Samurai Strings Attack Ottawa

07/30/2011

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Ottawa may never be the same.
Here’s a review I wrote for the Globe and Mail's July 29, 2011, edition.)

Who are the Samurai String Squad? They’re Alastair Eng, Courtenay Vandiver, Jeremy Harmon and Jesse Lewis – and they’re a string quartet, of a sort.

It’s clear the group are different from most string quartets from the moment they walk on stage, as they did on Wednesday night at St. Brigid’s Centre for the Arts, presented by the Ottawa International Chamber Music Festival. They all play the cello: There’s not a violin or viola in sight.
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The NYOC Kids are Alright

07/28/2011

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Lots of music in an Ottawa summer.
Last night I heard the National Youth Orchestra of Canada at St. Brigid’s Arts Centre, in Ottawa, where they were presented by the Ottawa International Chamber Music Festival.

Chamber music? Strauss’s Rosenkavalier Suite, Mahler’s Symphony No. 5 and a new piece for a large orchestra? Hardly – but Roman Borys, one of the music directors of the festival (and better known in some parts as the cellist in Toronto’s Gryphon Trio) explained it all to me. When the NYOC comes to Ottawa they usually play at the National Arts Centre – but the Centre is unavailable this summer. So Ottawa’s Chamberfest stepped up to present the ensemble.
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Dirty Secrets of Music Critics

07/26/2011

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Maybe 209 cantatas is enough.
BBC Music magazine has dared to ask some critics in the UK which works bore them the most – and the critics have dared to answer. Richard Morrison, at the Times of London doesn’t care for Vivaldi’s Gloria; John Allison, who edits Opera magazine, thinks Britten’s Midsummer Night’s Dream goes on too long. (You can see the whole list here.)

This is a brave thing for these critics to do. For some reason, many people expect music critics to be entirely lacking in the human capacity for personal taste. Rather, we’re supposed to be walking, talking, music-appreciation textbooks, utterly orthodox in our views and spewing truisms about enduring greatness and organic unity. And if a critic dares to speak unkindly of an “acknowledged masterpiece,” then that critic is clearly an idiot. This makes some critics reluctant to voice their contrarian opinions – which then acquire the status of professional “dirty secrets.”
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Would Somebody Please Say Something?

07/25/2011

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Glenn Gould had his opinions.
On Saturday, Toronto’s heat wave drove my out of my sweltering apartment and into the air-conditioned arms of the Toronto Reference Library. There, I settled into The Glenn Gould Reader – a collection of articles by the great man himself. There’s nothing like Gould’s dispassionately analytical prose-style (with just a touch of dry humour) for cooling the blood.

I soon found myself reading a charming little essay called “Canadian Piano Music in the Twentieth Century,” written in 1967 as liner-notes for an LP recording. In it, Gould offered a thumbnail sketch of the prominent Canadian composers of the day. According to Gould, Serge Garant was a “Boulez-bound serialist,” and John Weinzweig was “pecking away at modified post-Webernian pointillism.” Such brief remarks suggest little more than a casual acquaintance with these composers and their music. But the fact that Gould took pen in hand to offer his opinions shows that he cared.
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Going Places Fast

07/18/2011

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Pianist Jan Lisiecki.
Jan Liesecki is a tall, gaunt, 16-year-old with a mop of Bieber-esque blonde hair who’s poised to become a piano phenomenon. From Calgary, Alberta, he’s already made about 100 concerto appearances – and in the coming months will debut with the Orchestre de Paris, the BBC Symphony, the Cologne Philharmonic and Leipzig’s Gewandhaus Orchestra, among others. And last year he signed a recording contract with Deutsche Grammophon. He hasn’t yet played with the big American orchestras, but surely it’s just a matter of time.

I heard Lisiecki for the first time on Friday night (July 15), when the Brott Music Festival brought him to Toronto’s Glenn Gould Studio to appear with Boris Brott’s National Academy Orchestra. Personally, I’d rather assess a new pianist in a solo recital than in an orchestral appearance. But the fact that he played two concertos on this program – Mozart’s Concerto No. 21 and Liszt’s Concerto No. 2 – made it possible to gain a broader perspective on this young artist.
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