Blog Posts

What's up with Robert Kapilow?

1/19/2018

Conductor-composer-lecturer Robert Kapilow.

I made my first trek to Toronto’s Roy Thomson Hall of 2018 last Friday night (Jan. 12), for a Toronto Symphony program that I anticipated with mixed feelings.

On the one hand, the program featured Mozart’s Clarinet Concerto, to be played by the TSO’s principal clarinettist, Joaquin Valdepeñas. Nothing wrong with that idea! On the other, the concerto was to be enfolded in one of conductor-composer-lecturer Robert Kapilow’s “What Makes It Great?” programs, and that was something I felt a little uneasy about.

2 Comments

Toronto Consort creates new leadership model

12/16/2017

20 Comments

THe nine-member Toronto Consort.

I originally wrote this article for Early Music America magazine.

The Toronto Consort has been run so smoothly for so many years that the organization has tended to fly under the media’s radar. But in October, the organization made itself noticed when it announced that long-serving artistic director and tenor vocalist David Fallis would be stepping down at the end of the 2017-18 season (sort of). The directorship will be assumed by an eight-member group of artistic associates, including Fallis and many of the musicians who perform regularly with the nine-member ensemble. The Consort is set to become a consortium.

20 Comments

Afghanistan: Requiem for a Generation

11/15/2017

2 Comments

Canadian conductor Tania Miller.

I originally wrote this review for the Classical Voice North America website.

Since the end of World War I, Remembrance Day (Canada’s version of Veterans Day) has been a significant occasion for Canadians. Between 1914 and 1918, the Dominion of Canada lost over 60,000 soldiers in the “War to End All Wars.” Nowadays, there are memorial observances and events across the country from coast to coast, every November 11.

2 Comments

Canadian Opera serves up a delicious Elixir

10/25/2017

1 Comment

Simone Osborne (in blue) strikes a pensive pose. Photo: Michael Cooper.

Is there an opera in the standard repertoire that’s sweeter than The Elixir of Love? If there is, I don’t know it. And the Canadian Opera Company has celebrated the sweetness and lightness of Donizetti’s 1832 opera with a production that’s as sweet as honey and as light as a feather.

The COC rather boldly claims this Elixir as a “new production” – although stage director James Robinson has already mounted it in San Francisco, Boston, Denver, Kansas City, St. Louis, Detroit, Pittsburgh, and other places. Originally placed in “Anytown U.S.A.” in the early 20th century, the Toronto production shifts it north, to small-town Ontario, draping Red Ensigns on the gazebo that dominates the set. It’s a transformation that works quite well, bringing the audience closer, in time and space, to the action.

1 Comment

Arabella at the COC

10/16/2017

1 Comment

Erin Wall as Arabella. photo: Michael Cooper.

Arabella – do you know it?

You can be excused, gentle reader, if you don’t. Richard Strauss’s opera of 1933 isn’t done much, except in German-speaking countries, these days. For Toronto’s Canadian Opera Company, this Arabella was a company premiere – and a glance at the Operabase website (see here) reveals that the COC is the only company outside Germany staging the piece this year. But then perhaps all this makes sense, as the COC has Germanic leanings these days. (I am reminded of the time that Toronto Symphony conductor Peter Oundjian naughtily referred to the COC as “Die Deutsche Oper am Ontariosee.”)

1 Comment

Elisa Citterio takes the helm of Tafelmusik

10/15/2017

0 Comments

Elissa Citterio will make Toronto a little more Italian.

I originally wrote this article for Early Music America magazine.

It’s a September night in Koerner Hall at Toronto’s Royal Conservatory of Music, and there’s a sense of anticipation in the air for a program billed as “A Joyous Welcome.” Onstage, Elisa Citterio is leading Tafelmusik, while also serving as soloist in “Summer” from Vivaldi’s Four Seasons. The Italian violinist’s interpretation is dramatic, emphasizing abrupt changes in tempo and texture. And also dramatic is her stage presence, as she swiftly turns to divide her attention between her new orchestra and her new audience.

0 Comments

The National Youth Orchestra comes to town

8/1/2017

0 Comments

The NYOC kids are alright.

The National Youth Orchestra of Canada always puts together a big band – and this year was no exception. Indeed, when the NYOC played in Toronto on Wednesday (Aug. 26), hosted by Toronto Summer Music, the stage of Koerner Hall had to be enlarged to accommodate the 92 students in the orchestra.

The substantial size of the NYOC tends to govern orchestra’s programming, which is usually dominated by hefty scores from the Romantic, Impressionist and Modern eras. As well, the orchestra always hits the road with a new Canadian work in its music folders. And when it’s time for an an encore, the NYCO has a charming tradition of singing a couple of a-cappella selections. (They are a multi-talented bunch.)

0 Comments

Toronto Summer Music discovers Canadian music

7/30/2017

0 Comments

This year, Canadian music is big at TSM.

I originally wrote this article for the Classical Voice North America website.

As music festivals go, Toronto Summer Music isn’t a “big deal.” The festival doesn’t stage outdoor orchestra concerts for audiences in the thousands. It doesn’t present an endless parade of concerts and recitals by the world’s most glamorous and celebrated musicians. Yet throughout its twelve-year history, this “little festival that could” has presented about three dozen concerts and other events annually, in a three-week window in July and early August. Mostly, the concerts are chamber programs, small in scale but impressive in quality. And mostly, the festival has focused on the tried and true: canonic classical programming that is familiar and comforting rather than obscure or controversial.

0 Comments

James Ehnes, Bach and Toronto Summer Music

7/22/2017

0 Comments

Canadian violinist James Ehnes.

The place to be for music in Toronto on Wednesday evening was the Church of the Redeemer, at the corner of Bloor St. and Avenue Rd. It was in this small church – packed to the rafters with patrons of Toronto Summer Music – that violinist James Ehnes once again demonstrated he’s one of the best concert soloists on the stage today.

Most classical music fans in Canada are well aware that Ehnes is also Canadian, hailing from the town of Brandon, Manitoba. And I expect most have probably already heard him, and are well aware of his astonishing prowess on his 1715 Stradivarius fiddle. (Hence, the sold-out house.)

0 Comments

When the World Stopped to Listen

6/7/2017

2 Comments

I originally wrote this book review for the Classical Voice North America website.

In his new book, When the World Stopped to Listen: Van Cliburn’s Cold War Trumph and Its Aftermath, Stuart Isacoff brings both a pianist’s insights and a historian’s rigor to an event that shook the musical world – indeed, the world at large – almost six decades ago. It was in 1958, at the height of the Cold War, that a lanky young Texan went to Moscow and won the gold medal for piano at the first Tchaikovsky Competition.

Although Isacoff didn’t know Cliburn personally (at least, he makes no such claim), his presentation of the pianist is detailed and vivid. The portrait drawn here is not always flattering: for instance, Isacoff notes the overbearing influence of the pianist’s mother and first teacher, Rildia Bee O’Bryan Cliburn, his superstitious fascination with astrology, and his ill-placed faith in an amphetamine-dispensing quack, Max “Dr. Feelgood” Jacobson. Cliburn also is described as naïve, irresponsible, and plagued with performance anxieties. (Isacoff does not say much about Cliburn’s homosexuality, except to point out that the 1950s were not a time of tolerance.)

2 Comments