A fit of Christmas musick against Christmas music: Toronto Consort’s The Little Barley-Corne

Posted on November 23, 2014 by barczablog

Come for the rant, stay for the review.

If you’re like me, you’re conflicted about Advent, a period before Christmas. While the season of Advent isn’t quite here yet (meaning the four Sundays before Christmas, ergo, Sundays Nov 30 + Dec 7, 14 and 21) that hasn’t stopped the commercial machinery that puts Christmas music out there into stores. Perhaps you’re not yet overwhelmed, but then again maybe you haven’t been shopping. I saw crazy behaviour today on the streets, cars already packing their way into places of commerce.

Music was once for me the most innocent aspect of the season, the most direct appeal to the child in all of us, meaning, the part of me that perversely managed to remain innocent when all else around me persuaded me to be cynical and lose hope. The carols & songs of this season –both Advent & Christmas—were a direct pathway to my heart.
And of course there was a year awhile ago when something stopped clicking. It used to be that each year I could listen to each song afresh and be rejuvenated in my attitude, as though the new church year (that begins on that first Sunday of Advent) also represented my own rebirth. Like the baby Jesus I would be reborn each year with the new music.

Except that one year: something changed.

Does it happen to all of us? One year I noticed that some of the songs –even hearing them for the first time that year—didn’t quite move me as well as they had in past years. The endless cycle seemed to be broken, somehow. And so I was aware that I my capacity for magic and faith had been drained if not completely burnt out. It’s the moment when the songs stop rejuvenating you, when they’re just songs, chords, harmonies, words, angels and shepherds and sentiment that is just an attitude and no longer something genuine.

So of course when I walk into a store and hear the tunes that once were pious I am particularly enraged.  If I could do it without getting arrested, I’d start pelting merchandise at the speakers, because i find the music in stores to be something evil, something that’s stealing our innocence and perverting our children.  There’s nothing angelic about music that’s meant to stir your will to spend money, something to make even George Orwell blanch.

It’s as though my tender feelings that had once inspired me were now being mocked by the annual orgy of greed. From time to time I find a tune in the hymnal or a performance by a colleague in church or at one of the annual Messiahs will pull me out of my torpor and revivify something that’s almost gone: faith in Christmas as something more than an annual boost to the retail industry.

coming soon

And so I am especially excited to report that I just listened to something extraordinary! Toronto Consort’s The Little Barley-Corne is a CD subtitled “Christmas Revels from the Renaissance”. The music is sufficiently unfamiliar that it doesn’t sound like a Christmas CD at all. There are a couple of tunes we know from Christmas, but none of them are done in that insufferably pious way you used to find on TV Christmas specials (sorry if that dates me).

The only one I ever liked was the one where the Swedish Chef sings with Big Bird, whom he mistook for the Christmas Törkey (or something like that), and then starts to cry sentimentally when the big yellow guy gives him chocolate covered birdseed. How can you kill a bird that’s so thoughtful?

Time to change the menu!

I hope that doesn’t make you cry into your iphone (although my Swedish friends will be excused if they want to hurl abuse at me…oh well!)

But let me back up. That CD from Toronto Consort?  It transported me to another time, both historically and personally: to the time before my connection to Christmas got messed up by commercialization of the season. Can one turn back the clock? I think so. The performances are remarkable, sounding simultaneously unpretentious, yet meticulous. This doesn’t sound like the accuracy of hard-nosed scholars; there’s too much fun being had for that. It’s often syncopated and danceable, but with so much variety that you can’t stop listening. The accents are all remarkable in several languages yet these sound like people celebrating in their own tongue, a true Christmas celebration.  For now I have this music endlessly on the car CD player. It will be a long time before I can even associate the infectious rhythms with Christmas, let alone lose my sense of joy in these tunes.

And if you want to check this out in person, The Toronto Consort will be presenting a live version Dec 12-14.

Here’s the PR for the concerts:

“David Greenberg, who has been called “one of the most impassioned folk fiddlers you’ll ever hear” joins forces with the Toronto Consort to throw a fabulous Christmas party of rollicking English ballads, infectious country dances and enchanting French noels.”

Dec 12-14 at Jeanne Lamon Hall in the Trinity St –Paul’s Centre, 427 Bloor St W. Box office 416-964-6337, torontoconsort.org

They say the CD will be available at the concerts, although I think you will be able to get it –or download tracks—on the website soon.  For now, there are samples there (click the image below).

Posted in Music and musicology, Reviews, Spirituality & Religion | Tagged | 2 Comments

Beethoven, Nielsen and Mozart: TSO & Jan Lisiecki

Posted on November 23, 2014 by barczablog

Tonight was the last of the mini-festival of three programs / five concerts from the Toronto Symphony ostensibly featuring the music of Carl Nielsen & two of his big influences, namely Mozart & Beethoven.

It’s as though there were two parallel festivals:

  • Nielsen compositions conducted by Danish conductor Thomas Dausgaard to commemorate his 150th birthday “this season” (the anniversary falling in 2015)
  • The last three Beethoven piano concerti played by Canadian prodigy Jan Lisiecki.

Hype notwithstanding, many in the audience were clearly there to hear Lisiecki ‘s Beethoven, judging by the size of the exodus at intermission. The huge ovation afterwards encouraged an encore, and it was a Chopin nocturne.

It’s funny but I was already thinking of Chopin during the concerto, namely the 5th aka the “Emperor”. Lisiecki gave us a very romantic Emperor, enlarging the dynamic range; while it’s usually from pp to ff, the quiet passages were more like three p’s (whatever that would be called), if not four. In the slow movement the tempi changed a few times, leading conductor Dausgaard a merry chase, because the solos were at times so soft that they were almost impossible to hear. I was reminded of rubati such as you’d find in the Chopin 1st concerto. With this performance I couldn’t help noticing large parallels between the two works, separated by only about twenty years in the year of composition. It’s only problematic to those who are fundamentalists (those who wouldn’t abide tampering with their precious Beethoven), as the delicacy of the reading was revelatory. I had to remind myself that Lisiecki is still very young (is he even 20 yet?), as this was a very mature, even profound probing of the depths in the Beethoven, and a legitimate approach.

Lisiecki sounded wonderfully original at the end of the second movement, in the transition leading into the last movement. The slow first utterance of the theme for the third movement is written “pp” (as I just discovered, looking it up). And I guess this is the first time I’ve ever heard it played as written(!). All those notes usually come out quite a bit louder from soloists, perhaps a mezzo-piano, and never as delicate as a true pianissimo: which is what Lisiecki gave us.

And so when the third movement began we had a true and overpowering contrast in the fortissimo solo statement of the theme that follows. And I was surprised at how quickly it was played, possibly the fastest I’ve ever heard in a live performance. When the orchestra made their entry they were ready to give pursuit, and so the whole movement was at that quick pace, light and infectiously rhythmic, up to and including a breath-taking reading of the last quicksilver runs from Lisiecki leading to the last note.

Pianist Jan Lisiecki (photo: Mathias Bothor-- DG)

Pianist Jan Lisiecki (photo: Mathias Bothor– DG)

Lisiecki is fascinating to watch, his growing maturity already in evidence. He’s not exactly a veteran but he’s been a prodigy for awhile now, as the 2009 CBC documentary “The Reluctant Prodigy” would suggest (part one | part two).

He has remarkable posture, sitting very tall with no visible effort except in a few big passages. He sits straight up even when playing and seems to have enormous strength and stamina. There are times when you can’t see that he’s playing, because he is so effortless, so relaxed at the keyboard.

Works such as the Nielsen are precisely what I want to hear from the Toronto Symphony. I recognize that the audience probably want to hear Beethoven and Mozart, but those are composers one hears all over town (ie from Tafelmusik as well), whereas Nielsen can’t be heard anywhere else. This big sound requires a huge orchestra of modern instruments. With Dausgaard they had a champion of Nielsen, someone possibly pushing the players to another level. No, Nielsen will never be the draw that Beethoven can be, but that’s why this festival was an example of brilliant programming.

Nielsen in this instance sounds like the missing link between Mahler and Shostakovich, an exponent of huge orchestral sounds. The first movement begins with a kind of chaotic blur of repeated notes not so very different from the way Beethoven’s 9th opens (speaking of Beethoven’s influence). Like Shostakovich’s Fifth, a military mood in the brass & percussion seems to invade the piece, literally disrupting something that was peaceful up to that point.  The explosive sounds coming from the orchestra are very enjoyable, sometimes sounding like a big debate between the sections.  The final moments came together in a kind of perfect and clear statement of the theme, bringing the audience to their feet.

To open we heard a reading of the Don Giovanni overture, beginning with the most misterioso reading I’ve ever heard ot the first subject, creating a wonderful sense of drama before the boisterous allegro began.

This was the last concert in the series.

TSO Nov 20, 2014 Thomas Dausgaard, conductor and Jan Lisiecki, piano (photograph: Malcolm Cook)

TSO Nov 20, 2014 Thomas Dausgaard, conductor and Jan Lisiecki, piano (photograph: Malcolm Cook)

Posted in Music and musicology, Reviews | Leave a comment

Maghan McPhee: Portrait

Posted on November 22, 2014 by barczablog

I missed seeing Carmen on Tap last summer, a version of Bizet’s masterpiece seen around the province (including Toronto) last summer. If I’d known that Maghan McPhee was in the show I would have made more of an effort to see it. I knew her when she was a young student –we sang at the same church—and recall a clear powerful soprano and a terrific sense of humour. Nowadays she seems to be mostly in Ottawa where she teaches voice at Carleton U and sang recently at the National Arts Centre.  As luck would have it our paths haven’t crossed since then. I didn’t read the cast list for Carmen on Tap until just now as I was googling to see what she’s been up to: playing Micaela, the soprano who’s the natural foil to Carmen. 

I’ve been listening to McPhee’s new CD Portrait, a collection of songs from a broad assortment of composers, namely Massenet, Mozart, Schubert, Ravel and Menotti. McPhee is well matched by Parvaneh Eshghi piano, each of the five composers requiring a different sound at the piano. This is no longer a student’s voice but a mature singer with full command of her instrument, precise in her attacks, and stylish in her approach to the songs. The collaboration between Eshghi & McPhee makes a very different sort of music for each composer.

If one uses such diverse styles in a “Portrait” this must be a person of multiple dimensions.

The Massenet shines with the warmth of a summer morning, a happy celebration of life & love. Massenet rewards the good singer by offering wonderful expressive phrases, not for the faint of heart but delicious if sung with enough accuracy yet not so much as to be overly controlled.  If one can find a true sense of abandon, you’re in heaven, which is very much how McPhee lets her notes fly. McPhee truly lets go in the passionate phrases floating upwards without any difficulty.

The Mozart group are more restrained: or at least the first ones are.  The fourth is “Abendempfindung” , a song I’ve never encountered before, with a dark sense of gravitas suggestive of romanticism, or perhaps more accurately “sturm und drang”. It doesn’t sound like Mozart, but rather like a bold step beyond what he’d done before. McPhee gives it a noble urgency appropriate to the text.

With the Ravel set things click especially well. McPhee sounds (again) totally fluid in French, floating the notes without any noticeable sense of effort. The music sounds playful & fun. When she comes to “Tout gai!“ the concluding number in the set, she’s hit her stride, and everything really is joyful.

There are two more ambitious sections on the CD.

The Menotti songs? It’s ironic that the songs in English require more effort. The ones in German & French seduce whether one understand the text or not, simply with the wonders of a lovely melody soaring on a good voice. The five Menotti songs include a range from light-hearted and playful to more ironic and serious sentiments. I don’t love them although McPhee gives them a good account. I think part of the problem is that I’ve been listening to these songs in the car, where I can be swept up in the vocalism even when I’m not paying attention, but the Menotti simply requires more attention to be properly heard. They’re not as compelling as the Massenet, the Ravel, the Mozart…

click image to preview or download

Or the Schubert! I left mention of that until last, because it’s the most impressive. “Der Hirt auf dem Felsen” is an ambitious piece from Schubert intended to show off a virtuoso voice accompanied by piano and clarinet. Eshghi and McPhee are joined by Shauna McDonald clarinet. The vocal line soars as if through the wild mountainous terrain, arpeggiating and jumping full octaves and more. There’s an old recording by Elly Ameling that I admired, which she sings with great accuracy even if she sings everything –including the high B—very lightly.  But I believe the song was meant to be sung by a powerful voice, in other words by a voice like McPhee’s, and she delivers. I can’t get it out of my head but then again, I don’t want to get it out of my head. I’ve listened to it four or five times in the past day or two. I’d call it the highlight of the album, although the Mozart & the Ravel and the Massenet are all pretty good too.

And in case you had any doubts, next time she’s in town I’ll make more of an effort to get out to hear her sing.

Posted in Music and musicology, Reviews | Tagged , , , , , , | 3 Comments

Social media and performance: bane or boon?

Posted on November 19, 2014 by barczablog

To tweet or not to tweet: that is the question.

Saturday night at the Tapestry Briefs performance, Artistic Director Michael Mori invited the audience to employ social media, to post to Facebook or to tweet.  He even gave us the appropriate hashtags to use (although I used the wrong ones).

I know people who detest any signs of a smartphone in a theatre.  To go into a theatre and tweet during the performance felt like a transgressive act, a violation of the usual rules.

I didn’t see any stipulations, such as “wait until each 5 minute play is over,” or “if you’re going to post remarks to Facebook please sit where your screen won’t bother your neighbours”.  Nobody said that.  We were as far as I know, free to be where we wanted, to tweet or post as we wished.  I was grateful because it meant I didn’t need to bring pen & paper to make notes, that I could use my smartphone for that purpose.  But I was only comfortable hiding myself and my glowing screen in the back row.  As Tapestry Briefs gets us to move around from space to space, I chose the back row each time.  Those of you who know my preferences will know this is also against my personal grain.  I always try to sit in the front row whenever possible, and love getting into it if possible with the performers.

But this time I chose the back row.

And so I tweeted a couple of banal comments, beginning before the show.

  • #tapestryopera #boostershots seems like a good idea tweet tweet sip sip
  • #tapestryopera whiskey envy: living in Scarborough need to drive home. Can I get that scotch in a takeout cup?? Please?
  • Green tea! #tapestrybriefs has something for all even the teetotaller mmmm not bad
  • #tapestrybriefs full house tonight in a show true to the distillery district’s roots

The operas began.  It’s impossible to tweet during a 5 minute show, you’d miss it if you put your head down. There’s a tiny gap between each.

Hm, in that brief pause between tweeting makes sense (for once). There’s no time for more than about 50 characters.

And then I came into another space and got a bit too cocky I suppose.  No one stipulated where I should sit, but this time I sat as I usually did: in the front row.  And of course that’s when I was told to put my phone away and to stop by one of the officials of Tapestry.

I felt toyed with.  And tweets –even banal stupid ones like the ones i made– are free advertising. There I am puffing their show and they tell me to stop?

My review used an analogy that may seem wrong.

As I drove home I was thinking that Michael’s invitation might be a bit like the Emancipation Proclamation, a decree only as meaningful as the functionaries & bureaucrats who could make it real. All I can say –and I think Michael likely agrees with me—is that while most in the theatre probably still hate the smartphone, there are probably ways to make it work. I sat for part of the show in the very back row, so as to avoid upsetting anyone with my glowing screen.

But in that analogy where I invoke the Emancipation Proclamation, is the tweeter like a slave seeking freedom?  Or are the audience members –the ones forced to endure that glowing little phone—more like the ones oppressed at every turn by social media morons like myself, seeking liberation from the glow and the tap tap tap?

I wonder if tweeting put some noses out of joint?  I wasn’t really looking of course, so i can’t say, beyond my misadventure with the person who shut me down.  I wonder if Michael’s invitation was upsetting the purists: those who believe opera should be done in the dark among silent rapt listeners.

How ironic.  What is the ideal audience configuration for new opera, or older operas for that matter?  I can only point to history, plus a few experiences.

History tells us that until Wagner, the theatre’s lights weren’t dimmed but actually illuminated.  Go back a century or more from Wagner and you have a noisy theatre full of people doing their business, even having dinner in their boxes.  Alcina, for example, would have been presented in a light theatre full of patrons whose silence was intermittent rather than continuous.  We do Handel no favours when we expect his music to hold our interest in a big dark silent theatre for all that time.  He never expected us to behave like that.  I sometimes wonder if Marshall Pynkoski could be persuaded to try an experiment with his audience, getting us to watch with lights up, going in and out whenever we wish, following our libretti and perhaps also using our smartphones to tweet and take photos (but no flash of course).

L-R Wallis Giunta, Olivier Laquerre, Meghan LIndsay and Allyson McHardy.

L-R Wallis Giunta, Olivier Laquerre, Meghan LIndsay and Allyson McHardy.

The closest thing I’ve had to this fantasy was in the Opera Atelier noon-hour preview to Alcina at the Richard Bradshaw Amphitheatre, where I was photographing non-stop (with their blessing & permission please note).  I posted a review with a few of my photos.  So long as there’s no flash, I believe this would take us closer to the kind of audience Handel had in his time.

In the summer I had a comparable experience with the visit of the Bicycle Opera Project to Stratford’s Revel Caffé.

Sirett & soprano Larissa Koniuk, L'Homme et l'Ange qui a venu du Ciel

Sirett & soprano Larissa Koniuk, L’Homme et l’Ange qui a venu du Ciel

I had fun taking my smartphone into the opera.  Is this something to be encouraged? So long as you make special arrangements for the seating (that is, if visible smartphones are going to make some people seethe with anger) why not?

The counter-argument goes something like this: that anyone who needs to tweet during an opera isn’t an audience member you want, that if opera needs to chase this kind of audience, the art-form is dead.

Maybe.

I can’t argue for one side or the other.  I felt weird tweeting at an opera, and felt weirder still when –after accepting the invitation—I was stopped in mid tweet, like a bird having his beak closed.

But I think any baroque opera making claims of historical accuracy should be presented with lights up in a theatre allowing us to go in and out. Social media could be a part of this.  As for contemporary opera –that is, anything written in the past 30 years—I don’t know that there’s any one right way to do it.  Purism in the presentation of something new feels odd.

But in future if there are any invitations to tweet I am always going to hide in the back row.  Or keep my beak shut until the show is over.

Posted in Opera, Popular music & culture | 8 Comments

Cinematic Music- How We Hear Film: a course at the Royal Conservatory

Posted on November 18, 2014 by barczablog

I’m teaching a course at the Royal Conservatory of Music called “Cinematic Music- How We Hear Film” (register here).

There are many ways to teach the history of film.

Do you see directors as the key to understanding cinema? Then perhaps you go from DW Griffith to DeMille to Hitchcock & Cronenberg.

Film as an actor’s medium? Whether you start in the silent era with Fairbanks & Pickford, or later with Bogart, Gable … there’s a great deal you can learn about the medium watching the ways actors approach the medium.

Or perhaps following through a particular genre:

  • gangster pictures?
  • Monsters?
  • Westerns?
  • Science fiction?
  • Screwball comedy, or perhaps more recently romantic comedy?

Any one of these (directors – actors – genres) can be a pathway to better understand & appreciate your film experience.

And so too with film music. 

For me it’s a natural pathway.  I’ve written music for film. I have always loved watching and listening to any film, to examine how the music in the film works, to understand how the film works.

It’s been a subject I write about on the blog, sometimes coming up when I encounter a new film, other times front and centre in the topic.  This will give you an idea of some of the films I really enjoy, and what you might find in the class.

Cinematic Music: How We Hear Film begins on February 18th, 2015. For further info click here.

 

 

Posted in Music and musicology | Leave a comment

Tapestry Briefs: Booster Shots

Posted on November 16, 2014 by barczablog

I took in Tapestry Opera’s latest experimental workshop “Tapestry Briefs: Booster Shots”.

click for more info about Tapestry Opera

The title plays on a few influences:

  • Because Tapestry lives in the so-called “Distillery District” we’re in a realm of booze, so it makes sense to be thinking about whiskey
  • Tapestry Briefs is understood to be a series of samplings of the short operatic experiments from the laboratory work combining librettists & composers, so it was a natural to take the metaphor a step further, offering samplings of delectables such as whiskey and ice cream and sake and herbal tea. Yes I know, that latter seems like an oddball, but for this Scarberian, it was welcome, as I can’t very well drink and then drive home.
  • One of the operas in development –that was disproportionately represented with three rather than one taste—is even called “The Whisky Opera”. Was that one also influenced by being conceived in the Distillery District?
  • I suppose a booster shot is only peripherally about alcohol (via a pun), and so the program cover showed both shot glasses & a hypodermic needle.

New opera is very much on my mind. Driving home to Scarborough means a right turn out of that Distillery District, right past the front door of The Extension Room, where I took in something experimental Thursday night. Last night I watched my new DVD of Boesmans’ Julie, and so I am thinking very positive thoughts about what opera can be. In the opera course I teach, the last class usually addresses the question “is opera dead?” While its health seems very precarious right now when done on the grand scale of the Metropolitan Opera or the COC, smaller companies using young talent keep bursting onto the scene. Tapestry are having their 35th anniversary season, although they’re a long-established incubator, and hardly an institution that feels old in any sense. They’re feeling especially vibrant with their new artistic director Michael Mori.

Tapestry Artistic Director Michael Mori

I had a brief chat with him after the show tonight, when I may have seemed to be complaining. In his pre-show talk Michael invited us to engage in social media, facebooking and tweeting merrily through the opera. I took him up on the invitation repeatedly.  Sure, my tweets were pretty banal (dull little jibes about drink & distillery).

And so I was a bit disconcerted when one of his minions leaned close to me at one point and told me to stop.

WTF?

After the show I told Michael about this without naming names, thinking that our smartphones (ha… an Orwellian phrase quite apt for a night in which we saw a small portion of 1984 adapted) are passionately hated by many in the theatre world. As I drove home I was thinking that Michael’s invitation might be a bit like the Emancipation Proclamation, a decree only as meaningful as the functionaries & bureaucrats who could make it real. All I can say –and I think Michael likely agrees with me—is that while most in the theatre probably still hate the smartphone, there are probably ways to make it work. I sat for part of the show in the very back row, so as to avoid upsetting anyone with my glowing screen.

And what of the operatic tasting, the samples of new work?

It’s as it always is. Some work better than others. And audiences aren’t monolithic, but contain all sorts of people with different responses. There was one piece –not the deepest thing I ever saw please note—that made me guffaw loudly in a theatre where I was the only person laughing. As a result I worked hard not to laugh even harder (which is inevitable when people turn around and stare at you as if you’re from Mars), but of course I was frustrated at what I saw as a conservative response, because surely the composer / librettist aimed for this kind of response. There were other pieces –at least 3—that were received with loud laughter from others in the audience, that didn’t make me laugh nearly so much. But overall, much hilarity ensued, much fun was had by all.

There were two pieces that stood head and shoulders above the rest of the program, and when I say this I know that my response wouldn’t necessarily correspond to that of the majority.

R.U.R.,  based on the Czech Karel Capek’s play from the early 20th century play (RUR =Rossum’s Universal Robots), has long struck me as an ideal vehicle for an opera. I gave it some thought awhile ago, although had no idea really how to adapt it. Imagine my delight that Nicolas Billon and Nicole Lizée not only took this on, but –in the short excerpt—showed a truly inspired idiom for their adaptation.  They created the most impressive interaction between music & text, singers & performers that I’ve seen in any of the Tapestry Briefs exercises I have witnessed. As we watch the two scientists freaking out about their robot creations, we hear music that is on the boundary between electronic & acoustic, between human and mechanical, with repetition that is sometimes human-made and other times seems automated. At times the fade of the music resembles something asymptotic, as if the music and voices fade mathematically, as a function of something profound and inhuman. This interface between words & music, between performer and performance is very problematic and troubling: but in all the right ways.

Please Tapestry, have Billon & Lizée continue their work on this piece! The five minutes we heard are already masterful.

The other opera is really three, namely the triptych of excerpts from The Whisky Opera that with its prominence in the program clearly has the full attention of Tapestry’s braintrust.  All three excerpts seem to enact one of the wet dreams of opera composers: to find a language that is relevant to context of the story (historically & culturally), especially if it can incorporate popular musical idioms. That the story is also darkly humourous, totally Canadian in its focus and almost irresistibly lurid makes this a project that seems to be a can’t-miss proposition. I am sure that Tapestry will hear a lot of voices in support of this project, and not just from those lured by the whisky they were offering us to taste. The Whisky Opera comes from Hannah Moscovitch and Benton Roark.

There were two others that I liked:
• 1984—“The Note” reminded me that Orwell’s novel never gets old even if the children born in 1984 do: amazingly they turned 30 years old this year. It wasn’t profound but it worked.
• Damnation was like a joke on the minimalist composers such as Glass or Reich, the repetition being like the torments of hell. I was reminded of that scene in the film Beetlejuice when we’re told that people who commit suicide end up as bureaucrats in the afterlife. And apparently they’re tormented by repeated patterns of notes.

As usual the performances were superb. Carla Huhtanen and Krisztina Szabo are two of the most important singers in Toronto, irreplaceable when it comes to contemporary rep. Alongside them, Alex Dobson & Keith Klassen are a very musical pair.  The different operas employed varying constellations of the four throughout the evening. Christopher Foley & Jennifer Tung offered solid support from the piano (although there were other musical sources, for instance in RUR), and Mori’s direction was tight and transparent throughout.

It was great to see so many segments that were funny, although I don’t believe any of them (except the four I spoke of) are really sustainable beyond roughly five minutes in length; the fact that i am typing this up in the shadow of Saturday Night Live (which begins at 11:30 pm) might be in the back of my mind, another medium where nothing really deserves to be longer than about 5 minutes.

Tapestry are in their 35th anniversary season, and will be back in January for a party of sorts, although I suspect it will also be a benefit too.   Click here for more information.

Posted in Music and musicology, Opera, Reviews | 2 Comments

Soundstreams and Canadian Stage collaborating on Philippe Boesmans’ Julie

Posted on November 15, 2014 by barczablog

Canadian Stage have already shown a willingness to venture into different disciplines, bringing great artists such as Crystal Pite and Robert Lepage to Toronto to broaden the experience of the CanStage audience under Matthew Jocelyn’s leadership.

Soundstreams and Canadian Stage have announced a collaboration for next season.  Julie is  Belgian composer Philippe Boesmans’ operatic adaptation of August Strindberg’s naturalist play Miss Julie.   The libretto is adapted by Luc Bondy.

click for purchase information

I just watched a DVD of the 2005 La Monnaie production.  It’s 74 minutes long, which is remarkable considering that when i googled the length of the original, i found a production claiming that Strindberg’s play is 75 minutes long.  Operas are normally much longer, sung text usually taking lots more time than the same words spoken.  Boesmans’ score moves along at an astonishing clip, and requiring performances of remarkable intensity: because this powerhouse story that’s being told also requires singing as well.

I’ll talk about the DVD another time.  But I’m happy to say that this is a worthy project, one of the finest scores i’ve heard in a long time.

Almost exactly a year from now –on November 19th 2015– the Toronto production will open, Directed by Matthew Jocelyn, with Music Direction by Les Dala in the 850 seat Bluma Appel Theatre.

Posted in Dance, theatre & musicals, Opera, Press Releases and Announcements | 2 Comments

Ambitious Extensions of Us

Posted on November 14, 2014 by barczablog

This is one of those crazy weeks when it’s difficult to know what to see. I’m missing the opening concerts of Jan Lisiecki’s mini-festival with the Toronto Symphony, a gala concert from Aprile Millo and the opening of Tapestry Briefs: Booster Shots.  But I am a sucker for ambition, and that’s what clinched it.  I had to go see the one night of Extensions of Us, a multi-disciplinary recital that I am hoping might lead to more of the same, an attempt to create something genuinely new & original. How could I resist?

The “Us” is a five performer team:

  • Two dancer / choreographers:
    • Jennifer Nichols
    • Justin De Bernardi
  • Two singing actors
    • Adrian Kramer
    • Lucia Cesaroni
  • Pianist and music director Mai Nash

No wonder i’m thinking of ambition in a program of extensions, a series of performances where in some sense or other someone is reaching above or beyond. The title probably comes first of all from Nichols’ Extension Room, the large multi-purpose space where the performances were presented tonight, a combination of workout space and dance studio.  Many of the pieces were especially wonderful in the way they exploited this long quirky room. Nothing looked average or usual.

The physical elements of the movement and the romantic dimension in the performances all come back to some kind of extension:
• “Son pochi fiori” and “The Cherry Duet” – from L’Amico Fritz by Mascagni
• Traumerei – by Schumann
• Canzoni Napoletane: “Mamma” & “Core ‘Ngrato”
• Arias from Verdi’s La Traviata: “Un di felice”; “È strano…Ah fors’e` lui…Sempre libera!” and “De miei bollenti spiriti”
• “Rejoice, beloved” – from The Rake’s Progress by Igor Stravinsky
• Variations for the Healing of Arinushka – by Avro Part
• La Dame de Monte Carlo – by Francis Poulenc
• La Séparation – Nocturne in F by Mikhail Glinka
• Scenes from West Side Story by Bernstein: “Dance at the Gym”; “One hand one heart”; “Maria”;”Tonight”

It’s a mixed program in several different idioms. The Schumann, Glinka & Pärt were perhaps the most recognizably conventional, in the combination of an eloquent piano solo from Nash with dance. In many of the others, the relationships of the parts are wonderfully problematic. When we’re watching a pair of singers in a scene such as the one from La traviata and two dancers are also involved, it’s not clear what we’re seeing.

Soprano Lucia Cesaroni

As Cesaroni, portraying Violetta, sings of her dream of love, and we see Nichols & De Bernardi dancing, are we seeing Violetta’s dream enacted? Is Nichols also Violetta at this moment?

Choreographer Jennifer Nichols

Choreographer Jennifer Nichols

I was especially moved by the Poulenc, a flamboyant solo by Cesaroni , illuminated by Nichols’ dance. This is a very daring piece of work, a kind of negative virtuosity, where Nichols illustrates a very precarious existence, literally balanced on the edge of falling. She’s a negative image of the singer, taking us to psychological depths that are only implicit or shadows of the surface we experience in the text of the song. Nichols’ willingness to allow herself to be by turns contorted or grotesquely exposed takes her movement beyond mere dance.  This is the obverse of the usual in ballet or dance recitals, when the performers are all so uniformly beautiful that one comes to demand beauty at every turn, and where the expectation of virtuosity that is a kind of display tyrannizes the performers, requiring spectacular physicality and beauty.  It’s also nicely transgressive to see non-dancers dancing.

I’m not quite sure what to call this. Is it a recital? A multi-media piece or a series of pieces? The broad mixture of styles of presentation are inevitable with the eclectic program. While Cesaroni & Kramer crossed the disciplinary boundary (as they not only sang but were choreographed a bit),  neither dancer sang or spoke.   It will be interesting to see if they’ll go further next time. I do hope we’ll see more from this group. Hm, notice that I keep referring to them with a pronoun. Maybe next time their group will have a name.

But there must be a next time!

Posted in Music and musicology, Reviews | 2 Comments

Stewart Goodyear and Czerny’s four boxes

Posted on November 13, 2014 by barczablog

Do you read liner notes?  I always begin to do so.  If there’s something of substance, not only do I read them but I cherish them, making them part of the big conversation that is the work of art.  Nothing exists in a vacuum, given that an audience has to be there (if a leprechaun plays a tune in the forest and no one hears, is there music?).  Liner notes become a big part of a performance when they engage with the issues of the piece being performed.  While music is an abstract form, the liner notes can explicate, telling us how the performer meant us to hear.

Sometimes the notes do more, venturing into the realm of important theory.  Such are the liner notes of the CDs of Stewart Goodyear.  His notes for his complete set of the Beethoven piano sonatas are an extraordinary series of observations that have enlarged my understanding of the music, my experience of Goodyear’s wonderful performances, and –perhaps most important—my relationship with Beethoven.

click image for purchase information

Just a few weeks ago I encountered Goodyear’s new recording of The Diabelli Variations, including a significant essay in the liner notes.   Goodyear tells us about Carl Czerny, a composer who had an interesting way of understanding music, conceptualized around four categories:

  1. studies and exercises
  2. easy pieces for students
  3. brilliant pieces for concerts
  4. serious music

We’re told that what’s so remarkable about Beethoven’s composition is that he manages to defy these categories, transcending these boxes with music that can be fun, can be brilliantly virtuosic and also, serious music, perhaps all at the same time.

While I’m not sure I agree with Goodyear  (if i disagree it’s almost a matter of semantics… let’s set that aside for now) I love his ambition, that he’s not just tickling the ivories, but also theorizing mightily as well.  I would tend to see Czerny’s boxes as his own way of understanding music, and not necessarily one that everyone else followed.

As I type this it’s late at night after a very exhausting evening rehearsal.  I was probably the only one really wiped out in a room full of much younger people, having transcribed most of a dozen songs (there are two still to be found), plus a few surprises tossed my way, such as Das Lied der Deutschen (which I played & sang a few times without the music).  Singing full out, i didn’t pace myself, but loved pouring it all out in this room full of talented performers at Ryerson Theatre School.  In von Horvath’s play Tales from the Vienna Woods we’re mostly encountering light music, which is another category different from any of Czerny’s boxes.  A waltz tune –whether understood as music for a dance or merely a composition to be heard—inhabits a different box again from what Czerny gives us.

But what if we take one of those light compositions and re-contextualize it with something of greater meaning?  For example, what if we’re Stanley Kubrick and we take a Strauss waltz melody, but use it to accompany a journey to Earth orbit, in 2001: A Space Odyssey?  Surely we’re no longer in the presence of a light dance tune, because the context changes the weight of the piece.  

Kubrick accomplished a comparable miracle in A Clockwork Orange when he put the wacky orchestration of Rossini’s Thieving Magpie alongside some very disturbing visuals.  The music may be the same as always, but I think we hear it differently, the composition becoming a backdrop to something substantial. 

It’s pretty early for me to be presuming to know how the various tunes work in the von Horvath play we’re creating.  But the point is, to demonstrate how context can change how we understand a piece of music, putting it into a different box, if you will.  To me, the boxes are arbitrary classifications that exist in one place –such as Czerny’s head– but that vanish in the light of day or the exigencies of a later culture, such as Kubrick’s re-framing.

I wish sometimes that I could get back to the elegance of a formulation such as that of Czerny, where every piece, every concept and yes, every citizen knew its place.  Our messed up world isn’t so neat or tidy, as obstreperous in refusing to stay in neat orderly boxes as the Droogs.  I suppose that’s just the way it is, although when I’m coming home after a rough day, it’s really lovely to be able to put a CD into the player in the car, and especially to be able to hear Goodyear play Beethoven.

For awhile at least, everything makes sense.

Posted in Cinema, video & DVDs, Dance, theatre & musicals, Music and musicology, Personal ruminations & essays, Popular music & culture | Leave a comment

Gerald Finley on the shelf

Posted on November 11, 2014 by barczablog

It’s November. October was Gerald Finley month in Toronto, as his Falstaff jumped up on the table that was our collective experience (and for the final scene of the opera). Don’t let the headline (“Finley on the shelf”) scare you, Finley is not ill or indisposed.

The final scene from the Canadian Opera Company production of Falstaff, 2014. (Photo: Michael Cooper)

The final scene from the Canadian Opera Company production of Falstaff, 2014. (Photo: Michael Cooper)

To be honest I have no idea what his health might be, a week after he finished his run as Sir John at the Four Seasons Centre with the Canadian Opera Company. But wherever he may be, whatever his health or disposition, GF actually is on the shelf, or at least my shelf: because he’s made a lot of recordings, and sits comfortably in a lot of CD and DVD collections.

Let me speak briefly of what’s on my shelf, a fascinating assortment showing remarkable range. This may be a tiny sample of what he can sing, but it’s startlingly representative.

Handel’s Messiah
Finley may have undertaken earlier composers than Handel, but this is the earliest on my shelf. The language is the clearest of any of the Messiahs I have. When I listen to his “Thus saith the Lord”, I don’t hear the usual bass-baritone, trying to persuade us by means of  the thickness of his sound or pure volume.  That might be the virtuoso approach.  No, Finley accomplishes it through the conviction of his delivery. And really sounds like God. That’s not done by volume but a sound that signifies authority, getting inside the implications of the text.

What must God sound like?  You should listen to Finley to find out.

Thus said the Lord the Lord of Hosts:
Yet once a little while and I will
shake the heavens and the earth,
the sea and the dry land.
And I will shake all nations,
and the desire of all nations shall come.

You don’t sound like God by overwhelming us with pompousness or loudness. It’s with calm self-assurance, the certainty that you can do what you say. It’s uncanny, especially because it makes every other version I’ve heard previously sound artificial and false.

Saariaho’s L’Amour de loin
I bought the DVD that stars Gerald Finley in anticipation of the 2012 COC production of the opera that starred Russell Braun. Last month I saw the opera starring both men. It’s funny to reflect on the gentle vocal sounds each can make, considering how few opportunities we were given to hear their warm round sound. I had the feeling listening and watching that one reason the opera seemed to be spreading from opera company to opera company like a rumour, was that lovely voice. Finley has the warm round sound of a lieder singer while singing opera. Any lyrical phrase sounds better when sung by this sort of voice, a singer who finds music where others might not find it. If a composer is a product or a proposition being sold, Finley is the broker, the salesman, the advocate you want pushing your product or proposition.

Strauss’s Capriccio
Sometimes, as in the COC Falstaff¸ Finley is peerless, impossible to ignore as he stands onstage. But sometimes, as in the Paris Opera production of Strauss’s Capriccio you’re watching him emerge from a crowd of great talents. As with Falstaff it’s also a Robert Carsen production, delightfully simple.

Wagner’s Die Meistersinger von Nuremberg
One of the things I was pondering in anticipation of Falstaff was how Finley might portray age. Sir John Falstaff is old. Yet I wondered what we would get. Finley doesn’t seem old to me. Is it because we’re living in an era when “60 is the new 40”, when nobody seems old anymore..? And so I went hunting for Finley’s portrayal of Hans Sachs, someone else who is supposedly old, or at least old-er.   Have a look at Finley’s Sachs and you’ll see why I had to immediately buy the DVD. It’s like no Hans Sachs I’ve ever seen, three dimensional, compassionate, and human in ways that Sachs should be human. He finds elements that are in the character that I’ve never seen before. The voice is again pretty, full, but not overwhelming. As with the Handel, we’re free of mere virtuosity, because the skill is all channeled to a portrayal, to genuine truth.

But look at his energy, in this, the longest of all the operas.

Every year I find a reason to circle back to Viktor Ullmann’s Emperor of Atlantis, and to listen to Finley’s wonderful performance of music that is both old (at least in its adaptation of familiar melodies) and new (from the 1940s that is). This year I feel especially connected to Ullmann and the forbidden music of the early 20th Century, as I prepare von Horvath’s Tales from the Vienna Woods at Ryerson University. I must get Michael Haas’s book Forbidden Music again, as I seek to calibrate Johann Strauss with Viktor Ullmann.

But isn’t it amazing that Finley can sing just about anything old or new.  

Posted in Cinema, video & DVDs, Dance, theatre & musicals, Music and musicology, Opera, Reviews | 1 Comment