So I arrived at the Four Seasons Centre on Saturday evening (May 6) with high hopes. And the focus of my heightened expectations was the opportunity to once again hear Toronto’s own Adrianne Pieczonka in the title role. (She previously appeared with the Canadian Opera Company as Tosca in 2012.) Although she’s best known for her German-language roles, she often appears in Tosca: in recent year’s she has portrayed the ill-fated Italian singer in Berlin and Vienna, and next year she’ll sing the role at Covent Garden.
Tosca is a real “opera opera” – bursting with dramatic situations, culminating in a murder, an double-crossed execution and a suicide. The musicologist Joseph Kerman famously dismissed it as a “shabby little shocker” – but I’m pleased to admit that it’s my favourite Puccini opera.
So I arrived at the Four Seasons Centre on Saturday evening (May 6) with high hopes. And the focus of my heightened expectations was the opportunity to once again hear Toronto’s own Adrianne Pieczonka in the title role. (She previously appeared with the Canadian Opera Company as Tosca in 2012.) Although she’s best known for her German-language roles, she often appears in Tosca: in recent year’s she has portrayed the ill-fated Italian singer in Berlin and Vienna, and next year she’ll sing the role at Covent Garden.
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I originally wrote this review for the Classical Voice North America website. The Canadian Opera Company rarely stages Canadian operas. And with the current production of Louis Riel, which opened April 20 at Toronto’s Four Seasons Centre, Canada’s largest opera company did something not just rare but virtually unprecedented: It remounted a Canadian opera written half a century ago. Noel Edison, the Toronto Mendelssohn Choir’s music director, clearly put a lot of thought into his choir’s Good Friday concert at St. Paul’s Basilica in Toronto. It was called “Sacred Music for a Sacred Space,” and it was an imaginative program: refreshingly Messiah-free and remarkable for its stylistic diversity. The choir was, in fact, two choirs. The first half of the program featured the Mendelssohn Singers (an ensemble of professional quality, with the Elora Festival Singers at its core), discreetly placed in the choir loft at the back of the church. And the second half was sung by the larger TMC, in full view at the front of the church. Both halves featured a-cappella repertoire that occasionally stretched but never exceeded the substantial abilities of these choirs. I originally wrote this article for Early Music America magazine. They’re called I Furiosi, yet their fury isn’t the angry kind — it’s passion. The Toronto-based quartet is passionate about Baroque music, about historically informed performance, and about engaging with a broad audience. But most of all, they’re passionate about doing things their way. Last month, I wrote a review of the Boston Symphony Orchestra’s Toronto performance, in which I cleverly pointed out that the hall that the BSO calls home has the word “Beethoven” emblazoned over the stage. Conspicuously, there are no other composer-names on the other plaques that decorate the hall. They were deliberately left blank – apparently, Beethoven was deemed the only composer worthy of having his name carved in gilded plaster. This speaks to the singular place that Beethoven occupies in the classical repertoire: a musical hero, isolated by his own greatness, towering over all rivals. “To us musicians,” declared Franz Liszt, “the work of Beethoven parallels the pillars of smoke and fire which led the Israelites through the desert.” The last concert in the 2017 New Creations Festival – the Toronto Symphony Orchestra’s annual series of new-music programs – was the only one I was able to attend this year. Yet judging from what I saw at Saturday night’s concert at Roy Thomson Hall, it’s safe to say that NCF is continuing to attract a large and youthful audience. And judging by what I heard, it seems that this year’s guest curator, Owen Pallett, brought a very specific aesthetic leaning to his selection of the program. I mention this because new music concerts are often eclectic things – as though programmers are constantly striving to underscore the great variety of styles and trends at large in the musical world (or are simply trying to hedge their bets) by presenting a little of this and a little of that. Yes, there are an awful lot of styles of new music these days – but not every contemporary program has to hammer the point home. Sunday afternoon’s concert at Roy Thomson Hall was all about the three Bs: Beethoven, Berlioz and the Boston Symphony. And, for their first Toronto engagement in 21 years, the BSO brought along the American pianist Emanuel Ax. I have no idea how many times Ax has played Beethoven’s Piano Concerto No. 2, as he did on this occasion. But after half-a-century on the concert stage, I expect that even he has lost count. And, at the end of Sunday’s performance, I found myself hoping that he will continue to play Beethoven concertos for at least another half century. This review was originally written for the Classical Voice North America website. The Canadian composer R. Murray Schafer has never much liked opera, and he has taken pen in hand to explain exactly why: “The waste of capital is more conspicuous in opera than in any of the other arts. It is also the art form most seriously hampered by the Hollywood star system. And it has taken upon itself the task of perpetuating a good many works for their musical values alone, regardless of the fact that dramatically, and in other ways, they no longer excite. Yet there it stands in the midst of society with the appetite of a dinosaur, fed by blowzy socialites.” This review was originally written for the Classical Voice North America website. At the age of 21, Canadian pianist Jan Lisiecki has grown into a tall, slim young man, with long, pianist’s fingers and a mop of blonde hair. Seated at the keyboard – as he was on Wednesday (Feb 3) evening at Toronto’s Roy Thomson Hall, for an appearance with the Toronto Symphony Orchestra – he perches precariously on edge of the bench, and doesn’t quite seem to know what to do with his knees. Fortunately, he knows exactly what to do with his hands. Let me begin with a question: what compositions from the orchestral repertoire can you name that are quite short? And please bear in mind that I’m talking about complete, self-standing works. Little movements from longer, multi-movement compositions don’t count. Ravel’s Pavane pour une enfante défunt isn’t very long, clocking in at about six-and-a-half minutes. But I’m looking for pieces that are even shorter than that. Stravinsky wrote some orchestral miniatures: his Circus Polka is about four minutes, and his Fireworks is even shorter, at about three-and-a-half minutes. And, of course, Webern wrote numerous miniatures for orchestra – although he usually conjoined them into multi-movement suites. As well, there’s Copland’s Fanfare for the Common Man – although, strictly speaking, it’s not quite an orchestral work. |
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