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Remembering Harold C. Schonberg

11/29/2015

Harold C. Schonberg, hard at work.

November 29th would be the 100th birthday of the music critic Harold C. Schonberg, who passed away in 2003. To mark the occasion, I would like to offer this brief personal appreciation.

Harold C. Schonberg liked to sign his name with the initials HCS – translatable into music as B, C and E-flat. It was an appropriate gesture for a man who lived his life in the realm of music, but whose instrument was the typewriter. Schonberg was an old-school newspaperman, through and through, with ink under his fingernails (figuratively speaking). As a writer he was eloquent, but direct and to-the-point.

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Simone Osborne with the TSO

11/15/2015

Canadian soprano Simone Osborne.

The last time I heard Simone Osborne was three yeas ago. As I vividly recall, she was on stage at the Four Seasons Centre, singing the role of Lauretta in Gianni Schicchi like the part was written for her. Her “O mio babbino caro,” was sung with disarming purity and innocence.

On Thursday night I once had the pleasure of hearing Osborne – this time with the Toronto Symphony Orchestra at Roy Thomson Hall, in a mixed program designed to showcase her strengths. On the podium for the occasion was guest conductor Michael Sanderling, in his debut with the TSO. (The program was the third in the TSO’s “First Decades” series.)

New Orford String Quartet plays Beethoven

11/10/2015

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New Orford String Quartet.

is review originally appeared on the Classical Voice North America website.

Almost all the best professional string quartets in North America are based at universities. The members of the Emersons teach at Stony Brook, the Brentanos are at Yale, the St. Lawrences at Stanford, the Mirós at UT Austin – and the list goes on.

So it’s unusual to encounter a top-notch quartet that isn’t connected with a college music department. Yet that’s the New Orford String Quartet. This Canadian chamber group is made up of two members of the Toronto Symphony Orchestra (concertmaster Jonathan Crow and associate principal viola Eric Nowlin) and two members of the Montreal Symphony Orchestra (concertmaster Andrew Wan and principal cellist Brian Manker).

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TSO goes Psycho for Halloween

11/1/2015

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A passionate but poorly balanced performance.

A few years ago, I wrote an article about Bernard Herrmann for Listen magazine. (You can read it here.) And in the course of my research for the article, I discovered that, in recent years, orchestras have taken to playing his film music in live presentations with the films he scored.

I finally went to see one of these film-with-live-music shows on Saturday night, when (to co-incide with Halloween) the Toronto Symphony Orchestra presented Alfred Hitchcock’s 1960 film Psycho on a giant screen at Roy Thomson Hall, with a live performance of Herrmann’s score.

I should perhaps explain that this sort of thing can be done because Hermann’s music and the actors’ dialogue were originally recorded on separated soundtracks. This makes it possible to completely suppress the studio orchestra that originally recorded the music, so that another orchestra (such as the TSO) can play along with the film in a live concert, while the film’s dialogue is heard through loudspeakers.

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Renée Fleming at Roy Thomson Hall

11/1/2015

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Soprano Renée Fleming.

There are probably only a handful of classical singers in the world who could fill most of the seats at Toronto’s Roy Thomson Hall – and Renée Fleming is one of them.

At 56, Fleming still sounds (and looks) absolutely fabulous. And while RTH isn’t, frankly, an ideal place for a vocal recital, on Friday night she seemed entirely at home on the cavernous stage – with nothing but a grand piano, played by Gerald Martin Moore.

Much to her credit, she didn’t do what some singers I’ve heard at RTH (or similarly oversized venues) do: shriek and bellow at the back wall. While Fleming possesses a voice that’s entirely big enough for such purposes, she took a more intelligent approach. This was, after all, an art-song recital, and Fleming treated it as such, creating an illusion of intimacy. While this may have made people up in the second balcony wish they had bought more expensive seats, it made everyone in the hall listen more closely and attentively. Fleming made us better listeners, and we were richly rewarded for the effort.

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Remembering Harold C. Schonberg

Simone Osborne with the TSO

New Orford String Quartet plays Beethoven

TSO goes Psycho for Halloween

Renée Fleming at Roy Thomson Hall

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