TSO in 2016/17

Posted on February 4, 2016 by barczablog

If each season announcement by a major Toronto company is a demonstration of core values, the Toronto Symphony were in perhaps the most challenging position, having declared their intention to be the most innovative & inclusive orchestra in the world’s most inclusive city. But having set the bar so high they did not disappoint.

Before a note was played or a word uttered we were already in a new place, sitting onstage at Roy Thomson Hall facing out into the auditorium. How cool to be sitting there looking at Peter Oundjian at a podium, even if he wasn’t conducting us but simply announcing the season highlights.

This will be a very exciting year to be in Toronto, as everyone (the COC, and Tafelmusik, and Opera Atelier) commemorates our Sesquicentennial in different ways. In January 2017 CANADA MOSAIC pays tribute to some of the Canadian composers who made our country proud during the mid-to-late 20th century including works by Ridout, Mercure, Coulthard, and Weinzweig.  Even more exciting is the prospect of a series of commissions to be made in collaboration with other Canadian orchestras, but the details are still largely TBA.

The concert presentation of films in partnership with TIFF continues.  

There will be four offerings:

  • Raiders of the Lost Ark
  • Ratatouille (a delightful animated film),
  • The Fellowship of the Ring (first film in the Lord of the Rings Trilogy),
  • an anthology of excerpts highlighting the collaboration between composer Danny Elfman and Director Tim Burton.
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Mezzo-soprano Wallis Giunta

The Decades Project continues, taking us to the roaring 20s in the fall of 2016 (Gershwin, Rachmaninoff, Kodaly, Mihaud, Walton, Ravel) including a pair of works showcasing talent in the orchestra namely Vaughan Williams’s “The Lark Ascending” with Jonathan Crow, violin and Walton’s Viola Concerto with Teng Li, viola. We’ll go on to our exploration off the 1930s to begin 2017, with a series of big projects, namely Belshazzar’s Feast to be led by Sir Andrew Davis, Carmina Burana, and a return by Joel Ivany –who directed the Mozart Requiem so recently—for a semi-staged Seven Deadly Sins with Wallis Giunta (appearing this Friday & Saturday with Tapestry by the way).

Soprano Renée Fleming returns to sing with the TSO on opening night.

The New Creations Festival features seven world premieres, curated by Owen Pallett and including throat-singer Tanya Tagaq and the famous Kronos Quartet.

We heard a great deal about the TSO’s ambitions to be a central part of this city, hoping to someday welcome students from all schools in all parts of Toronto, a beautiful goal that depends on funding.

For all the new & challenging programming, the most exciting thing I heard was that for the next Mozart Festival aka Mozart @261, we would be hearing the Toronto Symphony playing at Koerner Hall led once more by Bernard Labadie. This orchestra is better than people realize from what we hear at Roy Thomson Hall, as I discovered in Florida last month. They will sound heavenly in Koerner. Among the artists appearing with the orchestra in that festival will be young pianist Leonid Nediak in his TSO debut. Nediak came forward to play the Rachmaninoff prelude in G minor for us, a fabulous performance that moved us to applause and clearly left Oundjian so moved he was barely able to talk afterwards, just as he had been fully appreciative of earlier performances of his TSO colleagues. The chemistry is quite beautiful to watch between Melanson, Oundjian and the young players of the TSO, as though their biggest fans were their CEO & their music director.

If it’s contagious I’ve caught the bug… I’m a big fan too.

Here’s an example of Nediak’s amazing playing.  

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COC Siegfried: Love on the rocks in white PJs

Posted on January 31, 2016 by barczablog

Of the four operas in Richard Wagner’s Ring Cycle the closest thing to a comedy is Siegfried. Yes we do have a couple of deaths and a couple of would-be rulers of the world thwarted but it’s got a happy ending, literally love on the rocks as Siegfried and Brunnhilde are about to get it on, considering that their last words are “lachender Tod”, or “laughing death”, surely a clumsy euphemism for orgasm.

I am torn. I admire the work done in this production, loving almost every performance and certainly appreciating the contribution of every single person up there, so let’s set aside my concerns until after I’ve properly appreciated what’s right about it.

I was fortunate to be sitting off to the side near the front, which meant I could spend a great deal of the show basking in the pleasure of Johannes Debus’ conducting. The COC orchestra was a force of nature, particularly in the big set-pieces where Wagner turns over the story telling to his brass, string, percussion, woodwinds, and conductor. Debus was very sensitive to his singers, some of whom had much more to offer than others. Anyone coming from out of town to hear the big stars might be confused, that they were hearing a performance as good as what you might hear at one of the world’s major opera houses even though they’re in Toronto.  But the amazing opera house changes everything, helping singers who would be inaudible singing the same role in a bigger house.

Three performances stood out for me tonight in a cast with no weak spots.  Stefan Vinke (Siegfried) sings this role as no one I have ever heard, from his first appearance, singing a high C that is usually omitted. Wow! Vinke sang, rather than barking or shouting (as some do because of the difficulty of the role), his lyrical line getting more beautiful the longer he was singing. Amazingly he was in a better groove in Act III than in Act I, in what is surely the most taxing role in all of opera. I begin to understand the people I see coming back to see it again and again. Vinke is the main treat of this production, singing some of the most difficult lines more clearly than I’ve ever heard them. If that weren’t enough –singing the role better than I’ve ever heard it—he is an attractive presence, and a wonderful actor. Whether in the many comic moments –parodying his guardian, sassing the dragon, trying to play a hand-made reed –badly– the few moments of genuine pathos such as the revelations about his past, or the times we want to see something heroic, he is the most believable, musical, heroic Siegfried I’ve ever seen.

Alongside Vinke we get to see the Mime of Wolfgang Ablinger-Sperrhacke. When I recall the first time I saw this production (directed by François Girard, designed by Michael Levine) more than a decade ago in the old theatre, I can’t forget how frustrating it was, that for several minutes I couldn’t distinguish one character from the other, that Mime (supposedly a hunchback dwarf) and Siegfried (supposedly a great hero), both in their white pajamas were hard to distinguish from one another, because they were roughly the same height and sounded alike. This time the contrast is spectacular, both in the physical presentation and the voices. WA-S is one of the best actors I’ve ever seen at the COC, in a vocal interpretation putting me in mind of Gerhard Stolze (on the Solti recording), playing up all the opportunities Wagner puts into the score for vocal comedy. At times I didn’t know where to look, because Vinke and WA-S were both so interesting to watch.

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1211 – (left to right) Jacqueline Woodley as the Forest Bird (background) with Stefan Vinke as Siegfried and Wolfgang Ablinger-Sperrhacke as Mime Director François Girard, Set and Costume Designer Michael Levine, (Photo: Michael Cooper)

Fortunately I am going to see it again.

The third extraordinary performance is the big name draw of the production, namely Christine Goerke. Her awakening was electric, both in the marvelous hand gestures, the vocal commitment and the magic between the two left onstage. I did not expect the last scene to be the best scene of the whole opera. There were other great moments though.

Jacqueline Woodley’s Forest Bird was wonderfully accurate, and very musical, while Meredith Arwady’s Erda was extremely powerful, especially some amazing low notes.

I first saw (and reviewed) this production back in 2005 when Girard & Levine first unveiled it —and so I am inclined to believe that maybe the problem is that the production doesn’t work as well in the Four Seasons Centre (that magical theatre I was speaking of earlier). I don’t think it’s fair to hold that against the director or designer.  Four Seasons Centre puts everyone under a bit of a microscope, giving us stunning close-ups. It helps highlight performances, seeing the strengths and weaknesses of singers & their acting, and the concepts in the production. Where Girard’s idea that seemed to situate everything in the mind of the young Siegfried seemed fresh and powerful in the big theatre, where everything was far away, hard to see, and impossible to hear, in Four Seasons Centre? Up close it doesn’t quite work so well, the bodies in the mental-tree seen from afar become a bit disturbing in closeup, if not creepy after awhile.

In the program note Girard speaks of how abstract Siegfried is, even though he conveniently skips or ignores the most concrete elements, such as the forging of a sword (magically handed to the hero, rather than created in steps, steps that Girard skips), or whittling a reed to make a flute (this time Siegfried finds his flute hanging in a tree).  Even so, I will mention a couple of directorial choices that bother me. One of my favourite parts of the entire Ring is the opening of Act III, Wotan’s last scene of the cycle as he confronts Erda, seeking a way to avoid the unavoidable. It’s music of despair with backbone. So it’s odd to open the act with the Forest Bird leading Siegfried (yes it’s a beautiful effect, but i missed it at the end of Act II, not inserted to begin Act III) while the music screams a heroic “no way out what do I do now” loudly for 5 minutes, and then to let your Wanderer shamble onstage like an afterthought.  Argh i know i sound like i’m getting old, as I was hungry for the post-modern stuff a decade ago.  Post-modernism means never having to say you’re sorry (and making a joke a decade ago gives me permission to repeat myself).

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Stefan Vinke as Siegfried and Christine Goerke as Brünnhilde (Photo: Michael Cooper)

And of course the Wanderer is in this white outfit, just like Erda and everyone else onstage, except for Brunnhilde and Alberich. I get the concept, that there’s all this stuff in the hero’s head.  Alberich has a grey jacket on, because he too is from the outside. Brunnhilde is in a sexy costume, which makes sense. I would think Erda & Wotan should also escape the white PJs, but post-modern also includes the right to change sub-text whenever it suits you.

And let me add another white PJs footnote while I’m on the topic. Brunnhilde wakes up, and looks for the one who has brought her back to life, woken her up with a kiss.
I get that the magic fire is done with all these people in white pajamas. It was better in the O’keefe and stunningly beautiful at that moment when Wanderer steps aside and can’t stop Siegfried any longer. But when Siegfried has crossed through the curtain of fire, why keep these people lingering there like spectators? And so, when Brunnhilde says “Wer ist der Held, der mich erweckt’?” (OR Who woke me up?) she wants to know, not because the stage is this confused mess. Why, François, do you leave 15 white-clad extras onstage, and have Siegfried drift upstage into this mess. And then when she asks her question she might well say (in German) “which one of you people was the one who kissed me awake”?

I mean François, why deconstruct the most romantic moment in the whole opera?  Get them off the stage. Brunnhilde and Siegfried are supposed to be alone.

I should have known that the reason Debus said that the opera points to the last scene was because in this production it’s so good. No wait maybe it’s because there’s too much conceptual clutter everywhere else, too many moments where Girard’s ideas –some good, some not so good—just plain get in the way of the opera. There are moments where the production is clever. I enjoy the dragon. I love the bird.  I love the fire and those extras (including John Allemang, who told us his story recently in the Globe and Mail). But on balance I don’t find the production concept illuminating, not when at least part of the time it’s holding me back rather than adding something. It’s odd to me that this scene that usually seems like an extraneous afterthought—the last one– works best this time. Is it because it’s so good? or simply because it’s the only unobstructed scene,  where two people are allowed to sing without all the conceptual shenanigans?

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Love, Death and the TSO

Posted on January 29, 2016 by barczablog

Tonight was my first look at the Toronto Symphony playing under Peter Oundjian since their Florida tour.

On the trip I saw an ensemble who were playing with commitment and passion. Oundjian’s leadership for the three performances I saw of Scheherazade reminded me a bit of a talk-show host. When I said this to Oundjian in our brief meeting in Daytona I think I saw him shudder as if he were in the presence of an idiot. But it’s not as dopey as it sounds. The Rimsky-Korsakov piece is full of an astonishing collection of solos, at least one per section. At times Oundjian was behaving like a story-teller which is apt for an episodic composition that is entirely about story-telling, or a curator showing us a beautiful series of pieces. It was perhaps paradoxical to experience a work where he seemed willing to let go of the controls, crossing his arms while the soloist functions a piacere, ad libitum as it were, and then when necessary, having them jump into formation for big precise passages, especially in the last movement.  I saw the pleasure of admiration, mentorship, even friendship, a proud leader watching his collaborators making music, not a boss or an authority figure.

Is this because of the time spent on vacation, playing the same piece over and over? Or maybe it has to do with a slight re-alignment of responsibilities. Since Jeff Melanson came on the scene and has gradually asserted his control in the past 6 months, I can’t help comparing this to what we saw at the Canadian Opera Company. Under Richard Bradshaw you had an artistic director / general director who was both the impresario and the fellow waving the baton, running so hard that maybe it’s no wonder that he tragically died of a heart attack; their current model is for two people –Alexander Neef and Johannes Debus—to do what used to be done by a single person.

And so while Oundjian still gives the occasional talk, I can’t help thinking that he is maybe better able to focus on his orchestra as conductor without extra duties (and excuse me if the analogy is inexact, given that Melanson had a predecessor, but not one who would step up to the microphone). Right now they seem to be in a groove. The TSO sounded good playing Mozart under Bernard Labadie the past two weeks, yet I think they sounded better tonight. We all love Mozart, but this –the large powerful works for big orchestras that we heard tonight—should be the TSO’s specialty, the works that no one else in town can or will undertake. I’ve never heard a sound from the TSO that seemed to match Roy Thomson Hall so perfectly, especially in the final portion of the concert.

Tonight’s program had wonderful overtones of profundity. All three romantic compositions — Sibelius’s Swan of Tuonela, Henri Dutilleux’s Correspondances and Berlioz’s Symphonie Fantastique— explore themes of love & death, the meaning of life, good and evil. I can’t help thinking of something R Murray Schafer said in his book My Life on Earth and Elsewhere as an indication of how far we’ve come. He spoke of the usual place of modern (especially Canadian) works on a typical concert program.

The contract read: ‘It is agreed that the work shall have a minimum duration of approximately seven(7) minutes and no longer than ten (10) minutes.’ That is, the work was to be what Canadian composers call a ‘piece de garage’, intended for performance while the patrons were parking their cars.

But tonight’s fodder for the late-arriving patrons coming from the garage wasn’t a modern piece but a classic by Sibelius! While the opening notes of his Swan of Tuonela were played over a fidgety crowd who seemed somewhat indifferent, I was surprised at how quickly they became attentive, especially once we got to Cary Ebli’s powerful English Horn solo.

The most modern edgy piece was placed second on the program and was eagerly received by a rapturous audience, because of course this was another collaboration between the TSO and soprano Barbara Hannigan. Henri Dutilleux’s understanding of Correspondances – the poem by Baudelaire that gives the work its title-  is a specialized kind of metaphysics, where we’re not in the safe realms of last week’s Mozart Requiem but instead in a place fraught with good and evil: just like life actually.

Nature is a temple where living pillars
Let escape sometimes confused words;
Man traverses it through forests of symbols
That observe him with familiar glances.

Like long echoes that intermingle from afar
In a dark and profound unity,
Vast like the night and like the light,
The perfumes, the colors and the sounds respond.

There are perfumes fresh like the skin of infants
Sweet like oboes, green like prairies,
—And others corrupted, rich and triumphant

That have the expanse of infinite things,
Like ambergris, musk, balsam and incense,
Which sing the ecstasies of the mind and senses.

Baudelaire’s poem is subtext for a series of texts sung by the soprano.

Barbara Hannigan, Peter Oundjian 2 (Malcolm Cook photo)

Soprano Barbara Hannigan, Conductor Peter Oundjian and the Toronto Symphony (photo: Malcolm Cook)

That “forest of symbols” is the forest of the symbolists, meanings that aren’t to be decoded but remain out of reach. We’re in a kind of purgatory, with Vincent van Gogh striving to express the inexpressible, with Solzhenitsyn grateful while lamenting the price his friends (Vishnevskaya especially) paid in showing solidarity. Dutilleux’s scoring sometimes pushes the soprano to sing very high, occasionally loudly, but more often we’re lower in her range, sometimes listening to something intimate & direct with the orchestra mediating. There’s a wonderful duet between an accordion and tuba. Whoever thought to leave the lights on –so that we could see the text in our programs – had a brilliant idea, as I saw lots of people doing as I did, following along with the words printed in the program. RTH was quite full, Hannigan’s reception thunderous, and I have to think it’s both her performance and the simple fact that we understood what was being sung.  Thank you Hannigan but also thanks TSO for leaving the lights on.

And yet I wonder if that’s why they were there, considering what followed, namely Berlioz’s Symphonie Fantastique. I used to own a cassette of the TSO playing this work, conducted by Seiji Ozawa from another century when I knew this as stoner music, given that Berlioz composed the first hallucinatory tunes long before anyone had heard of “Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds”. In those days the brass would fluff every now and then even while boldly doing their best. Fast forward (and not on the tape) to a time when the TSO doesn’t fluff. Saturday I’m wondering who will play what, considering that horn principal Neil Deland –who had the lovely solo in the intro to the first movement and lots of notes (with the whole section) in the second movement—is also undertaking Richard Strauss’s first horn concerto. But the whole section is rock solid, considering that we heard solos from three different horn-players tonight.

This was the most attentive Toronto Symphony audience I’ve experienced, quieter even than the Mozart Requiem a few days ago. There was only one tiny smattering of applause between movements, coming after the shattering climax of the fourth movement. I wonder if I could put in a word for the good old days –Berlioz’s time that is—when not only would there be applause between movements but even encores..? At the premiere in 1830 they encored the fourth movement. We’d been watching the trombones sitting silently, a hint of menace in the air from these people with legs spread to make room for their equipment (literally), and uh oh then they picked up their instruments. Trouble.

There’s no mistaking the chemistry though, an inevitable by-product of the trip. Oundjian is clearly in charge, the orchestra ebbing and flowing, sometimes picking up speed to end a movement as they did for the ball, the March to the Scaffold and again in the Dream of a Witches’ Sabbath. The grotesquerie was maximized, the orchestra filling Roy Thomson Hall with their big sound in the last two movements.

You can hear Oundjian lead the TSO in Symphonie Fantastique coupled with Neil Deland playing the Strauss Concerto #1 on Saturday night at Roy Thomson Hall.

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Questions for Jordan de Souza

Posted on January 28, 2016 by barczablog

Jordan de Souza, “the fast-rising young Canadian maestro with a busy international career” (Ottawa Citizen), is currently a Guest Conductor, Assistant Conductor, and Cover Conductor at the Canadian Opera Company, the National Ballet of Canada, and the Bregenz Festival (Austria), and is the newly appointed Resident Conductor for Tapestry Opera, Canada’s leading contemporary opera company.

There’s a great deal more in the bio you can find on his website.

In February Toronto audiences will encounter him

  • playing the piano in collaboration with Wallis Giunta for Tapestry Opera’s upcoming songbook VI Friday February 5th and 6th
  • as conductor with the Canadian Opera Company (Le nozze di Figaro) in performances February 23rd & 25th.

I had to ask him some questions.

1) Are you more like your father or your mother?

I feel fortunate to have inherited characteristics of both my parents and strive to be like them in many ways: I have my mother’s inward temperament (and hair) and aspire to her sense of purpose and compassion; I inherited my Dad’s cerebral matter (and love of sport) and follow the example of his love of family and work. I have both of them to thank for my love of music: being part of a large family, music was our lifeblood. (I’m the seventh of eight children, a.k.a. #LeadingTone or the best time signature of 7/8) We had four pianos in the house growing up and there were times when they were all going simultaneously!

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Pianist and Conductor Jordan de Souza (Brent Calis Photography)

2)    What is the best thing about what you do?

Music gives us the chance to be. We learn to listen and appreciate diverse vantage points, to engage as a community in a creative act that reflects the sum of its parts but has a life of its own. Poverty of mind and spirit is not a new challenge but, with art as the oxygen of society, we have the chance to understand each other and ourselves better. When the world is dark, it keeps the light inside you bright.

3) Who do you like to listen to or watch?



My favourite people to listen to are my nieces and nephews: I’m always guaranteed to discover something original, quirky, and wonderful! This season I began with the National Ballet of Canada and I’ve fallen in love with the art of dance. I’ve learned so much about music (e.g. phrasing, gesture, etc.) from watching the dancers. 

I also watch my Toronto sports teams as often as I can: I’ve been a Raptors, Jays, and Leafs fan since childhood and enjoy following their progress on my ESPN app and catching the odd game now that I’m back in Toronto. (Though I also secretly root for the San Antonio Spurs…)

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Jordan de Souza (Brent Calis Photography)

4) What ability or skill do you wish you had, that you don’t have?

I’d love to be able to dunk a basketball like Vince Carter, hit a homerun like Bautista, or dance around the pitch like Messi. Sport has always been a major passion: I admire the art of athletes as much as the athleticism of artists.

I heard a high C at the opera last week that easily warranted a bat-flip! 


5) When you’re just relaxing and not working what is your favourite thing to do?

Bass Robert Pomakov

Bass Robert Pomakov will be Dr Bartolo

I enjoy spending time with friends and family. One of the advantages of a life in music is that we meet so many people over the course of our varied projects; and we spend real, valuable moments with them. Seeing somebody every day for six weeks and going through the vulnerability of creating a theatre piece forges a certain connection. And then you don’t see them again: sometimes for three years, sometimes for ten. But when you do, it’s great to catch up and reminisce! I’m working on Figaro at the COC right now and there are two other alumni from St. Michael’s Choir School that I’ve known since I was a child: Robert Pomakov was in my older brother’s class and Michael Colvin has been familiar to me since childhood.

More about Jordan de Souza’s upcoming projects Tapestry Songbook and conducting Marriage of Figaro

1)     How was Songbook VI –the upcoming Tapestry recital with Wallis Giunta and yourself at the piano—assembled?

This is a superb endeavour by Tapestry: all the repertoire being presented was commissioned by Tapestry over the last 36 years. It’s a testament to their innovation, dedication, and longevity. The works are all at least 50% (if not 100%) Canadian: that is, the librettist and/or composer is Canadian (with half the pairing sometimes an import such as a Scot, Irishman, or American). The rep is incredibly varied and showcases a wide range of musical expression. Consider that while all of these works might not have been homeruns as a whole, they each have some really thoughtful and moving musico-dramatic scenes. It will be a pleasure to collaborate with so many talented young artists, as well as my dear friends Wally and Michael, in bringing them to life again. A veritable treasure trove of Canadian dramatic music!

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2)     At the same time that you’re preparing the songbook – a recital by you on piano in collaboration with Wallis Giunta, you’re also preparing to conduct The Marriage of Figaro at the Canadian Opera Company later in the run.  Could you talk about stretching yourself, reconciling piano & conducting, modern singing with Mozart? 

Conductors have a universal disease that propels us to be eternally immersed in as much music as possible. For me, I seem to have avoided specialization by loving too much diverse repertoire. I love working on Bach and Mozart as much as Verdi and Puccini, Strauss (either) and Wagner, or contemporary repertoire. Each informs the other. Understanding rhetoric, Affektenlehre, and the lack of diacritical markings in baroque music shapes me as a musician and, while I wouldn’t play Verdi like Bach, I can’t look at f-minor as an innocuous tonal region or sing the interval of a rising seventh without feeling the reverb of the rhetorical idea of exclamatio. Anything that brings this music to life in our imagination (i.e. left side of the brain serving the right) is encouraged. Regarding the piano vs. conducting, I think it’s crucial for conductors to stay in touch with an instrument: we must actively make music in a chamber setting in order to stay fresh in enabling others from the podium. 

3)     If you were offered the chance is there any opera or piece of music you’d like to perform either with Tapestry or with anyone else in Toronto?

I’m not a big bucket list guy: I’m too engrossed in what I’m doing presently to think about what I’d rather be doing; perhaps it’s one existential crisis too many. But if you asked me right now to choose any opera to conduct next month… La forza del destino just popped into my head. 

4)     Is there a teacher or influence you’d care to name that you especially admire?

Too many to name! Suffice it to say that musicians are some of the most fortunate because we have a built-in system of mentorship. We would be searching in the dark (which is sometimes good) without the guidance of those who have walked the path before us. I’ve had the pleasure of studying with several wonderful mentors who understand that failure is necessary and acceptable, and that criticism can be a positive and creative agent. But above all, they’ve taught me that as an artist, you get to create the world. So why not use some imagination?

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Jordan de Souza will be collaborating with Wallis Giunta in Tapestry’s Songbook VI on Friday February 5th and 6th,  and conducting the Canadian Opera Company’s production of Marriage of Figaro February 23 & 25.

 

 

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Tafelmusik: Season Launch 16/17

Posted on January 27, 2016 by barczablog

Tis the season. At a time of year when it can be so cold that one prefers to dream of next year (even if it’s been unseasonably warm to begin 2016), the major classical music organizations make their big announcements.

Tafelmusik’s event “Season Launch 16/17 enacts everything in miniature that this orchestra stands for.  The event was for a small circle of key donors, including a lovely series of performances, led by Mira Glodeanu as director & violin soloist. At this point I’d like to quote the press release which said the following:

“In June 2014 Jeanne Lamon stepped down as Music Director, and is continuing as Tafelmusik’s Chief Artistic Advisor until her successor is appointed. Tafelmusik’s Music Director search committee, consisting of musicians, board members, administrative staff, and community representatives, has searched Canada and the world to identify possible candidates. Tafelmusik continues to work with candidates as guest directors to assess musical fit and chemistry, and to allow the orchestra to become better acquainted with them. Given the breadth of Tafelmusik’s repertoire, potential candidates must perform music from a wide range of eras with the orchestra. Tafelmusik will also continue to work with a number of guest directors who are not candidates, but who are a delight to welcome to the stage.”

Whether Glodeanu is one of the ongoing series of possible music directors or simply a guest, I cannot say, but it was a friendly stress-free performance of works by Venturini, Tartini, Vivaldi, J.S Bach and finally Rameau.

It was not a big glitzy event full of fanfare.  This was intimate and very thoughtful. While they are all great musicians, they are first and foremost the nerdiest and most unpretentious lovers of what they do. They wear their hearts on their sleeves. And so they thanked their donors –who were the quiet audience—but not in the cheer-leading fashion we see at the TSO or the COC. There was more of a level playing field, the great artists speaking as equals to their family of donors, the people who really get them at a deep level, and who have committed to making important things such as tours, training programs & experimental programming possible.

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Alison Mackay, bassist & visionary programmer

I was enormously impressed when Alison Mackay took the stage to speak about her special contribution to next season. In past seasons she’s offered creative programs that make older music brand new, showing us original ways of understand the relationship between music and its context in the lives of people from the past, with concerts such as House of Dreams and The Galileo Project.

Her next project may be the most ambitious and profound yet, namely Visions & Voyages: Canada 1663 – 1763 . Just as the COC & TSO are making special programming to commemorate the 150th anniversary of Canadian confederation (COC with Louis Riel, TSO with a promise of special commissions to Canadian composers, details still TBA next week), so too for Tafelmusik, via Mackay, who is almost like their artistic conscience. Instead of zeroing in on 1867 – a year far beyond the usual purview of this orchestra—they’re looking instead to a key century, bringing us context via the music that Europeans would have listened to in those key years of our past. I’m eager to see this project take shape, which is genuinely ambitious and visionary.

The season and this orchestra remain firmly rooted in the baroque, from their season-opener with Handel’s “Water Music”, a program of arias by Karina Gauvin titled “The Baroque Diva”, a program of works by other members of the Bach family than old J.S., and their annual Messiahs in December.

“Close Encounters” take Tafelmusik in a new direction with a series of chamber concerts on Saturdays.

It’s a happy coincidence that the orchestra are simultaneously seeking a new artistic director –since Jeanne Lamon’s departure—and commemorating the 35th year of their chamber choir led by Ivars Taurins, which (if I don’t miss my guess) means he’ll conduct a bit more than usual this season. In addition to Messiah we’ll be getting “Let Us All Sing! Tafelmusik Chamber Choir at 35”, a celebratory program in November 2016; “A Bach Tapestry” including the Mass in G Minor in Feb 2017; and Mozart’s C minor mass in May 2017.

Tafelmusik will also be touring extensively, to Asia in November 2016, USA in Feb-March 2017, as well as their participation with Opera Atelier in another visit to Versailles, this time to offer Charpentier’s Medée.

But in the immediate future? Beethoven’s Ninth in a series of concerts next week that will be recorded, making them the first North American period instrument band to have recorded the complete set of these symphonies.

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Opera Atelier’s 2016-2017 Season

Posted on January 26, 2016 by barczablog

Opera Atelier’s 2016-2017 Season, celebrating Canada’s Sesquicentennial, will include Purcell’s Dido and Aeneas in October and Charpentier’s Medea in April.

Dido and Aeneas will star Wallis Giunta and Christopher Enns in the title roles, with Laura Pudwell (Sorceress) and Meghan Lindsay (Belinda).

Medea features soprano Peggy Kriha Dye and Canadian tenor Colin Ainsworth in the lead roles of Medea and Jason. The cast also includes Mireille Asselin (Créuse), Meghan Lindsay (Nérine), Jesse Blumberg (Oronte), Karine White (Cléone), Stephen Hegedus, Christopher Enns and Kevin Skelton.

The tour of Medea to Versailles (May 19, 20 and 21, 2017) is Opera Atelier’s special project in honour of Canada’s sesquicentennial.

Dido and Aeneas and Medea will be directed by Marshall Pynkoski and choreographed by Jeannette Lajeunesse Zingg, with set design by Gerard Gauci and lighting design by Michelle Ramsay. Both productions will feature the full corps of Artists of Atelier Ballet, and Tafelmusik Baroque Orchestra under the baton of David Fallis.

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TSO Stage Mozart Requiem

Posted on January 24, 2016 by barczablog

We were all invested with a sense of community. As I sat making notes afterwards, Joseph Johnson’s solo cello kept playing away, as though he didn’t want to go home.

I think it’s fair to say that so far Jeff Melanson is making good on his promise to make the Toronto Symphony “the most innovative, inclusive orchestra in the world.”

The buzz around the program this week to conclude the Mozart @260 Festival (a semi-staged Mozart Requiem causing sold out houses all week) was unmistakeable. Conducted by Bernard Labadie, directed by Joel Ivany, sung by the joint forces of the Amadeus Choir & Elmer Iseler Singers led by Lydia Adams, and soloists Lydia Teuscher, Allyson McHardy, Frédéric Antoun and Philippe Sly, this was a Requiem unlike any other.

Let me repeat, we were all invested. How? I assume it was Ivany’s idea, a clever little ritual before the performance began.

We were given blank cards as we came in.

Melanson asked us in his pre-concert introduction to write the name or names of someone whose passing we would choose to celebrate or mourn. A new ritual & convention of mourning was invented on the spot.

It didn’t mean anything right away.

And then to begin the concert the TSO Chamber Soloists played a kind of overture, the slow movement from the K581 Clarinet Quintet. As Joaquin Valdepenas, Jonathan Crow, Mark Skazinetsky, Teng Li and Joseph Johnson played an ultra-soft reading of the movement (that is, with a quieter dynamic range than usual, surely in keeping with the occasion & its purpose), we watched a slow processional up the aisles of Roy Thomson Hall, as the chorus members and the orchestral players walked in slowly, depositing their own cards on two well-lit slabs, and took their places. For me this created a sense that we were all invested, that we each had this symbolic connection to the event, to our predecessors, to our collective memory. Those cards were powerfully evocative, reminding me of the cards posted after the twin towers came down, as survivors sought the missing.

Each of us used the card in our own way, but this abstract template furnished a place where we all met.

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My thumb, my card, my loved-ones’ names.

My own photo that I show here against the view of the stage has two names on it, corresponding to loved ones I remember.  I am sure some people wrote a lot more. But it was a private thing that i’m sharing here even as it was at the same time, communal: not unlike mourning itself.

Ivany took on a daunting task, to direct a beloved work in a conservative town. He’d already done well with Messiah via Against the Grain, and clearly has caught the attention of the great and powerful, both at the COC (who have him directing Carmen later this season) as well as the TSO. Ivany has shown his penchant for daringly original re-writes of well-known works that don’t flout their newness, not guilty of any of the sins attributed to Regietheater (aka “director’s theatre”) because he normally leaves the plot or subject matter essentially intact but framed in a new way.

The card motif became a part of the staging as the loose piles of cards are eventually organized and given something like a place of honour on the stage with the soloists. A mimed ritual honouring our collective memory is enacted, while the Requiem is sung. It’s highly abstract, likely containing subtexts, but it does no harm to the original, allowing each of us to celebrate and mourn, or at least drink in the Mozart in our own way. Notice that we not only saw innovation but inclusiveness too.

Instead of stiff bodies and enforced cold distance, we had moments of contact between performers onstage, gestures of comfort and condolence, and a sense of catharsis by the end.

The TSO played wonderfully, inspired by the occasion and Labadie, who often took them at a historically informed clip, their playing clean and elegant. Adams’ choirs made the most exquisite readings I’ve ever heard (live or on record), their Latin words enunciated more clearly to my ear than that of most of the soloists.

What more could one ask for? I’m glad I got to see it, and do hope the TSO will repeat this or offer a similar experiment sometime soon.

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Ephemerality seeks eternity

Posted on January 23, 2016 by barczablog

It’s early morning:

  • after having seen a workshop of The Harvester last night
  • before seeing Joel Ivany’s take on the Mozart Requiem with the Toronto Symphony tonight

I just re-read what I wrote about the workshop last April to which Joel invited me, played by Jenna Douglas (I’m thinking of her too, as she goes away for awhile, but perhaps will still be virtually present).  Last April we saw a workshop + talkback, that has serendipitous echoes in what I saw last night. How lucky am I, that I just happened to see a workshop of a new work last night, to take me back to the first fruits of Joel’s creative adventure coming to fruition with the TSO under the baton of Bernard Labadie this week?

I may have been a bit irritating in the talk back last night, as I sat there like a self-appointed dramaturg. The others said their appreciations and thank you’s, but i wanted to probe the new work and ask “what does it do?” That’s very much what i wanted to report in what i wrote last night afterwards, to bear witness after a fashion, and to be as helpful as i could be to the creative team. The music-drama process can be so deep and profound, one doesn’t always recognize just how powerful the forces and parts are, that are in play. I think it’s because I was already remembering what I saw last April (coincidentally during Holy Week), in the Mozart Requiem workshop. I had wanted to understand what was happening in April 2015 as I wanted to understand the new opera in 2016. And thinking about both with the passage of time (morning after the new opera, or more than half a year after the Mozart experiment), I feel different again, and have to let those feelings go because there’s almost too much to explore. In fact what I distinctly recall about Joel’s creation –that time with a piano, four soloists and four more soloists in effect performing the chorus—was that there was so much going on, it was almost too much to take in, a very rich and challenging mix of movements and the very new experience of hearing the Requiem sung this way: which would already have been brand-new had we been watching, say Chris Enns and Ambur Braid simply stand and deliver with the four chorus soloists with piano , not also bend / contort / emote and also deliver. It was one of the most impressive things I’ve seen by the way, a curious creative cul-de-sac never to be visited again, because it’s just a trial version of something else, like an experimental hybrid in a scientist’s garden.

Those flowers live on in our memories.

I was updating my CV the past few days, looking at who I am while fumbling over memories of what I’ve done and not finished, including original works, adaptations and other roles I’d undertaken. I keep coming back to something about live theatre and music, a fact that is ever slipping through my fingers, about the ephemerality of it all. Life slips away from us, and what was here and immediate becomes older like the paper from programmes piled on a shelf, among other memories of other projects.

Music and theatre both could be characterized as a kind of proposition. I use that word enjoying the connotations of a relationship. Do we want something immediately sensual or something permanent and comfortable? Or both? In some ways the same questions that come up in our mating apply to our experience of art.

Mozart’s own work on his Requiem is a testimony both to eternity –in the resonance we feel in his use of the latin texts of the requiem mass—and temporality, in the fragmentary nature of what he actually finished. It addresses the whole world at times, while at other times is like his own interior monologue, his own suffering. I see this most clearly in the adaptation of the music in the closing portions of the film Amadeus, where “confutatis maledictis” (confound the accursed) is powerfully intoned, and juxtaposed immediately with “voca me” (literally “call me”), as though a desperate sad prayer sung by Mozart (Tom Hulce) in the vulnerable and pathetic voice of a fragile mortal man, dying before our eyes while pleading for salvation (“call me” again reminding me of that popular song, someone wanting a relationship: this time with God).

What survives? A little bit of the creator lives on even as we confront mortality. We remember the ones who sang, the ones who staged & brought a little of themselves before us. Then we walk out of the theatre, perhaps remembering some of what we felt.  

When I said “ephemerality seeks eternity” in the headline, I was phrasing it a bit like a proposition you’d see in a singles ad, like “SWM seeks SWF”, or “aging composer seeks immortality”. I have no idea whether these early morning thoughts will have any echoes in what the TSO will do tonight. I was just thinking that it’s new (premiered Thursday), and already it’s over. Saturday night is the closing night. All that work that the various singers did, memorizing their parts: and tomorrow it becomes a memory. And while I am grateful for recordings- like the paper in a marriage contract to help to seal the deal- what’s on paper is not to be mistaken for life, the honesty and vulnerability of live performance.

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The Harvester: an operatic workshop

Posted on January 23, 2016 by barczablog
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Soprano Stacie Dunlop

The Harvester is a play by Paul van Dyck, identified as an intriguing story for adaptation into an opera by soprano Stacie Dunlop, who was looking for a new piece to share the bill with Erwartung (a work she was going to sing).  When she saw the play she approached the playwright to create a libretto out of his play, which he did.  That libretto was then set to music by composer Aaron Gervais.

Tonight I witnessed a workshop presented by FAWN Chamber Creative (a group I asssociate with FAWN Opera) in partnership with Aradia Ensemble.

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(L-R) Playwright & librettist Paul van Dyck, FAWN Opera artistic director Amanda Smith, Composer Aaron Gervais, and Aradia Artistic Director Kevin Mallon

Dunlop and baritone Alex Dobson gave us a semi-staged presentation with Katherine Dowling at the piano, conducted by the composer, in a score that will eventually be done by a medium-sized ensemble to be led by Aradia Music Director Kevin Mallon. Mallon, van Dyck and Gervais each gave us a bit of an introduction concerning the work, followed by the performance, a talk-back session and finally a more informal reception.

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Baritone Alexander Dobson (Photo credit Jimmy Song.)

I wanted more. The work that I saw presented tonight is a science – fiction opera, a close-up glimpse of a post—apocalyptic dystopia. While I believe that the playwright understands his story very much in terms of its realism (thinking more of dramaturgy and style than the matter of the story), I saw it very much in symbolic terms. These two views aren’t incompatible. The story unfolds believably (ergo realism) yet it concerns a man and a woman professing diametrically opposite views: as though to suggest a fundamental myth of our species, where the man and machines are part of a strategy associated with the ruin of the planet and its ecology, the woman, against the machines and seeking to heal that ruination.

And so when I say that I want more, I mean that the story was so rich with associations that I felt it could have been drawn out much longer in the musical setting. I was hungry to see more of each character, just to get closer to them, to see more of them, and especially to get deeper into their music. But of course what I am saying is in a sense the very antithesis to what one might intuitively believe is a viable commercial path – a shorter work that gets to its climax sooner—even if placing “commercially viable” and “opera” into the same sentence seems oxymoronic, given the rarity of any opera catching on.

Having seen FAWN’s methodical approach, gradually bringing Adam Scime’s L’homme et le ciel into the world and finally staging it in 2015, it’s thrilling to hear of the plan to enlarge The Harvester in its future presentations, gradually incorporating Aradia and a more comprehensive staging.

Common to both operas (Scime’s work and today’s workshop) is FAWN Artistic Director Amanda Smith, who directed the action on the stage using a bit of clever costuming (designed by Lindsay Woods), set, elaborate props and fully developed characterizations from Dobson & Dunlop. When I read some of the reviews of the play from a previous production, I can’t help thinking that the operatic treatment is helpful. There were several moments that I accepted with absolute conviction.  I find the suspension of disbelief with an opera much easier than in a spoken play.

But I wanted more, wished it were longer.

I will keep my ear to the ground, to make sure I hear about the next stage in the creation of the work. I’ll let you know.

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La bonne chanson @ RBA

Posted on January 21, 2016 by barczablog

Today’s noon-hour concert at the Richard Bradshaw Amphitheatre was the first collaboration between the Canadian Opera Company’s Ensemble Studio and the COC Orchestra Academy.  As I so often do I’ll begin with a preamble, one that corresponds to the gap between my expectation and the actual recital.

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(l-r) cellist Drew Comstock, violinist Hua-Chu Huang, bassist Doug Ohashi, violist Meagan Turner, and violinist Yada Lee,

This is the third year of the COC-OA, a three-week intensive program, drawing upon students from the Glenn Gould School at the Royal Conservatory of Music and the University of Toronto’s Faculty of Music.  This year’s five  are mostly from the GGS:

  • GGS cellist Drew Comstock
  • GGS violinist Hua-Chu Huang
  • GGS violinist Yada Lee
  • GGS bassist Doug Ohashi
  • U of T violist Meagan Turner
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The COC Orchestra and Conductor Johannes Debus. (Photo – Michael Cooper)

The program is a kind of residency including time playing in the orchestra alongside professional mentors.  I understand that the five played last night’s epic dress rehearsal of Siegfried, and today –likely riding the same emotional high mentioned by our host & Master of Ceremonies Johannes Debus—they had to play a very different sort of music in a different venue. Where an orchestra pit is a dark place where you might be able to hide (even if Johannes & your mentor likely hears your errors) the RBA concert is the exact opposite, in its exposed playing, in a kind of fishbowl.  I’m sure some dread this kind of thing, although Drew Comstock seemed very confident as he stepped into the limelight for the introduction to the second—and lengthier—piece on the program by a Mendelssohn.

I came because the title of the concert made me eager to hear “La bonne chanson” of Fauré, to hear Jean-Philippe Fortier-Lazure sing, in collaboration with pianist Anne Larlee and the five member COCOA (hm… I like chocolate.. perhaps that’s why I enjoyed COCOA?).  While we may be Canadians in a bilingual country, one rarely gets this kind of treat, namely hearing a francophone clearly articulating a subtle piece such as this one in French.   Fortier-Lazure sang long phrases, clear sentences, occasionally opening up the throttle to offer us a passionate mezzo-forte. He puts me in mind of a recording I have of Les Troyens conducted by Charles Dutoit, employing a francophone chorus from Quebec, an eye-opener for me after having heard the way the Met chorus chopped the same work up into a series of discreet syllables of unintelligible gobbledy-gook.  This is very intimate ecstatic music (oh my, a song cycle from a happy person? that almost sounds like an oxymoron). I’m also mindful of Brahm Goldhamer’s subtle playing a few days ago at the RCM, where a small space created an opportunity for gentle music—making.

Fortier-Lazure has a fabulous operatic tenor that we heard for example in Barber of Seville about half a year ago; but he opted for some of the subtlest singing I’ve heard in the RBA space.  It’s a live room to be sure, but with some rep one really must resist the temptation to push. Fortier-Lazure took that quieter road.

I had to wonder how the seven players understood their relationship.  In the old days one might have thought that the musicians must accompany the voice, but that’s not what I saw.  Fortier-Lazure sang at times as though himself an ensemble musician rather than a singer, with no apparent ego on display. That the text is about images of flow and nature and love makes it all the better that we saw such a fluid interaction.

The big piece by a Mendelssohn?  The e-flat string Octet.  When I get a bit ambiguous about the composer it’s in response to the possibility –introduced to me in Comstock’s introduction—that the Octet (and perhaps the famous violin concerto!?) might have been composed by Felix’s sister.  I have no data (say it ain’t so, Giacomo!), only the memory of my outrage when I lost “pur ti miro”, snatched by a scholar in the 1990s from another famous composer whose name begins with M.

Whoever wrote the octet, it’s a very different sort of gig from playing hours of Wagner in the orchestra pit.  Three of the four movements go quite fast, including a great deal of exposed playing for everyone.  I was thinking that it’s not just a test for the COCOA but for their mentors as well.  For this work bassist Ohashi sat down, while the other four were joined by COC Orchestra players Paul Widner, assistant principal cello, Keith Hamm, principal viola, plus violinists Marie Bérard (concertmaster) and James Aylesworth.

Violist Hamm seemed especially comfortable in the spotlight, perhaps the de facto leader of the ensemble, as violists sometimes are, even if Bérard played an enormous number of notes, almost as though it’s her concerto (especially in the first movement).   After my close-up look at the Toronto Symphony earlier this month, I can’t help thinking about the ecology of this orchestra, the ways that this kind of exercise –the mentoring of the young players, and the chamber music recital—is valuable in building the orchestra, valuable for the Music Director and the community of music he wants to grow.  On the heels of last night’s immense opera, it was a delicious performance.

Debus & Alexander Neef were present for this charming hour of music-making, a very different sort of concert from the usual.

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COC Music Director Johannes Debus and COC General Director Alexander Neef. (Photo: bohuang.ca)

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