barczablog

Toronto is known for a few things. We’re a very knowledgeable hockey town, even if that’s often been a special kind of torture. We’re possibly the most genuinely multi-cultural city in the world, embracing all colours of the rainbow, including that LGBTQ rainbow as well. It’s known as a clean city, as a polite city notwithstanding some outrageous displays of rudeness during the recent baseball playoffs.

While Toronto’s downtown is full of churches, many of them have been re-purposed as condos, divorced from their original religious roots, in an era when attendance in protestant congregations is apparently in freefall.

And yet there’s a reason I jokingly call this city “Messiahville”, because Handel is probably the most popular most programmed composer. There are many flavours of Messiah, whether the larger than life versions presented by the Toronto Symphony, the alternative electric version from Soundstreams the past two years, the historically informed performances one gets from Tafelmusik Orchestra & Choir, or the many local versions & excerpts found in churches all over town.

Tonight was the Tafelmusik Koerner Hall experience. While it may have been a night of inclement weather that didn’t stop most of us, as the hall was pretty full. I proclaim that “all’s well” in Messiahville because the shows keep getting better. They have to, given such a discerning community of listeners.

Ivars Taurins, who portrays “Herr Handel” in the annual singalong, isn’t merely affecting a role. On the other nights, when we’re listening rather than joining in, Taurins is every bit as invested in channeling the composer, in finding a pathway to the essence of this marvelous oratorio. Every time he seems to get deeper into the role, because he’s getting deeper into the work.

Ivars Taurins (photo: Sian Richards)

Taurins is a remarkably physical conductor, but not in the sense of someone who is merely balletic, as the movements are all intimately wedded to the music. When there’s a big line he gives us –and the choir—a big gesture, to punctuate that moment. And he brings the same ear to his leadership of the orchestra, treating them as another group of voices integrated into the whole. It’s an enactment whose playfulness drills deeper into something genuine & true. Nowhere was this more evident than in the attacks Taurins coaxed from the timpanist. Taurins often prolongs climaxes, making a great deal of drama out of the last bars of some of these numbers. We’re accustomed by now to predictable cadences in the classical world, and why should that be? Taurins gives us something delightfully different.

The Tafelmusik Orchestra and Chamber Choir respond to Taurins sinuous movements, as though extensions of that fluid body, voices entering and answering as clearly as if you were inside the composer’s head.  At times the Choir are pushed to the limit, as in “And He shall purify,” taken at a breathless pace yet sung with the precise clarity of flames flickering in the light.  At other times they’re part of Taurins’ drama, as in a Hallelujah Chorus that builds oh so gradually, teasing us with mini-climaxes, and only fully opening up on the last pages.  They’re in a groove right now, matching this hall’s acoustic perfectly, every syllable crisp & clear.  I’m in awe of the choral story-telling, whether in the debating in “Lift Up Your Heads”, the passion agonies of Part Two, or a courtroom summation direct from Revelation, as we’re told: “Worthy Is the Lamb”.  Taurins and Tafelmusik Orchestra & Choir are one of Toronto’s treasures, and should perhaps be included in guidebooks as a must-see / must-hear event each December for any visitor.

I think this is the most impressive quartet of soloists I’ve ever encountered in a Messiah performance. Each one had at least one amazing moment of authenticity, blowing the lid off the usual way that music is done.

Krisztina Szabo has been ubiquitous in this town of late, often in modernist works on the opera stage. How refreshing, then, to see her not in a new opera, not in something atonal or dissonant, but something well-known. Yet her “He was despised” was fresh, especially in the taut drama of the middle section. Every few moments in “he gave his back to the smiters” she seemed to take on a different emotion, sometimes seeming furious, sometimes sad, sometimes compassionate. The da capo of “He was despised” was especially rich, sung in a softer sound, as though completely heart-broken.

Soprano Amanda Forsythe

Amanda Forsythe is the best soprano soloist I’ve heard in Messiah in quite awhile. The soprano gets some of the best music –for instance channeling an angel in the narration of Christmas Eve—and will usually be memorable so long as they’re more or less in tune. Forsythe sang with great restraint, impeccable taste, and an irrepressible friendliness manifested in eye contact with others onstage. I’ve probably mentioned my pickiness with respect to “I know the My Redeemer liveth”, a number that is sometimes undermined by too much enthusiasm; if you try to persuade us that you know that your redeemer liveth, you will sound as though you don’t really believe. The simplicity of Forsythe’s delivery persuaded me, particularly on several high notes attacked with delicacy rather than boldness.

This was my second experience of Colin Balzer, and I feel he and Taurins have deepened their reading substantially since last time. Improvisation seemed possible in almost every number, particularly “thou shalt break them”, an aria that was like an eruption of energy.  His tone is achingly lovely throughout.

Baritone Tyler Duncan

I was particularly pleased on my first encounter with baritone Tyler Duncan, speaking as a younger brother of a baritone who grew up craving brilliance from everyone and being frustrated more often than not. I heard something new in several numbers.  In “the trumpet shall sound” we were in the presence of testimony, as he shared a mystery with us. At times in this big bold aria he seemed to be whispering, spilling the beans of something intensely personal and internal even as the orchestra played loudly. It was truly magical. Yet when he wanted to celebrate in this same aria he gave us the feeling of jubilation, something extemporaneous and unpredictable.

I have to think that Taurins is the key, as he seems to be inviting his soloists to explore and probe, as each of them finds an intriguing place in their approach to the music and text, that is never an operatic portrayal but instead a kind of testimony or confession.

Tafelmusik Orchestra & Choir present Handel’s Messiah at Koerner Hall Friday and Saturday, with the singalong Sunday at Massey Hall. Information.

The Toronto Symphony, the Toronto Mendelssohn Choir, The Canadian Children’s Opera Company in partnership with tiff presented a concert performance of Howard Shore’s score for The Fellowship of the Ring, the first of Peter Jackson’s Tolkien films. If you think that sounds like a lot of people, you’d be right, and that’s not even including the big-screen presentation of the film, with its cast of thousands of humans, orcs, elves, dwarves, hobbits, uruk-hai, and assorted birds. Considering that I consider the first film to be the weakest of the three, I did not expect such an overwhelming experience, and am a little gaga imagining what the other two might be like, in a live concert version.

It’s not at all the same experience as the films we’ve seen in the theatres or at home on DVD or Blue-Ray. We have subtitles for the dialogue, which was often drowned out by the powerful musical forces arrayed around and behind the screen.

I’ve made analogies to try to describe this experience after seeing several other tiff—TSO co-productions, and I realize that my words fail to adequately capture the true magic of the experience. It needs to be said that

• Each one of these concert presentations is sold-out
• The TSO now has seen some competition in town from other promoters offering films with live accompaniment
• The reception at the end was overwhelming, suggesting that anyone there on a lark will be back again if they get the chance.
• And the TSO brought their A-game. For some previous films they’ve not used all their big-name soloists, but tonight, there was Jonathan Crow, Joseph Johnson, and Neil Deland.

I think of Shore as a film music composer with a background in rock or popular music, one of many now composing for film, such as

• Danny Elfman
• Michael Kamen
• Mark Mothersbaugh
• Mark Knopfler
• Tangerine Dream
• David Byrne
  …and there are lots of others.

But it’s a simplistic thought and hardly a new development, especially considering the composers who could write jazz—such as David Raksin or Elmer Bernstein– from more than half a century ago who changed the sound of film scores.

Composer Howard Shore

Shore has a particular sound that he employs in the Tolkien trilogy that doesn’t necessarily stand on its own, so much as work in partnership with the films. While I am a great admirer of Bernard Herrmann –to name one obvious example—I didn’t have nearly such a powerful experience seeing his films live (last year the TSO and tiff partnered to offer us Psycho and Vertigo), as I had tonight, and i confess it took me by surprise.

I think part of it is Shore’s counter-intuitive choices. In the sequence where Boromir dies–to give the most obvious example in the film– we get a very plaintive sound from the chorus, something you might call sentimental, but that I’d simply call beautiful, effective, powerful.

These moments are distant cousins of moments in Elfman scores where he uses wordless chorus.  For some reason these compositions have a a particularly powerful  impact live. I have no doubt that my favourite moment in The Two Towers –the sunrise sequence in the battle of Helm’s Deep, where Gandalf re-appears on a horse—would become overpowering done live.

I may be overthinking this, but where Herrmann’s scores are mostly cool surfaces applied to overpowering images in the Hitchcock films, Shore’s scores are more purely romantic.
And yes I’m hoping that the TSO & tiff offer us the other two Jackson Tolkien films.

In passing I must mention that Shore created an operatic version of The Fly¸ from one of several Cronenberg films scored by Shore.

As the Canadian Opera Company looks for possible scores, here’s one by a Canadian composer that has already been staged in France, USA and Germany.

But I digress.

There’s no question there’s a big market for this. I mentioned not long ago that Danny Elfman participated in a live performance of Nightmare Before Christmas with Paul Rubens & Catherine O’Hara in the Hollywood Bowl.

I wonder just how big the potential market is for this kind of film showing. Make no mistake, it’s a very special thrill, and the TSO seem to recognize that fact. I am expecting that next season they will have even more films with live accompaniment.

And I’ll be there if at all possible.

Last year the Toronto Symphony revived a new concert edition of Handel’s Messiah, first heard in 2010, created by their conductor laureate Sir Andrew Davis. At the time of the December 2015 concerts I declared that I wanted to hear it again.

And I’ve got my wish unexpectedly, as Chandos have released a new recording based on the TSO’s performances from last year. Excuse me for sounding uncertain. I don’t hear any audience noise so I don’t believe they were captured from those December concerts at Roy Thomson Hall although the Chandos website says it was “recorded live”.

I pored over the liner notes but saw no explicit clarification other than a cryptic picture of technicians with the caption “in the control room during rehearsals”. But were those rehearsals for the live performances or rehearsals for a recording without a paying audience?

They didn’t say, and come to think of it, I don’t care.  I love what they’ve recorded.

Must we be limited to only one?  Great works are routinely interpreted and paraphrased, given to us in many guises, and Messiah is no exception.  For those of the historically informed persuasion –a group with whom I sometimes align myself–this recording may be a transgressive pleasure, a high-calorie feast you mustn’t permit yourself if you’re on a strict diet.  But that’s just it, why can’t I sometimes hear this approach?  We have Beecham’s quaint sound that seems older than baroque in its obsolete ambition to knock your socks off during the Hallelujah chorus.  Davis gives us something with many of the same muscular impulses, but in pristine 21st century high-def sound.

It’s more or less the same as what we heard in December 2015 –with John Relyea, Andrew Staples, Erin Wall and Elizabeth DeShong—and the same cuts I observed at the time. The one I miss most is the middle section of “He was despised”(i.e. “He gave his back to the smiters”), especially considering the richness of DeShong’s voice.

Davis’s orchestration is like a witty commentary upon Handel, a gloss, a self-aware adaptation that sometimes positions itself in the tradition of Beecham’s big muscular sound with brass and percussion to underline key climaxes & phrases.

And sometimes it’s at least encompassing if not entirely following historically informed performance practice; for example in the Overture Davis first gives us something elaborated, then in the repeat offers us the stripped down version to which we’re accustomed. In places he’s playing with us, those listeners who know this work inside out, who have craved something without knowing exactly what we wanted. In “All we like sheep” and again in “Thou shalt break them” there are unmistakable touches of whimsy, an understated humour, an innocent playfulness.  But the precise descriptor eludes me. And so as I struggle to put this into words, I’m borrowing from a friend.

Whimsy is a lost love that the world has tossed into the bottom of the toy chest of forgotten treasures of youth. The world is too full of itself and drowning in ego to rediscover the magic of whimsy. Perhaps one day it will open the chest and rediscover what has been lost.

If you can let go of your ego, you’ll enjoy the pure beauty of this recording, along with its witty touches.  There’s nothing odd about it even though we’re sometimes hearing marimba, snare drum, and combinations of instruments as you haven’t heard before in a Messiah. 

The difference between seeing this in Roy Thomson Hall and on CD? In the hall it was clear, although at times the solo voices were partly covered by the big orchestra. On the CD it has high-definition clarity, a crystalline and edgy sound to match the clarity of Davis’ new edition.

Sometimes when I’m listening to a historically informed performance, I’m flying on the wings of historicity, high on the druggy aura of accuracy, as my disbelief is suspended. My modern ear has to sometimes be checked at the door, making allowances, the same way we ignore infelicities in a staging or some other aspect of a performance that collides with the exigencies of what’s required by a modern audience. The trumpet we hear in period-instrument versions of “The trumpet shall sound” are often the most problematic perhaps due to my romantic idea (and i know i am totally wrong as far as the baroque understanding of the piece): that if this is God’s trumpeter (perhaps an archangel?), surely God would find someone who can play the instrument in tune? But alas I’ve heard period versions where you could see an entire audience wince together. Heresy or not, Davis gives us a trumpet that sounds properly divine, not merely competent but stunningly beautiful.

Is Toronto Messiahville? One can have so many diverse Messiah experiences, between the period one from Tafelmusik, the modernized versions such as the Against the Grain choreographed Messiah or the Electric Messiah from Soundstreams to be offered again this year. And to this group we can add the Davis’ orchestration that underlines all the key phrases and punctuates all the most dramatic sections with extra brass & drums. It’s as though the Beecham version has been updated for modern ears & recording technology.   I think you’d find it compelling, as it’s not hindered by some quest for authenticity, indeed it’s going in another direction altogether. Instead it aims for more basic goals: beauty and spirituality.  You’ll get no arguments from me. It’s now a permanent resident in my car, uplifting the saddest traffic jam.

The Toronto Symphony and Sir Andrew Davis, conductor laureate (photo: Malcolm Cook)