Idomeneo: Marshall Law

Posted on April 5, 2019 by barczablog

The question running through my head as I watched tonight’s opening of Opera Atelier’s Idomeneo at the Ed Mirvish Theatre was: “who is the star?”

In this their first performance in a new venue I could say “it’s the space”.  Although it has a slightly larger capacity than the Elgin, from where I sat the acoustics seem far better than at the Elgin, where things always seem to be soft & fuzzy. Tonight things sounded crystal clear in comparison, which is surprising considering the size, bigger than the Four Seasons Centre, at 2200 (or so says the oracle according to Google). But there was a crispness to the orchestral sound, a precision to the voices that we never heard in the Elgin. Everyone sounded better as a result.  And so I’d pronounce the debut of Opera Atelier in the new space as a definite triumph.

It was a curious experience all in all. The nice ladies sitting beside me brought in beer that they sipped after intermission. A seller came around with ice cream bars. Wow! (and of course I ate one!) Before you ask me if I think this is in some sense a violation? No! This is much more in the tradition of opera in the 18th century & before, when you might have wenches hawking oranges, when the lights were up. Arguably it would be entirely appropriate to let people have their mobile phones on (and I say this having heard plenty of buzzes from those nearby). I still dream of someday seeing a Handel opera done with the lights up and the free-and-easy audience deportment that would be an emulation of that time. We are weird, in our 21st century lights out try to keep a lid on it repressed approach to theatre. I wish people would be less inhibited about showing appreciation, as that too would not only be more authentic but a whole lot more fun.  But in other words, letting people have beer & ice cream is a step in the right direction.

There are things about this production that are historically informed and other aspects that are decidedly modern or at least new, brainchildren of the director Marshall Pynkoski. We get a curious mix of the two that might best be understood as the Opera Atelier brand. Tafelmusik Baroque Orchestra + the interpretive brilliance of music director David Fallis give their operas legitimacy even when there are liberties taken, extra dance numbers that I can’t find in the score (although perhaps there’s a different version? I wonder); but at least they sound like Mozart. Nobody minds if there is an aura of historicity. And so while there were no strobe lights in Mozart’s time (an effect used several times in the opera), we accept it because the set, costuming and movement vocabulary mostly connote an earlier time. I say mostly because at times dancers of the Opera Atelier Ballet offered some spectacularly romantic moves, particularly in the last hour. But I’m not complaining.

And so, while you’re probably waiting for this review to declare that Measha Bruggergosman or Colin Ainsworth or perhaps someone else was the star, I’m not going to say that. The two biggest stars for me were 1) The Ed Mirvish Theatre, blowing me away with the acoustic, & the intriguing experience of beer & ice cream, and especially
2) Marshall Pynkoski, getting his singers to dance more than ever.

It’s funny, I had the funniest thought, reminded of Robert Lepage. You may recall that he faced a rebellion from his Brunnhilde a few years ago, when Debbie Voigt refused to climb onto the machine in her portrayal, although she did eventually relent. Directors sometimes push the envelope with their performers. Lepage has sometimes asked a great deal of his singers, as Julie Taymor did with the performers in Spiderman. Is anyone revolting against Pynkoski? Not that I can tell. But wow he demands more and more of his singers with every show. A few weeks ago I watched Mireille Asselin—one of the finest young singers in this country—dancing as part of a show at the ROM. Tonight every one of the principals was being asked to dance.

I have to wonder, too, as Measha Bruggergosman seemed to be limping. I wonder if she was injured in rehearsal? My heart went out to her, as it’s hard enough singing the role of Elettra without the additional choreographic challenges imposed by the director, or perhaps in collaboration with the choreographer Jeannette Lajeunesse Zingg.

Colin Ainsworth was very sympathetic in the title role, showing us more power than ever: or is that just the acoustic of the theatre? I heard an interpolated high C in one of the arias, and it seemed he was bringing a more dramatic sound than usual most of the way, even if he did take something off the sound when he was engaging in fast coloratura. It’s a huge sing.

Wallis Giunta (Idamante) & Meghan Lindsay (Ilia) were a great pleasure to watch, a romantic couple who worked entirely within Pynkoski’s scheme even as they gave us their stunning Mozartian vocalism, perfect intonation, while honouring the physical demands. At one point Ainsworth throws Lindsay across the stage, a bit of stage fighting that was delightfully fluid, and as much a dance move as a real fight. I’ve missed Giunta’s presence on Toronto stages, and it’s clear she’s developed a great deal in her time overseas, perhaps the most cojones of anyone onstage tonight in a swaggering trouser role.

While we didn’t hear as much of Douglas Williams wonderful voice as I might have wished he was arguably the most important figure onstage, unless one includes the massive trident he wielded.  Whoever you want to call “the star”, Opera Atelier depends upon conductor David Fallis, whose baton even commands the gods of this story.  The orchestra, chorus & soloists sounded wonderful, sometimes soft & delicate, sometimes terrifying.

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Douglas Williams as Neptune, wielding a bigger baton than David Fallis conducting in the pit: but we know who the orchestra will follow don’t we…! (photo Bruce Zinger)

Idomeneo continues until April 13th at the Ed Mirvish Theatre.

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887: a quest for redemption for Robert Lepage

Posted on April 2, 2019 by barczablog

There is some irony that Canadian Stage are bringing back Robert Lepage’s 887, both because it’s a powerful piece of theatre that you must see if at all possible, but also as an exploration of memory. Throughout the work Lepage is asking himself what he can remember, what anyone can remember.

And then there are the more recent events for Lepage.  They say that “there’s no such thing as bad publicity”. I wonder if Robert Lepage believes it, after the controversies of 2018, his annus horribilis.

If people are talking about you it’s supposed to be a good thing, right?

  • In the summer it was SLAV, a show including white people singing the songs of black slaves. After protests it was cancelled amid charges of cultural appropriation.
  • In December it was Kanata, a show scheduled for Paris about the settlement of Canada. After protests from the Indigenous community it was cancelled when the backers backed out.

And now in the spring of 2019, Lepage’s Ring des Nibelungen is being revived at the Metropolitan Opera, with some phenomenally negative reviews. They only seem to have positive words for the singers:

I wrote about this production (really four productions, given that the style varies from one opera to the next) at great length as each of the operas appeared, both as high-definition broadcasts and from attending two of the four operas in the house. From the intensity of my enjoyment my American friends might think I drank some sort of kool-ade, perhaps because I’m Canadian. Yet my scholar friends speak the name “Robert Lepage” with a kind of reverence that might puzzle Americans who only know him from his work with Cirque du soleil or the Metropolitan Opera.  Lepage is taken seriously in Canada.

This is from the rave review I wrote about 887 back in April 2017:

887 is a play that is at once, a meditation on memory, an auto-biographical testimonial by Robert Lepage himself, a funny two hours, and a highly political study of recent history. Several times I thought I saw the kernel, the main well-spring of Lepage’s inspiration: and yet so thoroughly are the different threads sewn together that I can’t really say for certain.

  • There’s the poem “Speak White” by Québecoise Michelle Lalonde, a text with which we’re teased throughout as Lepage shares the challenge trying to memorize the poem (and we wonder just how much of it he will eventually retain), which he has been invited to read at an event. As we shall discover, the poem is like the cri de coeur of an underclass seeking equality. This year especially the poem is must reading for any Canadian.
  • There’s the Québec motto inscribed on their license plates, namely “je me souviens”, or I remember. But what do we –or does Lepage—actually remember?
  • I couldn’t help thinking that at one time separatism was such a threat to confederation that every day we heard something in the news, about possible referenda, about the polling numbers for the Parti Québecois. As Lepage gives us his one-man show, I felt the subtext could have been that collective memory lapse, as the once powerful and threatening movement seems to have faded away to nothing.
  • And memory is personal for Lepage. The set is ostensibly a model of his childhood apartment home, but in a real sense it’s a model of himself, of his brain and his influences (and while this thought may seem wacky or strange to say, at one point Lepage made it literally so, allowing the diagram of the apartment to morph into cerebral hemispheres, complete with a bit of explanation about what the different mental apartments might be good for).
  • When he briefly alluded to his grandmother and her struggles with dementia, I wondered if I was the only one in the place suddenly uncontrollably crying –stifling sobs actually—in the way we were suddenly at a bedside. It’s still killing me hours later that the ambiguity of what we were seeing and discussing let the association come up. I thought I heard someone else audibly crying too at that moment. Mercifully we segued to a childhood scene of theatrics, the study of memory both enacted and analyzed.
  • And there’s probably more. Lepage joked about the whole process of memorizing, which may have been a personal subtext for the show.

I want to recall what I said about 887 as I think about what Lepage chose to do with Wagner’s Ring cycle. There is again a kind of literalness in the design concept, a concrete focus that is easy to underestimate.  I like simplicity especially when it works.

  • In Damnation de Faust, Marguérite sings of the flaming ardor of her love: and her CGI projected image seems to catch fire on the big screen behind her onstage.
  • For much of the Ring cycle we are seeing the events exactly as specified in the score, and sometimes for the first time in decades. In Das Rheingold we see the Rhine-maidens swimming in the river (usually impossible to do), in Götterdämmerung when Siegfried travels on the river with his horse, we actually have a horse signified, at least in a puppet version.
  • In 887 we see a model of Lepage’s childhood home (the title refers to his street address) as he contemplates his/our past.  (AND as I wrote: “The set is ostensibly a model of his childhood apartment home, but in a real sense it’s a model of himself, of his brain and his influences (and while this thought may seem wacky or strange to say, at one point Lepage made it literally so, allowing the diagram of the apartment to morph into cerebral hemispheres, complete with a bit of explanation about what the different mental apartments might be good for).“
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Robert Lepage and Ex Machina: 887 (Photo: Érick Labbé)

Lepage will be back to remind us what he can do, as he performs 887, an Ex Machina Production May 3-12 at the Bluma Appel Theatre.

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TCO Traviata

Posted on March 29, 2019 by barczablog
giuseppe_macina

Giuseppe Macina

Toronto City Opera? While the name is new to me, reading the history I see the lineage, going back over forty years to the legacy of Giuseppe Macina’s Toronto Opera Repertoire.

You can read more of their history here.

This continues the tradition of building an educational experience from out of music & theatre, singing & staging an opera. There are lots of people in the chorus having the time of their lives, while a few soloists enact the actual story.

Tonight they opened their production of La traviata at the intimate Al Green Theatre, the first of three performances led by the team of Artistic Director & conductor Jennifer Tung, pianist & music director Ivan Jovanovic, and Alaina Viau as Stage Director.

After reading TCO’s mission from their website I’d have to say that they have fulfilled their goals.

Toronto City Opera is passionately committed to opera for everyone. We give young professionals a chance to perform principal roles with coaching in musicianship and stagecraft. We give our amateur choristers inspiration and skills, so that they too can perform in a fully staged opera. And for our community we provide affordable access to this grand synthesis of music, drama, dance, and design to raise up the human spirit of everyone it touches.

The production is somewhat modernized, but without harming the story. While I was caught up in the happy vibe during the two party scenes (including a large and enthusiastic chorus), we still achieved the tragic effect at the end. Most importantly everyone seemed to have a really good time, and Verdi was along for the ride.

If you’re looking for a good community theatre experience, I recommend this without reservation, especially if you’d rather sing Verdi or Mozart instead of Rogers & Hammerstein. Soloists have to audition, and are on a different educational level than the chorus members.  I was pleasantly surprised that the music was presented with a great deal of cohesion & discipline.

For further information, including pictures from past productions and contact information, here’s their website.

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The Woods are Dark and Deep: is good

Posted on March 25, 2019 by barczablog

You will laugh, you will cry, and you will certainly enjoy The Woods are Dark and Deep, a new work I have just seen today at the Factory Theatre, from Pulse Theatre.

When you go see a new work performed there are at least two options available:

  • talk about the new creation & its creator
  • talk about performances & performers

But the new play from Mladen Obradovic suggests a third topic required in this case, because it’s a play about a historical event that’s never really had any attention. Why don’t I start with that first.

Did you know that Eastern Europeans were interned in work-camps in the First World War? We hear lots about the way Japanese Canadians endured being displaced and re-settled in the Second World War because they were identified as the enemy.

But it’s news to me that it happened in the earlier war too.

And even more disturbing to me is the discovery that the groups singled out were from the Balkans, the Ukraine and Hungary, speaking as a Hungarian.  But of course these were  countries identified as “the enemy”. Presumably the same would have happened with Germans, although that’s not part of this story.

You have to hand it to the planners, the powers that be in Canada during WW I, who conceived this idea. They made good use of our landscape, which has everything to do with the title. You can’t escape if you fear barren forests & the wild animals that live there, never mind the added charms of our winters.

This is a different world from our own, before the kind of medical care we take for granted. When people got sick in those days? There was a huge influenza epidemic towards the end of the war, killing millions of people. If you broke a bone or had a concussion, no one received the kind of care we now get.

Now imagine that you have an injury while you’re in a prison camp..!

I saw The Woods are Dark and Deep as the finale to a kind of birthday celebration, believe it or not.

  • I saw the St Matthew Passion on JS Bach’s birthday (Thursday)
  • I took my wife to see The Empire Strikes Back with live accompaniment from the Toronto Symphony on my own birthday (Friday)
  • I saw the New Wave Workshop last night, five excerpts from pieces that will be produced in the coming year from five teams of women (directors, composers & librettists), and women performers at the piano and singing: the birthday of Musique 3 Femmes, a new force as Yoda might put it
  • And this afternoon was for me a celebration of a brilliant new talent. I find it hard to believe that this is Mladen Obradovic’s first play. And it was back to the same kind of gender balance as Friday; just as Star Wars is mostly boys playing at sci-fi complete with Princess Leia as the exception that proves the (gender) rule, so too in this visit to a prison camp.

Let me repeat what I started to say above. The debut of Mladen’s play is an event. I laughed a lot but shed tears in a few places. There’s a boy- girl drama at the centre of the story, told in a style that’s a cross between epistolary romance and 20th century authoritarian. So while there are letters going back and forth, they get censored.

Mladen’s handling of these devices is masterful, very economical considering how much story he’s telling.

We’re visiting a very different world. I can’t emphasize this enough. I go CRAZY watching drama at our major theatres or feature films that are replete with anachronism, errors in the cultural reference points, likely caused by actors improvising with their 21st century millennial sensibilities, polluting whatever accuracy the writers may have created.

But for once it’s done right. There’s a fair amount of music in this show, too. It’s not only that it’s source music (aka diegetic music), performed by people onstage (as opposed to non—diegetic music as we see so often in film scores: from an invisible source outside the world of the play) but with authenticity. I don’t know Serbian culture, I only know that when someone onstage is singing and half the audience joins in? it’s profoundly stirring.

Oh yes, there’s also the matter of the performances / performers. Sorry to sound like a broken record, but there’s Mladen again, who plays Nebojsa, a troubled / troubling character. I think if you see the show you’ll be like me, liking everyone onstage: except the one that’s played by Mladen, a totally miserable SOB. In his defence, he’s in prison, so no wonder he’s unhappy. But I am intrigued that Mladen wrote this part for himself, wondering if he played it because he wouldn’t visit this upon any other actor, or because he truly understands the character. Mladen gets these wonderful moments when he can go completely against the grain of everyone else onstage, although he is often arguing or fighting with the others.

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Nebojsa (Mladen Obradovic) fighting with Janko (Dewey Stewart).

When was the last time you saw a new play with nine characters in it? Everything new these days seems to be for four or fewer: because of budgetary pressures naturally, not due to any creative reasons. In Shakespeare’s time everything was for huge casts (double- and triple-cast likely), so there’s a wonderful weight to this simply from the number of people onstage, each fully fleshed out.

I can’t decide who’s my favourite although there are several candidates. Janko (Dewey Stewart) is your classic romantic lead: but thwarted by the simple fact he’s imprisoned, far from the girl he loves. Will he be able to marry Claire (Sophie McIntosh), the girl who loves him back? In the meantime we get to see their correspondence written with the dubious assistance of the prison censor.

Then there’s the family of Oleksa (Ratko Todorovic) & Anya (Biljana Karadzic) plus their children Olessya (Mila Jokic) & Oleh (Simeon Kljakic), who figure in the story in so many ways. Olessya has a crush on Janko, helps him write his letters to Claire because her English skills are so much better than Janko’s. Nebojsa is teaching Oleh guitar. Oleksa is the strongest man at the physical labour necessary in the camp: but he’s disabled in other ways.

dinner biljana mila jake dewey me ratko simeon

L-R Biljana Karadzic, Mila Jokic, Jake Zabusky, Dewey Stewart, Mladen Obradovic, Ratko Todorovic and Simeon Kljakic

I don’t want to give the story away, so I’ll simply say that as in Shakespeare, everyone’s part is significant whatever its size. The strengths of the cast come at you from all sides at every moment. Some of that is likely the writing, some of that is the performances.

I should mention too director Sandra Cardinal who made it all flow, kept it cohesive. While there is no dramaturg credit given, Cardinal likely had a hand in bringing the new play into the world, bringing this fascinating group of characters to life.

It’s a very romantic tale that surely will bring you to tears in places, sometimes from what an individual faces, sometimes from the politics & the struggles confronting everyone on stage.  I wonder if there’s any thought of adapting this into a film? I hope so.

But for now, your best chance of seeing this wonderful show is at the Factory Theatre until March 27th. You won’t regret it. Go see it.

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Musique 3 Femmes – Next Wave Workshop

Posted on March 24, 2019 by barczablog

The Wednesday March 20th noon-hour sample of Next Wave was a small sample of the riches we encountered in tonight’s Workshop, presented with the support of Tapestry Opera & hosted at their Ernest Balmer Studio. And there was a social component that I skipped to get home to write this; but when you have to drive home to Scarborough one can’t surrender to the temptation of a free bar.

Five teams of librettist / composer / director with a pianist or two + singers gave us three samples before intermission and two after, prize winners of the Inaugural Mécénat Musica Prix 3 Femmes ( “a new $25,000 award in Canada supporting the creation of operas by emerging female and female-identifying composers and librettists”). All five were absorbing pieces of music theatre. If every text is a kind of puzzle that can be solved in a multitude of ways, I was aware that we were watching, not only the new works, but the fruits of the creative labour of singers & directors, working with a pianist seeking to wrap their heads & their creative chops around the new shows, making choices, experimenting, trial & error. Our responses are valuable feedback.

We were listening to the pianism of Jennifer Szeto, joined by Natasha Fransblow for one of the excerpts.  The musical direction was transparent and supportive, never noticeable except as an addition to the evening.  I’m not properly reviewing the performances, hoping they’ll forgive me in my choice to focus on the new creations.

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Standing front row: Naima Phillips, Margareta Jeric, Cecilia Livingston, Alaina Viau, Monica Pearce, Jennifer Szeto, Lindsay Connolly, Kristin Hoff; back row: Pascale St-Onge, Alice Abracen, Laurence Jobidon, Michelle Telford, Kendra Harder, Amanda Smith, Aria Umezawa,, Suzanne Rigden

The first excerpt was from The Chair (composer Maria Atallah, librettist Alice Abracen, director Anna Theodosakis). We’re watching a young person who has endured the loss of a friend, and now must endure the additionally harrowing experience of the various expressions of sympathy. It’s a wonderfully layered text as we go from the banal expressions constrained by the political correctness of the situation (numb thank yous) to more ironic ejaculations of the underlying truths.

I’m reminded of some of the falsehoods surrounding disability & age. That we all seek to signify normalcy & competence even when we may be losing our sight or our hearing or our ability to walk without limping. How much truth is permitted or sanctioned? Music theatre is helpful, as the departure from normalcy makes more sense when you’re singing, whereas the same lines delivered straight without music might seem crazed or surreal. Or perhaps it would be more accurate to say that we enter into an alternate world via music where we don’t have the same trouble suspending disbelief, as we read various layers of the young woman’s feelings & responses.

The second excerpt was from Singing Only Softly (composer Cecilia Livingston, librettist Monica Pearce, director Alaina Viau). Based on redacted texts from The Diary of Anne Frank, the excerpts had me asking some pointed questions about music theatre, in response to Livingston’s form that she calls “song-cycle opera,” at least for today. Tomorrow I may again crave Parsifal & Pelléas but in 2019 I have to question the efficacy of operas requiring big orchestras, and all the challenges that entails for dramaturgy & knowing what the piece is really doing. The expressive possibilities of this scale of work, with a couple of singers & a piano are enormous, the clarity one gets in a voice singing (excuse me for suddenly remembering their title) “only softly” make me recall the usual success rate of larger scale works. How often do they work? Rarely it seems. It’s just so much harder, the expressive power of singer + text becomes like a shotgun, spraying effects & impressions but imprecise. Viau / Pearce / Livingston gave their creation the precision focus of a laser.  Yes I know that the title likely begins in the furtive nature of the story (a family who must hide for fear of discovery): but there’s no loss of power due to the size.

I was reminded of Reviving Ophelia, a book I read long ago that I sometimes cite as a grandpa, recalling the issues as parent of girls, concerning the hazards in adolescence to the authentic self of the girl. I was thrilled to hear this (meaning the conflict, not the book) mentioned by the creators (in their intro before the excerpt), as one of the sites of the drama, a kind of drama of the unfolding development of a young girl. I was also delighted to see the use of a personage signified with multiple performers, something that I hope we see more often.

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Composer Cecilia Livingston

The third excerpt was from Book of Faces (composer Kendra Harder, librettist Michelle Telford and director Jessica Derventzis). The wonderfully flamboyant little example on Wednesday brought the house down, as I mentioned in that write-up. Tonight’s larger example showed us a much more complex piece, a comedy with darker nuances. While we still have the comedy of Facebook & Tumblr, we also get the subtext, the desperate struggle of a generation seeking to make a living that makes social media so addictive.

I can certainly identify. Confession. When I post a lot of blogs –as I have this month—it’s usually a sign that I am avoiding something in my life.

In passing –as we come to intermission—I have to wonder, did anyone miss men at all on this evening? Oh sure, there are a few of us in the audience (eating it up btw), but there’s no shortage of talent onstage, a very satisfying image of reality.

After intermission, two more extraordinary pieces.

First we came to the fourth item on the program namely Suite d’une Ville Morte (composer Margarete Jeric, librettist Naima Kristel Phillips, director Amanda Smith). Where the small sample of this Wednesday was particularly electrifying, I was surprised at how much further it went in the staged version tonight, an overpowering piece that bowled me over completely. I feel moved to remind the creators that while they may want to “finish” this piece, it’s totally legitimate to offer up a fragment. There’s certainly a tradition of this in the late 19th century for instance, thinking of Mallarmé’s unfinished dramas, Debussy’s unfinished operatic fragments, and poems one could name. The torso of something else can be almost more powerful than the finished piece, its incompleteness an invitation to the imagination to run wild. We had text & music with hints of possible mise-en-scène, but did not require closure or even precision.

Imagine a piano as the remnant of a dead city. Please note, too, that phrase “dead city” is itself a symbolist trope, if we recall the opera Die tote Stadt (edit the morning after: I should mention the source novel Bruges-la-Morte by George Rodenbach is symbolist, not the opera). Is the piano broken? We hear in the text of a burning piano. The thing is, pianos are always breaking (alas as we know too well), somewhat mortal themselves as extensions of a person. A pianist with a piano is a bit like a cyborg, in the sense that the hammers & strings extend a person’s expressiveness, a synthesis of human & machine (not to be confused with the Terminator of course). Yet we are all a bit broken, using eyeglasses, bicycles, smartphones, and various other tools to compensate for what we can’t do, especially as we age. When we do it to ourselves through war it’s that much more painful in its poignancy but still, an extension of the usual self-destruction. In this piece it’s especially clear, as we see a pulse emerge from the foot-pedalling of a piano, the thump thump rhythm that resembles our own internal pumps, emulated by the singers. There’s a kind of chicken & egg thing going on here, where we can’t quite tell which came first, the song or the singer, the human or the machine, the pulse or the instrument on which to pound that pulse. And the distinction is problematized, as we wonder which is the machine, which is the living thing.

I’m reminded to of the sci-fi trope of wrecked civilizations, as in Ballard’s Crash, or the Mad Max series, destruction that might be war or just the devolution of our species, losing its way. The words are on the boundary between mind and mindless, repeated utterances that resemble something animal or intuitive, meaning collapsing in the face of the unbearable.

I was reminded of Pan’s Labyrinth, a film you may admire, but one that I had trouble with because it was in places so very powerful. Would a person who has lived through the siege of their city be able to stand this? What sensitizes urbane effete listeners like you and me, might be too traumatic for someone who has lived this in real life. I don’t mean that to be a critique necessarily, so much as a reminder of how lucky we are to be able to ask these questions in a city that has not been bombarded or destroyed.

The fifth and last piece tonight was the consummation of the questions I had after Wednesday’s concert, when I wondered about the idea of solidarity & resilience in a story of women fleeing abuse en route to a remote shelter in Québec in L’hiver attend beaucoup de moi (composer Laurence Jobidon, librettist Pascale St-Onge, director Aria Umezawa). There was a very Canadian moment when they look fearfully at the sky, wondering if the weather will prevent them from traveling. But again as with the previous one, by singing we transcend this world,  straddling the boundary between reality & something mythic, larger than life, and not necessarily rooted in quotidian matters. By singing it we’re taken into an affirmation of something larger and life-affirming. Jobidon’s vocal writing is very good –how else do I say it? –in giving us two women singing together a great deal of the time. I can’t recall hearing anything like this from a recent composer, that works so well as an enactment of this idea –solidarity?– yet is simply good vocal writing, beautiful to hear, and genuinely operatic.

Afterwards, I wondered, why is it that the question is asked of music, as to why something is adapted or set as opera.  Did anyone ever challenge Van Gogh or Picasso over their subjects? Perhaps it’s a male question, to ask if something can work without the music, and therefore doesn’t need that operatic treatment. But it’s so good that I don’t detect any anxiety in these pieces, no existential challenge that would undermine the serene confidence of these creators. They don’t just have a right to be there.

They’re very good indeed.

And look around. Each of these operas will be presented in a more complete form somewhere in the months ahead.  Perhaps you’ll be able to see & hear them.

Posted in Dance, theatre & musicals, Opera, Reviews | 1 Comment

The Empire Strikes Bach?

Posted on March 23, 2019 by barczablog

I didn’t get enough sleep last night.  I got home from the epic St Matthew Passion I wrote about from March 21st aka Bach’s birthday at roughly 11:30 pm, had some vino & pizza with the Mrs and only finished writing at about 1:30 am.  I’m always up at 6:30, being both a morning person and someone who loves to stay up late. I had all sorts of things to do today on March 22nd, which is not Bach’s birthday, but is birthday for Stephen Sondheim & Andrew Lloyd Webber (isn’t it curious, that the two most popular recent music-theatre composers share a birthday?), William Shatner, Dave Keon and also me. That’s why we had the vino & the pizza.

On a day when I was tired all day, the highlight was getting to see The Empire Strikes BacK (spelled correctly this time) with its score played live by the Toronto Symphony at Roy Thomson Hall. Sarah Hicks conducted in high heels, coming in to begin with Yoda (or a good facsimile thereof) riding on her back.  While she may not be Ginger Rogers I’m reminded of a saying about the dance partner of Fred Astaire, something about doing it backwards and in high- heels.

The TSO now have a devoted following for these events. It was all but sold out, one of four showings, and greeted with rapturous applause.  Hicks encouraged us to be vocal, so it was. No we didn’t boo and hiss for Darth Vader. But there were marvelous moments when a scene ended and the audience erupted.  Famous lines drew applause.  I couldn’t resist joining in with Princess Leia, telling C3P0 to “shut up”.

They’re all so young.  You see it even more when they’re on the big screen, accompanied by that big vivid score performed live.  We just saw Singin’ in the Rain on TCM last week, a reminder of Leia’s mom aka Debbie Reynolds.  Carrie Fisher never had the innocence of her mom, especially the freshness we see in her debut opposite Gene Kelly & Donald O’Connor.  Carrie’s Leia is already world-weary when she tells Obe Wan that he’s her only hope.  When she’s instructing he rebels during the siege that opens the film, she’s already full of gravitas beyond her years.

This is the first time I understood some of the lines of the film, thanks to the subtitles. I suspect that if I had bought the DVDs I could have done the same thing, to solve the mystery of those lines spoken quickly by Yoda in the forest.  For someone who has seen this film dozens of times, it’s ridiculous that I didn’t know these lines.  I’m not really a devoted fan of the Star Wars franchise.  I love this film and mostly dislike the others. Episodes seven and eight are my next favourites after this one (episode five).

luke

And even so there are parts of episode V that I still dislike with a passion.  The last five minutes are the worst.  Never mind the repeated  “Ben why didn’t you tell me”, a line that’s repeated.  Did he have to say it? couldn’t it have been the voice inside his head? It’s something decidedly operatic, and I say that in an attempt to apologize for what they’re doing, at a moment that is all but indefensible as good dialogue, but might just work as melodrama.

And those shots at the end, where they’re looking out the window of a space-ship, and all the other ships are like boats, aligned the same way as though there were a mysterious source of gravity creating up and down for people who –as far as I know—should be weightless.  It’s very odd, perhaps the creators seeking to give the story something like a warm fuzzy ending, to offset the darkness of the story. Meanwhile, the darkness is what makes it so wonderful.

Any scene with Yoda is pure gold.  The scenes between Luke & his father (hopefully you don’t need a spoiler alert… oh well too late)? wonderful.  Hamill transforms his character in this film, and if only the other films could have stayed at such a high level of intensity.  The big powerful orchestra changes the experience so that even the weakest scenes acquire luster in the presence of all that music. I think Williams raised his game for this film, because it has so much genuine emotion, so much authenticity, especially when the tiny 900 year old master is onscreen.

I will be interested to see what other films the TSO offer next year. But I do know that we’re getting more Star Wars.  Return of the Jedi (aka Episode VI) is coming at the beginning of October 2019, while The Force Awakens (aka Episode VII) will be shown in May 2020.

For tickets click here.

Posted in Cinema, video & DVDs | Leave a comment

St Matthew Passion: Bach at 334

Posted on March 22, 2019 by barczablog

Tonight was the first of four performances of the St Matthew Passion from Tafelmusik Baroque Orchestra, Tafelmusik Chamber Choir, with members of the Toronto Children’s Chorus, all led by Masaaki Suzuki. By coincidence it was JS Bach’s 334th birthday. While there are several compositions that are so well known that anyone can hum the tune (“Jesu Joy of Man’s Desiring”? or “Sheep May Safely Graze”?) JS Bach’s output is so enormous that there are many compositions that aren’t well known.

And then there are the great works that are simply too difficult to be done often. First & foremost in that category would be the St Matthew Passion. The 2019 version led by Suzuki is the fourth time Tafelmusik have undertaken the work in their 40 year history.
Forgive me that my preamble is endless musing on dates & time. It’s the beginning of spring, something I mused on a few days ago. Spring or the last portion of winter usually coincide with Lent, the season that ends on Good Friday & the Easter Celebration. The Passion stories from the Gospels are a climax to the Lenten season.

I can’t help thinking about the way the text changes in its context, because of course the reception in 2019 is hardly recognizable compared to 1727 when Bach’s St Matthew Passion was composed. While there is an air of authenticity in hearing the work in a church: but it’s a secular world now. We read in Charlotte Nediger’s fascinating program notes about the Lutheran tradition in Leipzig in Bach’s time; yet it may as well be Mars considering the world we inhabit. Rather than being a setting of a text that is universally celebrated (as it was in his time), Bach’s composition is in some respects a wonderful lesson in the most ideal aspects of Christianity, a quaint exposition of another culture, if you’re not a Christian. There are traces of anti-semitism in the story (which hardly makes this one unique, as some go much further in vilifying the Jews), but mostly we’re simply taken through the dramatic narrative of Jesus’s last hours.

For someone who doesn’t know Christianity it’s in some respects a crash course in some of the key moments. Unlike Handel’s approach to the story, which pauses regularly to let soloists have their impressive moments (creating more segmentation and rest points), Bach moves the story along in an entirely different way, creating a great deal of intensity. We are watching characters from the story enact key moments, hearing the Jerusalem crowds react –aka the chorus— and of course it comes straight out of the Gospel according to St Matthew (just as the St John Passion comes from that Gospel).  Sometimes the story is interrupted to hear commentaries from soloists or chorus. At times these resemble homilies, densely abstract meditations on the nature of some part of the story and its meaning.

Here’s one example from the latter part of the work.

Chorale
O Haupt voll Blut und Wunden    O head, full of blood and wounds
voll Schmer und woller Hohn,      full of suffering and full of scorn
o Haupt, zu Spott gebunden           o head, bound in derision
mit deiner Dornenkron                   with a crown of thorns,
o Haupt, sonst schön gezieret         o head, once beautifully adorned
mit höchster Her und Zier               with highest honour and grae
jetzt aber hoch schimpfieret,           but now highly abused:
gegrüsset seist du mir!                      Let me hail thee!

Now of course as a believer one listens to this text in an entirely different way from an unbeliever, as these words are admonitions, framed within the injunctions of the New Testament. In Bach’s world (that lived by those rules), this text reads very differently than it does in our own time (when the rules are for many people nothing but quaint relics).

I heartily recommend the performances, especially to anyone with even the tiniest smidgen of religious sensibility. And if you’re an atheist it might be especially compelling to you, to help explain the mysteries of Christianity, what it’s all about and why Christians care about this story.

Suzuki brings a very original approach to this work and likely any baroque piece. His contrasts are razor sharp, the moments when the chorus erupts, totally volcanic in energy & precision, but especially in the commitment of every singer & player. The fact that the observers at any moment –the members of chorus or orchestra who were not singing at a given moment—were enraptured by what they were hearing added a layer.

RESIZED_James-Gilchrist-High-Res-19-Jan2015

Tenor James Gilchrist

I was especially entranced watching James Gilchrist, our Evangelist. The role of the Evangelist is enormous, and includes several distinct sorts of singing. At times Gilchrist is telling the story quickly in a very light declamatory recitative, soaring at times to the top of his range. I just pulled out my score, there’s at least one high B, perhaps it even goes higher? Now add in the fact that he’s not just singing but telling the story. Yet that’s the least of it. He’s involved in this story, the way a prophet would be involved in such a report, virtually preaching.  No that’s not the way some people sing it, but Gilchrist isn’t most people.  There are also arias, sometimes sung very sweetly, sometimes in a fiercely dramatic style. Gilchrist was perfectly in tune all night, clearly articulating his text, but most importantly offering genuine ministry in telling Jesus’s story in this musical form. And (as I mentioned) when he wasn’t singing he was absorbed in the music-making all around him.

The other soloists, while asked to sing less often (as soloists, when they were not also singing with the choir in their section), were every bit as committed. Terry Wey, countertenor, showed a wonderful tone, an incisive approach to some of the most urgently passionate texts. Stephan MacLeod as Jesus was a gently powerful presence. Tyler Duncan had several very dramatic moments, as Judas, Peter & Pilate. Hannah Morrison’s beautiful soprano was very welcome whenever she had an opportunity.

As I was leaving I joked with Ivars Taurins –the usual conductor of Tafelmusik Chamber Choir & their music director—that “gee! he really knows how to conduct” (meaning Suzuki of course).  After sharing a laugh, I added that Ivars should be proud. The choir sounded especially good, not just accurate but committed to the occasion. And the orchestra was every bit as good, including several delightful solos.

It’s a very full night’s work for everyone –Suzuki, Gilchrist, choir & orchestra—at about three hours of music.  The St Matthew Passion continues this weekend until Sunday at Jeanne Lamon Hall in Trinity – St. Paul’s Centre.

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

The Next Wave @ RBA

Posted on March 20, 2019 by barczablog

A concert is not a litmus test but even so today’s free noon-hour concert at the Richard Bradshaw Amphitheatre is an unmistakable sign of health in the community of women creating opera in this country, and apt in the home of the Canadian Opera Company. We saw prize winners of the Inaugural Mécénat Musica Prix 3 Femmes: “a new $25,000 award in Canada supporting the creation of operas by emerging female and female-identifying composers and librettists.”

poster

And how wonderful that today we heard some of the great things that they’re creating, a preview of the Next Wave Workshop that’s to be presented Saturday night March 23rd by Musique 3 Femmes with the support of Tapestry Opera at Ernest Balmer Studio. The basic template is the same for today as for March 23rd: five teams of librettist, composer & director working on an operatic idea, sung by one or more of Suzanne Rigden, soprano, Kristin Hoff, mezzo-soprano, Lindsay Connolly, mezzo-soprano, and played by Jennifer Szeto at the piano. Where today’s examples were sung from music stands, Saturday night we’ll get staged excerpts. In addition to the music we also heard different perspectives of composer, librettist and director weighing in on an aspect of their project. Today’s sampler left me wanting to hear & see more.

Here’s how they describe the prize-winning projects, including their projected future productions.

L’HIVER ATTEND BEAUCOUP DE MOI
Composer: Laurence Jobidon (QC)
Librettist: Pascale St-Onge (QC)
Director: Aria Umezawa

Amidst the harsh and cold weather of northern Quebec, Léa tries to reach a safe-house in order to protect herself and her unborn child. She meets Madeleine, a tormented woman who promises to lead her to the end of a road where no one else goes. L’hiver attend beaucoup de moi is a chamber opera that pays tribute to feminine solidarity and resilience, as well as to the strength of the Quebecois territory. The work is led in Toronto by director and former San Francisco Opera Adler fellow Aria Umezawa and will see its full premiere in Montreal in March 2020.

BOOK OF FACES
Composer: Kendra Harder (SK)
Librettist: Michelle Telford (SK)
Director: Jessica Derventzis

“Nothing on Earth has prepared me for life like the Internet…” Book of Faces is a comic opera exploring the world of social media and two millennials for whom the struggle is just too real. The second collaboration between Saskatoon composer Kendra Harder and librettist Michelle Telford, Book of Faces sees a world premiere at Next Wave Workshop led by director and Artistic Director of Opera 5 Jessica Derventzis, and later performances as part of Highlands Opera Studio’s 2019 summer season.

SINGING ONLY SOFTLY
Composer: Cecilia Livingston (TO)
Librettist: Monica Pearce (PEI)
Director: Alaina Viau

Singing Only Softly is a song-cycle opera by Toronto composer Cecilia Livingston, featuring an original libretto by Monica Pearce inspired by redacted texts from Anne Frank’s famous diary. The work explores Anne’s complex adolescence, her growing maturity, and her tumultuous relationship with her mother, Edith. Singing Only Softly is led here by Loose Tea Music Theatre founder and Artistic Director, stage director Alaina Viau, and features guest artist soprano Gillian Grossman. Singing Only Softly sees a full production by Loose Tea Music Theatre in May 2019.

SUITES D’UNE VILLE MORTE
Composer: Margareta Jeric (QC)
Librettist: Naima Kristel Phillips (QC)
Director: Amanda Smith

A woman returns to a place where she fell in love. She finds a piano on a heap of rubble. An exploration of the anatomy of a piano, this work examines the interplay of loss and connection in a world where everything can change in an instant. Based on the play Ghost Town Suites by Naima Kristel Phillips, Suites d’une ville morte is the first collaboration by Phillips with Croatian-Canadian composer Margareta Jeric. The work is in development for Toronto’s FAWN Chamber Creative, and is led here by FAWN founder and stage director Amanda Smith.

THE CHAIR
Composer: Maria Atallah (ON)
Librettist: Alice Abracen (QC)
Director: Anna Theodosakis

“You didn’t even know her name. You don’t even know my name.” With an original libretto by Alice Abracen on a short story by composer Maria Atallah, The Chair explores grief, loss, and friendship through the eyes of a teenager. Melanie loses her best friend in a tragic accident and returns to school to face throng of well-wishers and a mysterious new classmate. For the Next Wave Workshop, the piece is led by COC Ensemble dramatic coach and founder of Toronto’s Muse 9 Productions, stage director Anna Theodosakis.

The sequence for today’s presentation was different.

We began with a little bit of (1) Singing Only Softly, from the team of Livingston, Pearce & Viau, based on redacted texts that didn’t appear in Anne Frank’s diary. It’s described as a “song cycle opera”, a concept I can’t pretend to unpack on the basis of what we heard so far. It’s an interesting challenge to adapt something that is so well-known (the character at least) yet brand new (the text). Livingston’s vocal writing & Pearce’s libretto also with Viau’s direction successfully conveyed the right impression of a girl. I’m not sure if I’d call it an illusion or simply that they did not transgress the bounds of what I expected from such a well-known character.

Jeric, Phillips & Smith took us 180 degrees in the other direction musically even if we were in some respects in similar territory, with another story involving war, (2) Suites d’une ville morte. But where Livingston’s music was gently tonal, Jeric gave us a wildly playful adventure. We’re to imagine that a woman returns to a war-torn city finding a piano on top of a heap of rubble (broken? Perhaps the last vestige and the last remnant of life & culture?). While this might be wonderful staged, what we saw in the concert performance was an invitation to our poetic imaginations. Szeto was playing on and in a prepared piano, at times strumming and making this instrument –that we could imagine as a virtual character in this opera– sing, while the singers tapped their chests and produced all manner of sounds, before they did finally begin to sing too. I found it wonderfully problematic that one could ask who is the instrument and who is the singer. The concept is pregnant with possibilities.

(3) The Chair from Attalah, Abracen & Theodosakis showed us something different again, and had me admiring the jaw-dropping contrasts, in the way they curated this concert. We went from…
1-something straight-forward in its innocent portrayal of childhood to…
2-something wilder & more dissonant, and now …
3-in this the third item the first glimpse of irony & layers between the surface and the interior, all in a brief presentation. So much of our lives is a performance, and here it was wonderful to see the distance between what was being said and what was being felt, shown with such clarity and edge by this team.

For the next one, from Jobidon, St-Onge & Umezawa, we went in a new direction that was in some respects very conventionally operatic –a woman’s suffering—but shown in a whole new way. (4) L’hiver attend beaucoup de moi shows us emotion and pain, in a very beautiful and tuneful package, the piano writing also very powerful. While I understand that the story concerns “solidarity & resilience” (as stated above), I don’t think we were hearing that in the passage heard today. This was for me the most conventionally operatic sounding of the first four excerpts, and given the politics of the occasion I hope that’s okay to say..(?).

The team from furthest away were present to talk a bit about their work. Harder & Telford are from Saskatchewan, and worked with Derventis on a comic opera about social media. Facebook begat (5) Book of Faces. As composer Kendra Harder explained she envisaged oratorio when she composed; the result is somewhat parodic, reminding me of the irony we get in Gay’s Beggar’s Opera or perhaps what we hear in Gilbert & Sullivan, in the collision between the stiffness of a style and the wackiness of Telford’s text. All that was missing was the voice-over “and now for something completely different”. Our finale –an aria titled “Take it to Tumblr”—was the most recognizably operatic display of the day, pushing soprano Suzanne Rigden to the top of her range & her most agile coloratura. It was deliciously silly.

If you want to hear more of any & all of these, you need to get a ticket to Saturday’s “Musique 3 Femmes: The Next Wave”.

Here’s the link for more info & tickets.

Posted in Music and musicology, Opera | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | 1 Comment

Berlioz 150   

Posted on March 17, 2019 by barczablog

I started writing this one and shoved it aside because I’m swamped with several things at the same time.  That’s life in Toronto if you’re keeping up with the music or opera or theatre scene, let alone trying to see them all, as I sometimes attempt to do.

But writing in response to a performance is the easiest, passive rather than active. That’s the main reason I aim to write the night of the show, so that there’s no backlog of responses.  Notice that I call it a “response”: as though it’s visceral & muscular, merely the twitching digits when electrodes are attached, fingers dancing on the keys, and not the conscious choice to write something.  The brain doesn’t come into it.  But –if you can excuse and even follow the plethora of parenthetical thoughts like side trips wandering away from the main track, the train of thought—when one is busy there must be more of a choice, what shows to see, what to miss.

I am coming back to something I started writing last weekend.  It seems apt to come back to this today given that there was a surprising dusting of snow last night, interrupting the steady advance of spring.  Hector Berlioz died on March 8th 1869, or in other words 150 years ago.  There are lots of composer anniversaries, often the occasion for festivals or scholarly study.  While this one might also trigger some activity—concerts conferences & book—its chief importance for me is simply that Berlioz is my favourite composer on most days.  From time to time I will doubt it, and then revisit some of his music.  While there are certainly many other composers who move me, particularly Debussy & Wagner, Puccini & Verdi, Mozart, Bach & Handel, and yes at times Tchaikovsky (Nutcracker! The solo piano music, and much more) or Saint-Saëns (that 2nd piano concerto) or even Percy Grainger..(?), it’s Berlioz who ultimately holds sway over my heart.

To commemorate the moment I looked at my bookshelf and when I saw the piano-vocal score of Damnation of Faust alongside his Requiem and the Berg sonata for piano
(the books are in alphabetical order after all… Carmen is on the other side), I impulsively pulled it out and started playing from the beginning.  It felt right before I even remembered what the words are saying.

There’s a solo line on the piano, corresponding to a violin line, a melody that will wind its way through the orchestra, getting picked up by the tenor.  It’s Faust alone with the orchestra (isn’t that a crazy thought? but if you’re a composer imagining, that’s how you’d picture it).  And Faust is observing & thinking. That’s what the romantic hero in the sublime landscape will do, even if he sounds unhappy.  While the tune is in major for the violins, Berlioz does that thing he sometimes does and fools us by changing the context even while using the very same motif, and so when Faust starts singing in the 9th bar (plus pickup) he seems to be singing a lament in F-sharp minor although of course it’s a D major key signature (F-sharp minor being the relative to A, which is the dominant to D).  It’s so deliciously apt that he’s singing “Le vieil hiver a fait place au printemps”, or in other words, winter has given way to spring.

Friday March 8th (Berlioz’s day of passing), I wrote this: “Have you been outside today? I was breaking up ice, melting under the sun.”  The sadness of that minor phrase matches the shift of mood, the seasonal affect disorder of February giving way to the sunny disposition we might feel, as the melancholy of winter is overwhelmed with the sensuousness of a warm sun and the smells of the ground as it comes back to life.  You get up out of your winter cocoon and start moving outside, returning to life.  Berlioz has all of that in the first pages of the score, an old man in the winter of his life wanting to be alive again, as the world renews itself & he watches & comments.  The little tired line grows and swells like the feelings in your chest, breathing in the warm air.

I listened.  I let myself be moved, thinking not so much of my pleasure & my decades-long affection for this music, but instead for a moment thinking of Berlioz.  He wrote this, and I wonder what he was thinking.  It doesn’t quite fit the generic pigeon-holes does it..!? In other words there’s much here that’s new, that still beckons to intrepid designers & directors.

I shared this to Facebook back on the 8th.  Listen from the beginning, as you’ll hear exactly that same passage to start that I described, the sadness of winter give way to the joy of spring: and an observer who can’t quite manage to join in. I identify very strongly with this alienated observer.

I had thought I wanted to talk about some of my favourite pieces or aspects of the composer, the way I did with previous anniversaries of note (thinking of Debussy & Wagner), when I posted several times within a few days.  Somehow this is different, not an intellectual exercise but something personal.   Today, I have some fires to put out –figuratively speaking I assure you—so let me just say that I’ll stop here.  I just wanted to post the thing I started last Friday, even if it feels like the beginning of something.

Or is it the fact that Spring hasn’t quite conquered Winter?

But lately I’ve been writing big long pieces, seeking to prolong my stay in the blogosphere, perhaps a bit like old Faust, hiding inside his head, avoiding real life.  If I ever figure out a way to permanently stay there in the bloggy world, would that mean I stop writing?

Which reminds me of a joke.

  • Pilot announces “we’ve lost power in engine #1. That will delay us for 90 minutes but we’re still safe with the other 2 engines.
  • Pilot announces “we’ve lost power in engine #2. That delays us 3 hours: but we’re still safe with that last engine.
  • Passenger pipes up “gee if we lose that other engine we’ll be up here all night”.

 

Posted in Personal ruminations & essays | Tagged , | 2 Comments

ELLES—Marina Thibeault

Posted on March 17, 2019 by barczablog

The new ATMA Classics CD ELLES seems apt for a month when there seems to be a great deal of music, opera & theatre created by women, celebrating female creativity, and perhaps extra noticeable with last week’s International Women’s Day on March 8th. There was Stacey Dunlop’s Lonely Child Project, Sook-Yin Lee’s Unsafe at the Berkeley Street Theatre, School Girls at Buddies, Revisor choreographed by Crystal Pite.  And upcoming we get Next Wave Workshop from Musique 3 Femmes (and Tapestry), and the Toronto City Opera’s La traviata. And those are just the recent/current ones I’m aware of.

So I’ve been listening incessantly to ELLES.

elles2

It’s what I do when I get a new CD. First time through it’s a voyage through terra incognita and the sense of wonder at the newness I’m encountering. Gradually it resolves into a series of expectations. It’s rare that I want to listen again after the 2nd time through, but this one is different on a number of fronts.

Sometimes recordings are organized in such a way that the journey from beginning to end makes you want to do it again. I think that’s at least part of it.

The title is a signal of course, although I’m not sure who is to be understood in this plural pronoun. It could be the performers, violist Marina Thibeault & pianist Marie-Ève Scarfone, two women with roots in Québec. It could be the repertoire on the CD: all from female composers.

Or perhaps all of the above?

If I asked you to name some female composers you’d probably include at least a couple of these names in your list, as they’re among the best known. An additional filter is the instruments of course, as it’s all either music for viola & piano or for solo viola.

  • Clara Schumann: Three romances Op 22
  • Nadia Boulanger: Three pieces for cello & piano, arranged for viola & piano
  • Fanny Hensel (aka Fanny Mendelssohn): Dämmrung senkte sich von oben
  • Rebecca Clarke: Sonata for viola & piano
  • Lillian Fuchs: Sonata Pastorale (unaccompanied viola)
  • Anna Pidgorna: The Child Bringer of Light for viola solo

If this were programmed by a man I suspect it would be organized chronologically, whereas this is more purely musical, or dare I say it, poetic, pursuing an emotional logic.
Before I address that, I want to talk about my first experience of the CD, plunging in without really looking too closely at the liner notes. Sometimes when I go to a concert I’ve read up in advance to be fully prepared; sometimes I make no preparation and immerse myself in the pure sonic experience. With a recording I seek the luxury of both, getting to blindly listen and then after looking at the titles & notes, listening again. My first experience of Thibeault’s viola was very disorienting. It’s possible this is simply my ignorance, the disorientation of someone who knows nothing or very little.

But the first time through I was overwhelmed by the tone of this viola, at times thinking I was listening to a cello. Now indeed at least two of these pieces were originally cello pieces transcribed for viola. But that doesn’t explain a rich sound that I’ve never heard coming from a viola.  Before you enter into any consideration of interpretation you’re already in rarefied air, a sound unlike anything I’ve heard before

So I must mention that there’s a Sinfonia Toronto concert coming up Friday April 5th that I will miss because I am already over-committed (I said yes to something each of Thursday, Friday & Saturday!). Thibeault will play the Canadian Premiere of a viola concerto by Peteris Vasks. The beautiful tone I heard on this CD should sound especially rich in the intimate confines of the Glenn Gould Studio.  Oh well. If you should go please let me know what you thought.

[Back to the CD]

We begin in a curiously familiar place with the Schumann. Clara Schumann’s Op 22 romances sound a lot like Robert Schumann’s music.

Amazing! These are magnificent pieces working in many of the same ways you might recognize from Robert Schumann’s compositions. The influence they must have had upon one another is palpable, and perhaps the very quintessence of “the romantic”.

There are some interesting points of divergence that might be due to the female performers, or maybe come from the score itself. I think if it were Robert Schumann’s music played by men, that the piano part would be heavier & less subtle. But recalling the original way that Barbara Hannigan approached Berg in a TSO concert a few weeks ago, maybe this is the gender talking: and in a good way.

Boulanger is not someone I know, and after hearing her three pieces I’m planning to explore further. The last movement is especially thrilling with a bravura piano part that brings out the best in Scarfone.

Hensel gives us the itinerary for a tiny two minute trip back into the dreamiest depths of the romantic movement, a stunning melodic arc that I didn’t want to end. But it did. (another reason to let the CD play over…)

Rebecca Clarke? I didn’t know her work but I will have to explore further after hearing this glorious sonata. Impetuoso for the first movement brings us decisively into the 20th century. But we’re still tonal, modal & passionate. This is a true duet, Scarfone taking the stage at times, at other times more in support of Thibeault’s soaring line.

The second movement Vivace has all the playfulness of a scherzo. I’m more reminded of the middle movement of Saint-Saëns 2nd piano concerto, that goes back and forth between gossamer lightness and a slower melody (the closest analogy I could think of…not quite the same though). What’s really amazing about this is how I’m reminded of a question I posed a couple of weeks ago, namely how does a composer get people to play their works? The short answer is to write something fun, something you hear and say “wow I want to play that!” That’s what I felt when I heard the Saint-Saëns 2nd concerto middle movement, a stunning ear-worm if ever there was one. This movement too has staying power, amazing textures & sounds.  And Clarke’s last page does sound a lot like Saint-Saëns’ conclusion.

And then her third movement is a soulful Adagio beginning with a piano statement, answered by something mysterious and poignant in the viola, questioning and questing for something, growing and accelerating. From a deceptively simple beginning this piece really shows the gender thing most eloquently in a testosterone free zone, ending without bombast or falseness.

And from there, we’re in alto solo territory for the next four cuts: the three movement Sonata Pastorale of Lillian Fuchs, and the fascinating closing piece from Ana Pidgorna.

There’s a great deal of variety in the three-movement Sonata Pastorale. At times it’s very thoughtful & sombre, but the last movement breaks free for an energetic Allegro. This kind of writing totally suits the viola, a melancholy probing under the surface that you wouldn’t expect from a violin.  Thibeault is fully in control of this piece, taking us for a wild ride to finish.

And to close the CD, the Pidgorna, which is unlike anything that came before, barely recognizable as the same instrument. Everything that’s been established to this point –the solidity of tone & tonality—is now up for grabs in this electrifying finale. I’m glad I listened to it the first time without recourse to the notes, as its playfulness is unmistakable. The rhetorical segmentation reminds me of a one-woman show, an attempt to do a soliloquy without words. It helps that Thibeault is so decisive, sometimes attacking powerfully, sometimes more gently.

Here’s a live performance of The Child, Bringer of Light.

… making me want to go back to the beginning of the CD, to hear the Schumann again.

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