done more often, to become more familiar.

I should spare a moment to speak of the pieces occupying the majority of the program.  We began with a wonderfully subtle Sesqui from Andrew Balfour, a work that I don’t want to underestimate, that seemed minimalistic in its two minutes of pulsing and brooding, never overdone. This was the least celebratory Sesqui I’ve heard yet, but given its Peoples of the North association, this is a thoughtful commentary in a year of self-congratulation.The familiar Barber piece came out of that upstage configuration quite well, the cellos situated far upstage but penetrating the texture easily, whether as a byproduct of the stage configuration or through Oundjian’s machinations.  The Bártók in the middle of the program was again a slightly disturbing effect, listening to the orchestra displaced by the space to be used in the Weill, and deployed (as Oundjian explained) symmetrically as two orchestras as per the score.  Was I listening more closely because I had to work a bit harder to see them, clustered upstage? I don’t know.  I may be projecting, but Oundjian seems very relaxed, like a kid still in school during the last week of school, grinning and without a care.  The TSO were totally responsive tonight, themselves seeming totally at ease.

The program repeats on June 15th, minus the Sesqui.

Tonight I enjoyed the sole Toronto performance of Life Reflected at Sony Centre, a multi-media anthology produced by the National Arts Centre Orchestra, celebrating four Canadian women as part of the Luminato Festival.  Google tells me that Life Reflected was first presented in May at the NAC, produced and directed by Donna Feore, conducted by Alexander Shelley: an ambitious undertaking, however you choose to understand it.

These four women were the subject of each segment:

• Alice Munro
• Amanda Todd
• Roberta Bondar
• Rita Joe

Each one represents a story told in a different way, although I understand this primarily as a pretext for the NAC Orchestra to commission original compositions for orchestra:

• Zosha di Castri composed Dear Life, employing words by Alice Munro, spoken on tape by Martha Henry with soprano Erin Wall
• Jocelyn Morlock composed My Name is Amanda Todd
• Nicole Lizée composed Bondarsphere
• John Estacio composed I Lost My Talk, featuring Monique Mojica and dance on film choreographed by Santee Smith

I Lost My Talk from Life Reflected (Photo: Fred Cattroll)

While the four pieces are linked by design elements, they are quite different, one from another.

Dear Life is like a melodrama –thinking for example of Schönberg’s Ode to Napoleon Bonaparte—where a text is spoken while accompanied by orchestra to illustrate or amplify. We hear Martha Henry’s wonderful speaking voice, while Erin Wall sings something like scat (as in jazz) although some of what she sang is verbal.  I think di Castri was charged with composing something in support of the text and not to compete with it: which she accomplished very respectfully.

My Name is Amanda Todd made me cry, a very simple idea perhaps, but a colossal challenge for composer Morlock, whose score holds your attention for its entire ten minutes. At times the score employed patterns, sometimes shorter phrases, but a very beautiful piece for orchestra.

Bondarsphere was another typical Lizée work, in its inter-connected and self-referential writing, sometimes reminding us of the workings of technology, sometimes being more conventionally orchestral.  We see globes in space, globes shown on TV screens or the globes that float on staff-paper.  The score takes chunks of text –for instance from CBC broadcasts—and uses them as departure points for playful explorations, sometimes in the realm of sampling, sometimes via imitation.  I was reminded of the last Luminato piece I saw in this space namely Einstein on the Beach, complete with another trippy launch of a spaceship every bit as thrilling as what Glass gave us. And while the score seems to want to drill down on its sources, analyzing and sampling and echoing, we do build to something like a diapason from the brass near the end.  This piece drew a huge ovation, although I think we may have missed the actual end of the piece, which went on thoughtfully for awhile after.  I am so in awe of her work, wow I wish I could hear it again (although I need another ‘wow’ for the visuals from NORMAL accompanying the piece, a tidy marriage between all elements).  

Estacio’s I Lost My Talk was the piece of theatre we needed to see at the conclusion.  If Life Reflected is a sesquicentennial project then its credibility rests heavily on this last piece, which is a beautiful reminder of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission.  Mojica says so poignantly:

“I talk like you
I think like you
I create like you”

This is the context for cultural genocide, the viewpoint of a child forced to speak the language of the colonizing culture rather than the one into which she was born.  At one point she says something like (this is a paraphrase, whereas the above is a quote) “help me find my talk”.  At first glance I was wondering –in light of the recent conversations about cultural appropriation—how Estacio could be writing this music and how could they dance ballet –which is to say, European music and a European theatrical form? Ah but then it damned on me, that this is perfectly apt for the lament of one who is telling us that she is speaking to us in OUR language not hers.

I wasn’t surprised to see Donna Feore’s name on this piece.  I enjoyed her work in Stratford recently.

I hope some or all of this can be produced again, at least as concert performances of the music, which is all excellent.  Perhaps they will make a DVD.  The NAC should be proud that they commissioned a full evening of original music. Much as I am grateful for the two minute sesquies we’ve been hearing, this is what a commitment to Canadian culture looks and sounds like.  Bravi..!

I’ve seen two operas by Dame Ethel Smyth presented tonight by Opera 5 under the heading “Suffragette”. The title feels especially apt for a composer I’d never encountered before, who was not only active in seeking the vote for women (making her an actual suffragette) but who was daring creatively as well, writing her own libretti for her operas, a trail-blazer of a composer who lived from 1858 to 1944. Opera 5 are to be commended for bringing someone new before us on the stage, and apt for a company whose leadership—Artistic Director Aria Umezawa and General Director Rachel Krehm—is female.

Alexandra Smithers as pub-owner Mrs Waters (photo: Emily Ding)

Tonight’s program included two works : Fête Galante (1921-22) and The Boatswain‘s Mate (1913-14), presented at Theatre Passe Muraille’s main space. Opera 5 gave us quite a spectacular presentation, using a small orchestra of a dozen players, led by Evan Mitchell.

Of the two operas, The Boatswain’s Mate takes up the biggest portion of the evening. While it’s an earlier work than Fête Galante (which has some ambitious elements to its dramaturgy that are genuinely experimental for its time) I’m sure Opera 5 presented them in this sequence knowing that Fête Galante is not entirely successful in its experiments, not as good a piece of theatre as the rollicking Boatswain’s Mate, a work that includes some dialogue, and numbers with full stops allowing for audience applause. And applaud we did, delighted with the performances.

The Boatswain’s Mate is clearly the work of a feminist, a story ahead of its time. When we meet Harry Benn (Asitha Tennekoon) , who seems sympathetic in his desire to marry pub owner Mrs Waters (Alexandra Smither), we might mistake him for the hero of the story. But both the composer and Mrs Waters have other ideas, as neither the story nor its genre follow the usual expectations. We meet Ned Travers (Jeremy Ludwig), who conspires with Harry to fake a robbery designed to persuade Mrs Waters that she needs Harry. But they’re surprised by the independence of Mrs Waters who refuses to fit anyone’s stereotype, meeting the burglar with a bat and lots of backbone.  It’s much funnier than what I’ve described here, a very physical story vividly brought to life by Director Jessica Derventis. In the middle of the night Mrs Waters has to deal with a crew of pub-crawlers, but they’re no match for Mrs Waters.

Smither has ample opportunity to show off both her voice and her dramatic skill, although her numbers aren’t quite as interesting as what Smyth gives poor love-struck Harry to sing, and Tennekoon boldly rises to the challenge.

In Fête Galante Smyth writes in a more advanced through-composed style without any full stops or divisions for numbers, but I found that the resulting music is not as interesting, in the trade-offs she made to unify the whole. The story, too, is challenging to pull off, a somewhat melodramatic tale incorporating commedia dell’arte elements reminding me a wee bit of Leoncavallo’s Pagliacci in the way illusion and reality collide in a story of love & jealousy. The singing was lovely even if the requirements of the score did not push the singers as far as The Boatswain’s Mate. But Elizabeth Polese and Jonathan MacArthur were very effective together, and Alan MacDonald showed off a lovely baritone sound.

“Suffragette”, consisting of these two works from Dame Ethel Smyth will be repeated at Theatre Passe Muraille’s main space June 24 & 25.

Tonight’s concert brings us to the end of the Toronto Symphony season, and of their Decades Project, an exploration of music & art led by Peter Oundjian.  There’s an additional poignancy when we notice that the TSO’s Oundjian decade and a bit is also coming to an end.  Oundjian’s tenure enters its twilight (his final season in 2017-18 still to come) with an unmistakable air of valedictory already in the air.

Violinist Nicola Benedetti with the TSO and conductor Peter Oundjian (photo: Jag Gundu)

One can’t help wanting to draw conclusions, especially after hearing two fitting pieces:

• A violin concerto played by a young soloist seemed apt recalling that Oundjian is himself a violinist as well as a mentor
• A big celebratory piece, namely Orff’s Carmina Burana was a natural outlet for the impulse to have a season-ending party

He told us upon his 60th birthday that he’d stop dying his hair.  Yes Oundjian is so much more relaxed up there, so at ease, particularly when he’s leading a big complex piece such as the Carmina Burana, holding the Toronto Mendelssohn Choir, the Toronto Children’s Chorus, the TSO plus three soloists perfectly together.  Watching the rapturous reception for this work reminded me a bit of a rock concert, both because of the huge applause, and yes, because I had a sentimental flashback to undergraduate days listening to this piece high, a work as legitimate as stoner music as anything by Led Zeppelin or Pink Floyd.

We watched three wonderful soloists.  I hope the TSO asks Phillip Addis back after such an  intelligently sung debut.  I watched him marshal his resources through the “Estuans interia”, a series of (I think) high Gs, and a final powerful A. He’s a theatrical singer who happens to possess a lovely sound and flawless intonation.  When Daniel Taylor stepped forward to give us his “Cignus ustus cantat”, a deadpan swan-song assisted by the chorus, the energy level went up another notch.  Soprano Aline Kutan whom I recall hearing with the COC a few years ago brought her beautiful colour to the unforgettable lines at the climax of the work.

Before intermission we had a very different sort of work. Nicola Benedetti was soloist in Szymanowski’s Violin Concerto #2.  Like the Orff work it’s another piece from the 1930s, and as Oundjian explained at the beginning of the concert, a work receiving its first Toronto performances this week.  I can’t help thinking about the objectives of the Decades Project, and the wish that this become a more or less permanent feature with the TSO.  Ideally we need to regularly hear new works –both the ones that haven’t been played here before and those commissioned by the TSO—in the years ahead.  Whatever we’re hearing, the process of educating the listeners and creating a vibrant community for music is an ongoing conversation that is spurred on by programming like this, where history of the music is front & centre.

Benedetti and Oundjian made a strong account of this work, one with a wonderful cadenza at the end of the first movement, and lots of stunning extended chords in the orchestra that wouldn’t be out of place in a Gershwin piece.  I’m not saying it’s jazzy but some of those sonorities were stunning, and Oundjian always kept the orchestra softly out of Benedetti’s way, allowing her to offer a sensitive exploration of the piece.

But the key thing is that the TSO follow up on this pattern, that Oundjian is a kind mentor, a generous leader who shares the spotlight.  His instincts are very good, a natural teacher who suggests the ideal template for his successor, huge shoes to fill even if he’s not such a big guy.  This kind of curatorial wisdom, leading us to explore the connections and resonances between different compositions must not end but go on in the decade to come.

Tonight’s concert by the St Lawrence Quartet launching the 2017 Toronto Summer Music Festival, the first under their new Artistic Director Jonathan Crow, has me wishing I could spend the next few weeks doing nothing but going to TSM concerts.  There was a sense of occasion, a genuine electricity in the air.  Crow explained that the theme for TSM 2017 is taken from the Sesquicentennial of Canada, as in a focus on Canadian composers and performers.  When I saw tonight’s program –placing an R Murray Schafer string quartet between quartets by Haydn and Beethoven—I wondered how he would compare.

Violinist Jonathan Crow, Artistic Director of Toronto Summer Music Festival & Toronto Symphony Concertmaster

While I’m as nationalistic as the next guy I figured

• at worst we would hear a new sound beside the two familiar composers
• at worst the Canadian work would be more than just a token few minutes to begin the concert

I did not expect that Schafer would more than hold his own, that he’d seem to be a peer of the two icons with whom he shared the stage.  Some of that needs to be properly attributed to Crow & the St Lawrence Quartet whose intelligent programming brought out the complementary aspects of the three works.  And nothing was held back in the performance of the Schafer.

Composer R Murray Schafer

From a lush romantic interpretation of the Haydn Op 20 #2 in C Major, a textbook demonstration of how quartets usually work, we went to the Schafer, a three movement composition that deconstructs the quartet experience in three vivid movements.

The first movement began with Christopher Costanza, cello, alone on the stage.  He was playing notes on two strings that sometimes were close to the same pitch, sometimes slightly different, calling our ears’ attention to the phenomena of tuning, harmonics, and the actual creation of the sound from first principles.  In time we hear a second musical sound from backstage and we see Lesley Robertson, viola, gradually coming to her place onstage.  In due course we also have each of the violins arriving, namely Geoff Nuttall and Owen Dalby.

Violinist Geoff Nuttall

Schafer is known for operas & spectacles that have something of the “happening” about them, so I wasn’t surprised when I started seeing his string quartet in dramatic terms, indeed, wanting to understand the piece for its dramaturgy.  Where the first movement gradually assembled the players into a team, we were watching a piece that was busily problematizing the usual principles & relationships of the quartet.  Were we watching four players working together from the same score, or were we at times watching four independent agents improvising?   And part of this framework was the audience’s apprehension of the event.  At times we could barely hear what was happening backstage or in the auditorium as the players gradually approached and assembled into an ensemble.  Some of the movements by the players were more flamboyant than usual, indeed at one point I thought Geoff Nuttall, who seemed to be channeling Lyle Lovett via the violin, reminded me of that “Walk like an Egyptian” song from the 80s, in his movement vocabulary.   Were we watching music played by virtuosi, or a performance where the musicians enacted roles? I think this is the sort of question Schafer suggested to us.

In the second movement Schafer held up a distorted mirror to what we had been seeing and doing in the Haydn (or any concert situation).  Where the first movement was slow as the ensemble gradually coalesced onstage, the second movement was a visceral appeal to my most immature impulses.  I think if the audience had been comprised of children, we would have been clapping and stomping along with this vibrant pulsing composition, indeed I wanted to jump to my feet and dance.  Of course that’s not done at Koerner Hall when a string quartet is playing, so I pretended to be an adult.  I wasn’t the only one, as i heard lots of giggles.  This middle movement included some fast passages, but often augmented by vocal work from the quartet. Yes I was stifling my jubilation, although in places the audience laughed loudly.  At times I thought the quartet resembled the Swingles Singers, after they’d been afflicted with Tourettes; and not to mock anyone with that condition, but the players seemed to be seized by primal impulses, the music seeming to emerge from the id of this quartet, pure raw irrational noises.  The playing –controlled as it was—seemed galvanic, as though someone were shooting electricity into them.  I was reminded of “talking like a pirate day” on Facebook, with some of the “arrr” sounds coming out of the players.  And then in the last movement, for the most part Schafer confounded expectation by having large swaths of unison among the four players.  How elegant they sounded, even if these weren’t the melodies of a Haydn or a Beethoven.  And then Nuttall rose to his feet, began to play a busy but beautiful solo passage, while the other three: cohered into a tonic chords.  Nuttall took his solo into the wings, fainter and fainter, against that solid assonant affirmation to conclude.

I was not the only one  impressed, as the huge reception turned to the Master in the hall, namely Schafer himself. I’m thrilled that he got to hear the work played with such lucidity and commitment, and especially that it –and he– were so warmly received by this enthusiastic audience.

We closed with Beethoven’s Op 131 in a reading that was probably the most conservative interpretation of the three works presented.  I’m not complaining, not by a long shot. Where the players showed flamboyance and daring in the Haydn—thinking especially of Nuttall & Costanza for their bold cantabile playing—they approached the Beethoven with a steady consistency, wonderfully tight with one another.   It was bliss watching their inter-actions, the eye contact and body language, accentuating the stunning sounds.  This is all one could ask for in chamber music.

Does Crow’s arrival signal something different from TSM?  I don’t know, although a new artistic direction and the energies of youth are usually welcome.  I’m looking forward to seeing more of TSM, indeed I wish I had the time to dive in every night.

Have you ever heard of The Story Cartel? It’s a new way of promoting books.

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The concept was brought to my attention by Arthur Wenk, an impressive organist I first met when I was a tenor soloist, and his page-turner at his church in the 1990s, and later stumbling upon him via the shelves of the Edward Johnson Building’s music library.  Wenk happens to be one of the important authorities on Claude Debussy, known for such books as Claude Debussy and the Poets, an inter-disciplinary study decades ahead of its time.

His latest book, A Brief History of Classical Music:  A Tale of Time, Tonality and Timbre, is available free of charge via download at Story Cartel until the end of July.