Wednesday 31 July 2019

Festival of the Sound 2019 # 8: The Three "B"s -- Plus

Tuesday of Week Two brought a pair of concerts with strong focus on the classics of the classics -- the composers I learned about, as a youngster, as The Three "B"s:  Bach, Beethoven, and Brahms.

On looking up this piece of antiquated musical lore, I was surprised to learn that it was originated by composer Peter Cornelius to elevate Hector Berlioz to the same heights of perceived greatness as Bach and Beethoven.  Later on, conductor Hans von Bulow changed the third B from Berlioz to Brahms, indicating a conservative bent in musical taste shared by many in the Viennese critical establishment, and particularly expressed in print by Eduard Hanslick.

In exchanging Brahms for Berlioz, von Bulow not only showed his disdain for the French romantic master but also blithely ignored (as had Cornelius) such great names as Byrd, Buxtehude, Boccherini, Bizet, and Bruckner.  Later generations would bring many more "B's of note, among them Britten, Bernstein, Bartok, and Busoni.

At any rate, the Tuesday afternoon programmes gave us a great deal of music from von Bulow's list of The Three "B"s.

The first concert was a programme of three Beethoven works, featuring cellist Yegor Dyachkov and pianist Leopoldo Erice.  The pair began with one of the master's most delightful works, the set of theme and variations on Papageno's jovial aria Ein Mädchen oder Weibchen from Mozart's Die Zauberflöte.  This may be Beethoven's Opus 66 (putting it right next door to the dramatic Fifth Symphony) but Beethoven plainly respected and even revered the genius of Mozart, and the resulting variations are an affectionate tribute rather than creating any undue dramatic emphasis.  A light touch on the keys and hearty energy without overplaying on the cello brought out all the nuances of this delightful piece.

This was followed by the fourth Cello Sonata in C major, Op. 102 No, 1.  A very different world indeed, this concise work calls for careful balancing during the passages where the cello has to play low in the register.  Every note matters in this closely-written music.  Dyachkov's attention to phrasing and Erice's emphatic but not over-heavy playing again paid dividends.

After a brief pause, Erice returned to play the last of the master's 32 Piano Sonatas, the C Minor, Op. 111.  I've heard this piece played live a couple of times before, but never with such immense power and intensity.  The first movement allegro erupted all over the keyboard like a volcano blowing its stack, but this was a volcano with a difference.  Even at his more passionate, Erice's playing remains almost abandoned, almost out of control.  But the "almost" matters.  Not many pianists would dare to push this music so far for fear of exceeding the limits of "almost".  The second movement is marked adagio molto semplice cantabile -- that is "slow, simply, singing."  I'm never quite sure whether Beethoven intended the "molto" to apply to the adagio or the semplice.  In the event, Erice managed to make it apply to both in this performance, giving in this way an adequate counterweight to the incredible fury of the first movement.

The second afternoon concert consisted of three sonatas for strings and piano.  The first two were played by Duo Concertante, consisting of violinist Nancy Dahn and pianist Timothy Steeves.  Bach's Sonata for Violin and Keyboard in B Minor, BWV1014, was treated to the sort of performance that has grown unfashionable in the age of "authentic performance."  The violin was played in modern style, with discreet use of vibrato, and the keyboard part didn't sound like a piano pretending to be a harpsichord.  Speeds avoided the excesses of some authentic interpretations, and there was some use made of rubato, but not over much.  A satisfying reading, true to the music on its own terms.

Dahn and Steeves then continued with the Sonata No. 1 in A Minor, Op. 105, by Schumann.  Here we got a more emphatic style of playing in accordance with the much heavier, denser keyboard writing used by Schumann.  Even so, the music remained musical -- not too ponderous -- and the lighter weight of the central allegretto was delightful.

The final selection was the Cello Sonata No. 1 in E minor, Op. 38, by Brahms.  Yegor Dyachkov returned, this time partnered with Martin Roscoe.

It's easy to tell that this is the first major work Brahms wrote for solo instrument with piano.  The piano was as much Brahms' instrument as it was Schumann's, and in his earlier works in particular the piano writing can sometimes becomes so dense as to overwhelm the instrument's partner(s).  In a cello sonata, we're faced with the additional difficulty that the cello line may become submerged under the higher, brighter piano tones.  Roscoe did magnificent work in keeping the piano part an equal partner to the cello, but even so there were one or two moments of imbalance.  Dyachkov gave a dramatic, intense rendition of the solo part which worked to maintain the balance as well.

All in all, a rewarding afternoon with some magnificent musicians and the legendary Three "B"s!


Festival of the Sound 2019 # 7: Seriously Musical

Running a bit late with my review from Friday's concerts, with apologies.  I've been preoccupied with the life issues of Brünnhilde, my nearly-ten-year-old Jeep.  She's all good now, and I'm back on duty.

Ultimate contrasts in style, but not in quality, between the afternoon and evening concerts on Friday.  

Janina Fialkowska's afternoon piano recital, a mixture of French music with a set of Chopin, was a classical piano experience par excellence, with superb playing in a fascinating and diverse programme.y

The recital had two halves, the first devoted to an assortment of music by French composers, and the second to the music of Fialkowska's compatriot, Chopin -- a composer whose music has given her a deservedly high reputation as a leading interpreter.

The recital opened with a rare gem: an Impromptu in E Major by Germaine Tailleferre, a composer completely unknown to me.  Although Tailleferre's composing career was in the twentieth century, the idiom in which she wrote this piece would pose no challenges to anyone who could cope with Debussy or Ravel.

And it was to Debussy that Fialkowska turned next, with shimmering, lovingly shaped performances of Poissons d'or from Book II of Images, and Les sons et les parfums from Book 1 of Preludes.

An Intermezzo in A Flat Major by Francis Poulenc came next, and then Fialkowska closed the set with a rippling, sparkling performance of the three-movement Sonatine by Ravel.  At her request, this entire set of French music was played with no breaks for applause.

The Chopin portion of the recital opened with the Scherzo No. 3 in C Sharp Major, Op. 39.  It's an oft-quoted truism that Chopin was "the poet of the piano," but pieces like this scherzo remind us that poetry isn't always merely pretty, and can easily become massive in scale.  Fialkowska gave a fire-eating performance of this epic work, yet still found fantasy in the cascading scales that mark each phrase of the chorale-like second theme.

She followed on with a brooding, sensitive Nocturne, Op. 55 No. 2, and then a group of 3 Mazurkas: Op. 67 No. 2, Op. 33 No. 2, and Op. 33 No. 4.  These were a real treat to the ear.  Too many pianists neglect the Mazurkas, whether because they are too simple and not showy enough, or because they "all sound alike."  It's unwise to dismiss the Mazurkas on such specious grounds, for they have much to say.  Fialkowska plainly understood that a significant portion of Chopin's soul can be found in these far-from-artless pieces.

The recital ended with the Ballade No. 4 in F Minor, Op. 52.  Again, as with the Scherzo, we faced a work on an epic scale, but with more of a narrative or journeying feel to it.  Fialkowska shaped all the sections of the work with thoughtful consideration of how they fit together into a whole, and balanced the fiery and emotional peaks with the more meditative moments to near perfection.

Plenty of pianists can play Chopin well, but not too many play his music with such distinction and finesse.  This recital was a real highlight of the Festival.

The evening concert featured the Payadora Tango Ensemble.  In the big picture of the Festival, this concert could fairly be regarded as the kickoff to the "Folk Weekend."  The music may have lain far outside the North American/Celtic folk traditions which most people think of when they hear the name "folk music," yet there's no denying the tango its legitimate place as an expression of folk music and dance in South America.

In this programme, we came face to face with a whole range of composers whose names were not familiar to most of us (apart from the now-ubiquitous Astor Piazzolla), but the music they produced was undeniably sophisticated, serious music, albeit rooted in a traditional style.

The ensemble was sophisticated too: one fabulous pianist (Robert Horvath), one excellent player on the bandoneon (a kind of accordion), mandolin, and violin (Drew Jurecka), a string bass player who also plucked an impressive guitar (Joe Phillips), a vocalist/violinist who led the group (Rebekah Wolkstein), an accomplished tango singer (Elbio Fernandez), and a couple of stylish and sultry dancers (Roxana and Fabian Belmonte).

This show (it was much more than just a concert) gave us a thorough introduction to the world of the tango, including examples of three main styles, samples of high-energy and highly seductive solo and couple dancing, vocal numbers ranging from the brooding to the frankly virtuosic, and excellent playing throughout.

Like everything presented at the Festival of the Sound, this was seriously musical work, both entertaining and thought provoking.

A personal footnote: there were several times during the evening when a turn of musical phrase or a movement by the dancers triggered memories of my parents.  They shared a great love of Latin American music and dance.  Their taste ran more to Cuban and Mexican than Argentinian, but I like to think that they would have really enjoyed this unique presentation.


Friday 26 July 2019

Festival of the Sound 2019 # 6: Two Blockbuster Concerts

Thursday produced only two concerts, but both were of the memorable blockbuster variety that causes them to be remembered well into later years.

In the afternoon we had a stunning pair of string quartets from the Rolston Quartet, and in the evening the National Youth Orchestra scored a remarkable first: the debut on the Festival stage of the Symphony No. 5 by Gustav Mahler.

The afternoon concert opened with the String Quartet No. 19 in C Major, K.465 ("Dissonance") by Mozart.  If you haven't heard the work, fear not -- the dissonance occurs only in the adagio introduction to the first movement.  It always strikes me as Mozart's attempt to show cosmos evolving out of chaos, a subject which Haydn also tackled with strikingly different results in the orchestral introduction to his oratorio, The Creation.  The Rolston ensemble played that searching chain of dissonances with great intensity, savouring the moment when dissonance finally elides into consonance, allowing the allegro movement to launch.  

Their interpretation of the quartet as a whole was given on a broad scale of tone more evocative of Schubert than Mozart.  The result wasn't perhaps the most authentic, and might not be considered a performance to live with on a recording by many music lovers, but I personally liked the go-for-it power of the music's louder moments, the sharply-pointed yet still big sforzandi, and the contrasting quiet intensity of the softer passages.

In a performance of this character, even the "cantabile" of the andante movement became the singing of a trumpeting opera ensemble rather than a lyrical melody.  The emphatic chording of the minuet lent the music a distinctly rustic, earthy quality.  The final allegro then wound the quartet up with plenty of fiery energy and dash to spare.

After a short pause the Quartet then played the String Quartet No. 14 in D Minor, D.810 ("Death and the Maiden") by Schubert.  This searching work, more sustained in its intensity than almost any other music ever written, is as much a testing ground for a string quartet as anything Beethoven ever wrote.  Indeed, it's not stretching a point to say that Schubert in this piece fully achieved his intention of becoming the next Beethoven.

It's no contradiction to say, in the same sentence or breath, that the Rolstons gave this quartet a totally stunning performance, but that they can and will do it better.  All performing artists know that "Better" always lies somewhere beyond the level you presently are achieving.  In this case, it lies further ahead in time.

The full emotional intensity of this quartet is difficult to unlock for someone who hasn't yet experienced some pretty severe shocks and heartbreaks at the hands of this merciless taskmaster we call "life."  The real miracle of the music is the way that Schubert tapped into all of that emotional depth and intensity when he was not yet 30 years old.  It will indeed be fascinating to hear what this ensemble, should it still be in existence, will make of this music in, say, 15 years' time.

What they made of it on this occasion was already memorable, to say the least.  The first movement was full of fiery fury and anger, with phrase ends bitten off sharply, yet it was anger kept on a tight, controlled rein -- the sound remaining at all times musical, never allowed to grow raw around the edges.  When played like this, the quartet can and does sound like a symphony in embryo.  Given the headlong energy which the Rolstons brought to the music, skipping the exposition repeat made sense -- although I normally prefer to hear it played.

The heart and soul of the music are found in the second movement, the variations on the melody of Schubert's earlier lied which gives the quartet its nickname.  While it's not a good idea to focus too much on the words of the song while playing the quartet, there's no denying that the generalized idea of death calling to us governs the theme, and thus the entire movement.

Taking the opening theme at a flowing tempo, the quartet then characterized each of the variations with a good mixture of boldness and sensitivity.  The quieter variations featured more delicate playing to offset the emphatic crunch of the bows into the strings in the bigger sections.  Particularly effective were the violin and cello melodic lines in the first two variations.  The final coda of the song died away into nothing rather than clearly ending.

The brief third movement brought the greatest contrasts between the brawny playing of the "demonic" scherzo theme and the lyrically lilting trio.

If the final movement, a tarantella, is indeed a dance of death (as so many commentators have said) then the Rolston Quartet were definitely tempting fate, taking the main theme at a daringly fast pace that had many of us wondering where they were going to go in the prestissimo of the final coda.  Where they went was to become faster still -- yet, incredibly, all the individual notes of that final frenetic page remained completely audible and distinct.  A stunning performance, giving promise of much more to look forward to in future.

Best news of the day: James Campbell announced that he has already invited this gifted ensemble back for next season.

For the evening concert, the Festival welcomed the return of the National Youth Orchestra, Canada's pre-eminent orchestral training workshop ensemble.  The concert opened with Johan Halvorsen's violin/cello duet arrangement of a Handel passacaglia, showcasing the talents of the concertmaster and principal cellist.  The programme concluded, according to tradition, with the entire orchestra converting into a beautiful choir and singing two harmonized songs, one in French and one in English.

The principal business of the evening, though, was a single large work: Gustav Mahler's Symphony No. 5.

This is undoubtedly the loudest piece of classical music ever performed in the Charles W. Stockey Centre, and quite likely the first complete performance of a Mahler symphony ever given in Parry Sound.

For this reason, I want to start with a bit of a programme note, since the Festival programme has no room for such material.

This symphony was the first Mahler ever wrote without having recourse to some kind of written programme, narrative, or movement titles.  Yet it still follows the composer's famous dictum that a symphony must encompass the whole world, and it has a narrative, albeit not an overt one.

This symphony displays a remarkable new attitude to tonality.  Instead of following classical practice and having the symphony end in the same key as it began, or a related key, Mahler opens this work in a tortured C sharp minor and ends the final movement in a radiant, grandiose D major.

The work has a fascinating symmetrical structure, highlighted by the composer when he divided the work into three parts.  Part One comprises the first two movements: a towering funeral march with an angry allegro section embedded, and a fiery, furious allegro with another, quite different funeral march at its heart.  It's no wonder that most commentators see these two movements as being in fact a single unity.

Part Two contains only the third movement, an example of the slow Austrian triple-time dance called the ländler.  Mahler was inordinately fond of this country dance, and examples of it crop up at all stages of his career, and in the majority of his symphonies.  This is by far the longest movement, so its place at the centre of the work stamps it as the symphony's focal point.  It's interesting, then, that in a work with so much sound and fury, the first theme of this centrepiece is slow, gracious, a bit indolent, even seductive to a degree.  But the movement often gets beyond that territory and is full of sudden, dramatic key changes, stops and starts, changes of tempo, and the like.  It finishes in a mood of raucous celebration.

Part Three begins with the sombrely luminous Adagietto, which is far better known than the symphony as a whole, thanks to its use in film, television, and even in commercials.  Sombre because of the frequent playing on the low strings of the violins, luminous because of the liquid harp arpeggios which lighten the mood throughout, the Adagietto is undoubtedly a love song -- and as certainly addressed to Mahler's wife, Alma.  The soaring climaxes of the music make it easy to overlook the multiple changes of time signature in this piece, sometimes shifting from 3 to 5 to 2 to 4 and back to 3 beats in just a few bars.  it gives the melody lines an appealing feeling of flexibility, of twin souls breathing.

The final fading note of the violins carries quietly over into the opening of the finale, a brisk, bright rondo where the orchestral textures are dominated by counterpoint, the interaction of melodic lines to create the musical texture, rather than writing the music by chords.  The sudden stops and starts return, along with frequent changes of orchestration.  The music's raucous character is emphasized by Mahler's oft-repeated direction that the horns, clarinets, and oboes should forcefully play with the bell of the instrument held up high -- thus creating a bright, glaring quality to the sound.  While this technique is used in all his symphonies, it probably gets more use in the Fifth than in any of the others.  The final movement eventually builds up an unstoppable head of speed.  After a glorious, triumphant, chorale-like episode in D major dominated by the brass choir (briefly foreshadowed at the end of the second movement), the orchestra launches into a frantically celebratory coda, spinning faster and faster until, with one final pause on an unexpected note, a last downwards plunge ends the entire work on three emphatic chords.

Under the direction of Michael Francis, the orchestra gave this massive, complex work a performance which could stand comparison with any other I have heard.  As examples of the sophistication of this reading, take the clear distinction between 3-note and 4-note figures in the string writing of the first movement, or the crisp staccato of the horns in the second.  The gentle ebb and flow of the ländler tempo in the third movement found the whole ensemble speeding up and slowing down in virtually perfect unity.  The Adagietto featured some beautifully underplayed portamento from the violins, a tricky effect to bring off without being glaringly obvious.  In the finale, all the complex lines of the counterpoint came through crystal-clear, so that the alert listener could pick out any one line and follow it with no trouble.

All of this comes down, as much as anything, to the impressive balances achieved by Maestro Francis.  Without careful attention to balance, it's all too easy to make any Mahler score deteriorate into noisy mush.  I was particularly impressed because my seat, right under the elbows of the back desks of first violins, still allowed me to hear any and every aspect of the complex orchestration throughout the entire symphony.

Not the least impressive was the tremendous energy, zest, fire, which these players brought to the score.  It's that immense passion for the music, more than any other single quality, which ideally fits this orchestra to tackle the passionate music of Mahler.  This concert was memorable!


Thursday 25 July 2019

Festival of the Sound 2019 # 5: Busy Day of Varied Musical Treasures

Some days at the Festival of the Sound end up, by chance or design, revolving around a single theme or common characteristic (see yesterday's post for an example).  Others, like this Wednesday of the first week, just bring together an intriguing assortment of music both well-known and less so, with an equally intriguing mix of musicians who may have played together frequently or may never have performed together before at all.

Sometimes it's those never-before events that can prove the most intriguing and exciting.

Wednesday began with a lovely recital by the team of baritone Russell Braun and pianist Carolyn Maule.  This programme did have a theme of its own, the theme of the sea and water.  It's a subject that has fascinated composers, poets and painters for many centuries.

Maule anchored the programme with a wide-ranging performance of Chopin's one and only (and masterful) Barcarolle, the rowing rhythm in the bass always discernible as the upper keyboard parts ranged from the lightly ethereal to the robustly emphatic.

Braun's numerous contributions ranged from a sensitive Auf dem Wasser zu singen of Schubert to a deeply-felt, majestic Old Man River from Jerome Kern's immortal score for Showboat.  Off the beaten path treasures in this recital included two lovely late songs by Gabriel Fauré (not listed on the programme) and Srul Irving Glick's The Sea is Awash With Roses.  

The second afternoon concert presented two intriguing rarities, both of which I heard for the first time at this Festival, many years ago.

Clara Schumann was one notable victim of a particular form of musical gender discrimination (another was the French violinist and composer, Louise Farrenc).  Each of these women was greatly admired as a performer and as a teacher, but continued to be regarded as a distraction from the real composing work which was done by men.  Odd.

Every time I hear Clara Schumann's Piano Trio in G Minor, Op. 17, I feel more and more regret that she abandoned her composing career.  This is music of real substance and staying power.  I often pull out the recording of the piece which I bought shortly after hearing it at the Festival back in the 1990s.

The Swiss Piano Trio gave the work a performance which definitely underlined its strength, power, and character.  The opening allegro moderato gave ample evidence of the dramatic range of Schumann's musical thought.  The lilting minuet and rustic trio contrasted well.  The andante slow movement, if it lacked the drama of Beethoven, lacked nothing for emotional depth.  The allegretto finale provided an apt conclusion to a work which deserves to be better known and more widely performed.  Kudos to the Swiss Piano Trio for taking it up in the year of the 200th anniversary of Clara Schumann's birth.

The second major work was an equally rare bird, and for this one I had to go all the way back to either 1993 or 1994 -- the first two seasons I attended the Festival.  I'm almost certain it was 1994.

Erno Dohnányi's Sextet in C Major, Op. 37, is a fascinating work -- and that's putting it mildly.  It covers a far wider emotional and stylistic range than most composers would dare attempt in a single piece, and presents all kinds of unusual sonorities for the audience to enjoy.  The music was composed in 1935, but many passages make more than a nod in the direction of Brahms -- both harmonically and in the choice of instruments in key passages.  The Swiss Trio were joined in this work by viola Douglas McNabney, Ken MacDonald on French horn, and James Campbell on clarinet.

The first movement performance paid due attention to the composer's allegro appassionato -- a stormy, dramatic piece full of rich harmonies and forceful gestures, with themes that linger in the mind.

The second movement, marked Intermezzo Andante, belied that innocuous description as it was played with a depth and weight of tragic feeling that brought it close to the Brahms of the Fourth symphony.  The combination of clarinet and horn moving in harmony above deep piano chords creates a good deal of that depth.  So does a figure heard several times, in which a melodic note drops by a semitone while the bass rises by a third from the submediant to the tonic -- a sonority which also dominates Schoenberg's doom-laden Lied der Waldtaube.

The third movement brought a refreshing contrast in brighter tones and lighter harmonies, before the finale leaped out like a jack-in-the-box with its bouncy, jazzy main theme unlike anything else heard in the entire work.  The melody is based on a catchy 3-3-2 rhythmic pattern.  Good luck trying to chase this ear worm out of your head!  The entire last movement was played just as it needs to be, total smile-on-your-face music -- right up to the final moments when the composer brings the piece to a rousing, affirmative conclusion on the subdominant chord, and then casually tosses in a two-beat cadence on the tonic.  It always brings a laugh, and I'm sure Dohnányi laughed as he wrote it.  It was evident that the ensemble were having themselves a great time playing this one.

The evening concert brought a first appearance by a dynamic young ensemble, the Rolston Quartet.  The quartet first performed the String Quartet in F Major, Op. 59 No. 1 by Beethoven -- the first of the three "Razumovsky Quartets."  This work was written in the same year as the Fourth symphony and shares with its year-partner a large scale of tone and ideas.

The Rolstons gave a reading which was appropriately big-boned, yet not lacking in subtlety.  This was the work where Beethoven extended the bounds of the quartet genre as decisively as the Eroica had expanded the genre of symphony, so a grand and dramatic scale is very much to the point.  The subtlety came with moments like the delicious pointing of the scherzando rhythms in the second movement, and the sense of suspended time in the slow movement.  The work culminated in a hair-raising account of the finale, played at a fire-eating allegro tempo.  I think the master would have approved.

There's a small side issue which troubled me from my seat close to the stage.  I could see three of the players clearly.  One looked completely detached.  One looked sullen and unwilling.  One spent most of the work displaying an angry frown which occasionally deepened into what looked like a grimace of pain.  These three players looked distinctly uncomfortable and it made me feel uncomfortable too.  And I know that they can smile because they certainly did during their curtain calls amid the uproar of applause and cheers -- cheers which they earned by their music making.  Something for them to consider in future.

After this work, the quartet were joined by double bass Joel Quarrington and pianist Janina Fialkowska for a performance of a chamber arrangement of Beethoven's Concerto No. 3 in C Minor, Op. 73.  The arrangement was made by composer Vinzenz Lachner, a contemporary of Schubert.

The first thing I noticed was the importance of adding that bass to the lineup.  As compared to the Chopin concertos with string quartet which we've heard in the past, that fifth string instrument tilted the balance a little more towards the "orchestra," creating a more equal partnership -- or duel, if you like -- between soloist and accompaniment.

Fialkowska's performance of the solo part ranged from high drama to ethereal fantasy in the first movement, with darker solemnity and power in the slow movement, and a nice contrast in the almost folk-like idiom of the finale.  Her performance was crowned by a cadenza written by Franz Liszt, which she tossed off with considerable aplomb and flair.  I could probably have guessed at Liszt's authorship even if we weren't told beforehand, if only because of the dense, bass-heavy chords at key points in the cadenza.  A fascinating addition to a magisterial performance.

The quintet achieved great things in the orchestral role, not least in successfully altering their tone colour for important lead lines that would normally be played by winds.  The players matched the soloist in drama in the stormy passages of the first movement, and brought real gravitas to the slow movement.  Their playing in the finale was nothing if not lively.

These chamber arrangements of classical concertos are always a fascinating experience, not least for the additional light they throw on works which we consider well-known.


Wednesday 24 July 2019

Festival of the Sound 2019 # 4: Making Arrangements

We're now officially into "Multi-Concert Madness."  During the three weeks of the Festival, the weekdays from Tuesday through Friday generally have three concerts each, although occasionally a day is allowed to get off lightly with just two.  The standard times for a 3-concert day are 1:30pm, 3:30pm, and 7:30pm.  The first two concerts typically last 70-75 minutes with no intermission, and the evening concert usually runs about 120-150 minutes including an intermission.  The game is always to see how close the intermission can come to showing off a spectacular Georgian Bay sunset, since the broad deck outside the back of the Stockey Centre faces west across the waters of Parry Sound.

The other game, at least for me, is to see how many of these concerts I can attend on my season pass before battle fatigue sets in.

I'm tolerably certain that the results were not the Festival's intention as the programme was drawn up, but it is a fact nonetheless that each of the three Tuesday concerts involved music being arranged for some instrument or instruments other than the originals.

The first concert featured the celebrated duo-pianists Anagnoson and Kinton, now in their 42nd year of performing as a team.  The featured work was an exciting rarity: the 4-hands piano adaptation of Stravinsky's ballet, Petrushka.  The composer and other pianists worked from this score during the rehearsals for the ballet's 1911 premiere, but did not perform it publicly.  It says something for the complexities of Stravinsky's score that it couldn't readily be reduced to the scale of a single piano, much more the rule in ballet and opera studios.  In any case, the 4-hands version has now been adapted to incorporate changes made during Stravinsky's 1946 revision of the ballet.

Petrushka is an exciting, dynamic score, so it's much better suited to piano performance than some other Stravinsky works.  Anagnoson and Kinton treated the work to a suitably sharp-edged reading, full of dramatic contrasts from section to section.

The performance was accompanied by overhead projections of a series of paintings by Alan Stein, illustrating the events of the story in a winter setting full of brilliant colours set against cold white surroundings.

To round off the programme, Anagnoson and Kinton then played Lutoslawski's Variations on a Theme of Paganini, a six-minute virtuoso showpiece for 2 pianos.  The piece is based on the famous Caprice No. 24 for solo violin, itself a set of variations on a theme.  This is the same caprice used as thematic material in the two books of Paganini Variations by Brahms and in the Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini by Rachmaninoff.

Lutoslawski's work strikes me as the epitome of what Robertson Davies once called "wrong-note modernism."  Really, what this means is that the players could make mistakes in every bar and only someone who had played and studied the work would know the difference.  Paganini's theme is there at all times, and even some reminiscences of a couple of the Brahms variations, but all surrounded and hedged in by massive discords all over both keyboards.  The fun of the work, such as it is, comes from trying to keep the theme in your ear throughout the performance, and from admiring the frenetic exertions of the players.

The second concert brought a welcome annual return visit by the Gryphon Trio.  In the first section, they were joined by clarinetist James Campbell in an interesting assortment of short pieces by Schumann, each for a solo instrument and piano.  The trick was that two of the pieces were played on solo instruments other than the ones which the composer originally assigned.  These alternate versions were sanctioned by Schumann -- in some cases.

Campbell opened with the first of the Drei Fantasiestücke, Op. 73 -- a piece to which the clarinet has the legitimate claim, although Schumann allowed the use of either viola or cello.  Perhaps it was true, as Campbell stated, that he really didn't care since the piano was his instrument!   =

The second work was the second movement of the Drei Romanzen, Op. 94, for oboe and piano.  In this case, Schumann explicitly forbade his publisher, Simrock, to publish alternative versions for violin and clarinet, saying that the piece would have been different if he had written it for one of those instruments.  Simrock went ahead and published the alternate versions anyway -- neither the first nor the last time that a publisher has ignored the wishes of a composer or author!

The piece is marked Einfach, innig (simple, heartfelt) and that described exactly the manner in which violinist Annalee Patipatanakoon played it.

The third piece we heard was the third of the Drei Fantasiestücke, played by Roman Borys on cello with a great deal of fire and energy.

After a brief pause, the Gryphons were joined by Douglas McNabney on viola and Joel Quarrington on double bass in the well-loved Piano Quintet in A Major, "The Trout," by Schubert.  This unusual five-movement work is one of the most frequently requested and performed pieces at the Festival, being in a perpetual dead heat for first place with the Brahms Clarinet Quintet.

The Trout Quintet always strikes me as the definitive piece of summer music, full of light and air, gentle breezes and ample energy.

Those qualities were present in full measure in this performance.  One intriguing feature of this reading was the prominence of the many passages where the melody is assigned to the viola; these points in the score all seemed to have been specially highlighted, although not in any glaringly obvious way.  Another delight was the consistently light and airy playing of Jamie Parker on the piano.  Schubert certainly helped by writing so much of the piano part high up on the keyboard, and Parker's lightness of touch on the keys and of foot on the sustain pedal made true summer sunshine of the music.  The warm applause at the end was certainly well-earned.

In the evening, there was a dual concert by members of the Hannaford Street Silver Band, with a free "Bands on the Bay" concert on the Stockey Centre's outdoor deck at 6:30 pm followed by the more structured concert in the hall at 8:00 pm.

In a Peanuts cartoon from the 1960s, Lucy convinces Charlie Brown to take his yearly kick at the football by showing him the printed programme announcing his participation.  After she has yanked the ball away, according to tradition, she stands over him and says, "In every program, Charlie Brown, there are always a few last-minute changes."

The evening concert from the Hannaford Street ensemble wasn't so much a matter of a few changes as it was a completely new concert which included a few of the pieces previously announced!  Since I don't normally take notes, I'm relying on the weakest of witnesses -- my memory.

The programme started on historic ground, with Giovanni Gabrieli's Sonata pian' e forte ("Sonata soft and loud").   It's one of the earliest instances we know of a composer incorporating dynamic markings in a score.  The ensemble divided into two groups, standing on opposite sides of the hall, as the players in Gabrieli's original performances would have been positioned in the opposing music galleries of Basilica San Marco in Venice.  It seemed a pity that the players couldn't have gone up to the upper balconies of the Stockey Centre, but it's a long hike up and the elevator is both slow and small.  It was still a spectacular piece.

This was followed by a spectacular C Major Concerto for 2 Trumpets by Vivaldi, with the two players using the stratospheric piccolo trumpets.  The virtuoso acrobatics of the soloists were impressive.

We also heard a suite of three famous excerpts from Bizet's Carmen, played with considerable elan, especially in the jet-propelled final pages of the Bohemian dance.

This concert included a special guest artist, baritone Russell Braun.  Conductor Ray Tizzard spoke about Jim Campbell's knack for putting together unexpected combinations of performers, and imagined Jim saying to himself, "You know who would sound good with the Hannaford Band?  Russell Braun."  Tizzard then added, speaking for himself, "Who knew?"

I got what he meant.  The idea of combining a single, unmiked singer with a 12-member band playing on trumpets, cornets, French horn, tuba, and trombones, really does sound like an accident waiting to happen.  But then, Russell Braun is not just any ordinary singer, and his voice --powerful and tonally beautiful in equal measures -- was more than up to the challenge of remaining audible at all times against this semi-Wagnerian level of orchestration.

Among Braun's solo numbers, scattered through the evening, were a Donizetti aria, Mozart's Non più andrai from The Marriage of Figaro, and a passionate love song by Ivor Novello.

In the second half, the band turned towards a more popular repertoire, ranging from Piazzola's Libertango to When I'm 64, with a gorgeous horn solo in Stardust as a highlight along the way.  The main programme ended with a rousing St. Louis Blues March by W. C. Handy.

Two brief encores followed: the 1867 patriotic song, The Maple Leaf Forever, and the 1967 Ontario theme song, A Place to Stand.

All in all, a vastly entertaining concert with something for everyone in the selection of music.


Tuesday 23 July 2019

Festival of the Sound 2019 # 3: Expecting the Unexpected

Classical chamber music may be the bread and butter of the Festival of the Sound, but it's hardly the whole story.  If traditional chamber music isn't your thing, perhaps you'd prefer some good jazz?  The Festival has that.  Folk?  Yep, that too.  Choral?  Organ?  Opera?  Symphonic?  All of the above.

Sunday and Monday included a string of three concerts which illustrated the diversity of the Festival more clearly than any words of mine could do.

On Sunday afternoon, a small sell-out audience of 50 people sat down in the intimate performance space of the Festival Station office to hear an afternoon of classic jazz/swing music from the legendary pianist Gene di Novi.

As always, it was sheer delight to listen as Gene' fingers rolled easily and nimbly as ever across the keyboard, effortlessly ornamenting within each song and as readily bridging his way from one tune to another.

In between several sets, and for a few more minutes at the end, he regaled us with some of his most entertaining anecdotes about the great musicians he'd worked with -- their names a veritable roll-call of the golden age of the big bands.

Although I felt sorry for the people who wanted tickets and couldn't get them, I totally agree that a smaller, more intimate space like this is absolutely the right place to appreciate Gene di Novi's art -- his music-making would be out of place in the 400-plus-seats auditorium of the Stockey Centre.

But it was back to the Stockey Centre we went on Sunday evening for an Opera Gala, another regular feature of the Festival for some years now.  This year's programme was curated by soprano Leslie Fagan and pianist/trumpeter Guy Few.  Anyone who recognizes those two names would know that we could expect, and would get, wonderful music and good laughs in nearly equal measures.

The "framework" for the concert was the idea of a Viennese opera party, so naturally the evening opened and closed with light-weight, fizzing selections from Johann Strauss Junior's timeless operetta masterpiece, Die Fledermaus.  

In between these two bookends, we heard composers from Rossini to Bernstein, including (among others) Verdi, Puccini, Bizet, Delibes, and Korngold.

A few highlights of this very rich opera party will have to suffice.  Baritone Joseph Chan brought the house down right at the outset with a high-energy, highly comical Largo al factotum.

Tenor Colin Ainsworth drew loud cheers as well with the famous Nessun dorma.  

I couldn't help getting tears in my eyes as these two joined in a beautifully-balanced Au fond du temple saint from Bizet's The Pearl Fishers.

Mezzo-soprano Krisztina Szabó assumed an appropriately roguish air as she sang Prince Orlofsky's song from Die Fledermaus, Chacun à son gout.  I'd love to see her on stage in the full operetta in this hilarious breeches role.  She also showed herself the master of Rossinian bel canto in the flashy Non più mesta from La Cenerentola ("Cinderella").

Together with Leslie Fagan, Szabó created lovingly poised phrasing in the Duo des fleurs from Lakmé by Delibes.

As for Leslie Fagan herself, she won the unofficial High Notes contest which raged between these fine singers throughout the evening. After she'd finished her sparkling rendition of the bel canto styled Glitter and be Gay from Bernstein's Candide, the others publicly conceded to her! All in good fun, of course.

The entertainment was leavened by substantial selections from accordionist Joseph Petric in both halves of the programme.

There was also a surprise appearance by a certain Mr. Russell Braun, who was called from his seat in the audience to sing one of his most moving songs, Ivor Novello's We'll Gather Lilacs. There were certainly some very wet eyes on the stage after that number, and probably a good many more besides mine in the audience.

Accompaniment duties were fulfilled throughout the evening, with plenty of dash and style, by Guy Few and Carolyn Maule.

An Opera Gala at the Festival of the Sound is always one of the most entertaining events of the season.

On Monday afternoon, we moved from the Stockey Centre up to the Mary Street Centre, home of St. James United Church. This was one of the two key Festival venues before the building of the Stockey Centre, used at those earlier festivals for all the daytime concerts. Appropriately, Jim Campbell (Artistic Director) used his customary welcome remarks to reminisce a little bit about those early days, and about the important role which this church played in the growth of the Festival.

The concert was a duo programme for trumpet(s) and organ, with Guy Few and William McArton. It's another of those off-the-beaten-track moments for a classical chamber music programme, so I was pleased to see a sizable audience.

The backbone of the programme was formed by the Concerto in D Minor, Op. 9 No. 2, by Albinoni. The artists decided to rearrange the programme and play the three movements of this concerto at the beginning, middle, and end of the recital. This was a good choice, as it allowed the audience to be continually reminded of the differences in tone between the brilliance of the higher-pitched piccolo trumpet which Guy Few used in the concerto, and the conventional B-flat trumpet which he used for the rest of the programme. The players clearly presented the interplay of voices in this Baroque concerto, and if the organ was a bit on the strong side for this music, it certainly wasn't too strong for the trumpet!

The one movement we heard from Naji Hakim's Sonata for Trumpet and Organ was intriguing, and I would have welcomed a chance to hear more from the work of this living composer.

Also fascinating was the Prelude V by Jean-Michel Defaye, an intricate solo for the trumpeter which Guy Few tossed off with considerable aplomb. Was it in introducing this piece that he asked the audience (only semi-jokingly) to pray for him? That request struck me as unlikely in the extreme, since Few always plays with such assurance and lack of any apparent nerves.

McArton gave strong performances of three major works for organ: the Prelude and Fugue in G Major, BWV 541 and the Fugue a la Gigue in G Major, BWV577 by Bach, and the Cortège et litanie, Op. 19, No. 2 by Marcel Dupré, long-time organist of Saint-Sulpice in Paris and a noted composer for the organ.

So, from jazz to opera to organ and trumpet -- easy to see from this diverse 24-hour period that there's far more to the Festival of the Sound than just string quartets and instrumental sonatas.


Sunday 21 July 2019

Festival of the Sound 2019 # 2: Dinner Music

The Charles W. Stockey Centre in Parry Sound was designed with an intriguing feature to multiply its usefulness in the community: the entire raked auditorium with its seating can be collapsed backwards into the rear wall, leaving a flat-floored hall suitable for banquets.  Every year, the Festival takes advantage of this feature to hold a Gala Opening dinner and concert.  It's a fundraising event for the Festival, the ticket buyers get a tax receipt for a portion of the price paid, and the after-dinner entertainment ensures that everyone goes home happy.

The evening begins with hors d'oeuvres and a cash bar in the lobby.  The meal consisted of a salad and fresh bread, then a main course of chicken, choice of included red or white wine, and a light, frothy dessert with coffee or tea.

For many years, the musical programme was presented in segments between the courses of the meal but last year it was given as a single extended concert after dinner.  That plan was followed again for this year's event.

This year's musical programme opened with a very unusual ensemble from the Netherlands: the Syrène Saxophone Quartet.  The ensemble consisted of one each of soprano, alto, tenor, and baritone saxophones.  Their short set contained an intriguing mix of repertoire: several movements from the Water Music by Handel, Barber's Adagio for Strings, and three dances from West Side Story.  The group played with impressive energy and sensitivity to the needs of these very different musical styles.

I was fascinated, not only by the unusual sounds which made me listen to these evergreen staples with fresh ears, but also by the blend of the four saxophones.  Many people think of the saxophone as a "mellow" sound, but the combination of four had the odd effect of making the instruments sound brighter, edgier, brassier than usual -- the mellow quality was harder to detect except when they were played very quietly (as at the beginning and end of the Barber).

The second segment was equally unusual, presenting music for accordion and trumpet.  Guy Few opened this set with a showy march, Sounds from the Hudson, by Herbert L. Clarke in which -- as Few told us -- accordionist Joseph Petric provided the entire band.  Petric then played solo in the Trieste Overture by Pietro Deiro.  The two joined forces again, this time with Few on the piano, in Neurotango by Ramón Pelinski.  This second set was another new experience for me, since I've never had the experience of watching a concert accordionist at work from close-up.  Fascinating.

But enough seriousness, it was time for the shenanigans.  Russell Braun and Carolyn Maule, perennial Festival favourites, came to the stage next.  Braun sang the Pirate King's song from The Pirates of Penzance.  Little Buttercup (Mary Lou Fallis) then reappeared (see # 1 post for her first appearance), and joined Braun in the duet from Act 2 of HMS Pinafore, "Things are seldom what they seem."

Then Fallis, who loves to satirize the world of opera, sang a song (unannounced) which was plainly entitled "I'm Tone Deaf."  I leave it to you to imagine the side-splitting uproar of laughter as she landed obstinately and clung obdurately onto wrong notes while the poor accompanist hammered vainly on the right note, before finally modulating to get to wherever the singer had gone.  Based on the musical style, I'm going to go out on a limb and guess that this song was written by Fallis in collaboration with Peter Tiefenbach.  But that's just my shot-in-the-dark speculation.  I'll simply say that the madcap pair in question would be quite capable of perpetrating this masterpiece of musical mayhem.

I may be getting the order mixed up here.  Somewhere along the line, Russell Braun sang the lovely Deh' vieni a la fenestra from Mozart's Don Giovanni, addressing the song ardently to pianist Maule (she's his wife, BTW, for those not in the know) then slid cozily onto the piano stool next to her as she played the final notes.  Kudos to Maule for a very fine imitation of the mandolin from the original score.  The two then proceeded to dash off a cute little 4-hands duet of the Humoresque # 7 in G Flat by Dvořák.

Well, you get the idea.  "Dinner music," at the Festival of the Sound, isn't some anodyne arrangement of an arrangement of an old pop standard.  It's innovative, it's lively, it's touching, it's funny as hell, and it's all unfailingly musical.

If I could have my druthers on one point, it would be to suggest that an announcement should be made ten minutes before the musical programme begins.  This would give people a chance to stand, stretch, head out to the washroom, etc., before sitting down again for the concert.


Saturday 20 July 2019

Festival of the Sound 2019 # 1: A Gala Opening and a World Premiere

As my regular readers well know, several weeks of my summer each year are devoted to absorbing classical music at full intensity in Parry Sound, Ontario, home of the Festival of the Sound.  This is one of three major music festivals in Ontario celebrating significant anniversaries this year -- the Festival of the Sound and the Elora Festival at 40 years each, and the Ottawa Chamberfest at 25 years.  It's a bit sobering to realize that my "few" years of attending this splendid Festival now extend to over a quarter of a century.  Where did the time go?

I could easily write a book about all the incredible musical experiences and the lovely friendships which this Festival has brought into my life.  Maybe I will, but not here and now!

It's with something of the feeling of an annual family reunion that I walk on opening night into the Charles W. Stockey Centre, the Festival's home since 2003.  It would be hard to imagine a better acoustic environment for the chamber music which forms the Festival's backbone.  The performance hall is a singularly exciting space from a visual viewpoint as well as for its sterling acoustic qualities.

The time before the opening concert (and during the intermission) is a great opportunity to meet old friends again, and get into the festive mood.  It's also a moment to reflect, lovingly and gratefully, on the lives of other old Festival friends who are no longer with us.

The Gala Opening Concert definitely lived up to its billing, with the presence of the Elmer Iseler Singers, a nine-member instrumental ensemble, and a large-scale new work written for the occasion.

The Elmer Iseler Singers also celebrate their 40th anniversary this year.  During that time, their reputation has grown until they have become one of the pre-eminent musical institutions of Canada, a professional chamber choir of uncommon versatility, beauty of tone, precision, and depth of musicality.  All of those characteristics were present in ample quantities last night.

The opening number of the programme was a perfect example.  Talk about hitting the ground running at full speed; the concert began with a spectacular, full-throttle Cum Sancto Spiritu from the B Minor Mass of Bach.  Under director Lydia Adams, the choir hit the exact sweet spot between too slow and too fast -- the "right speed," at which all the complex fugal lines can be, and are, clearly and precisely enunciated with no blurring of the notes, while the music still has all the necessary lift and go to keep Bach's joyful inspiration dancing us lightly away.  Plainly, it's been too long since I've heard a complete B Minor Mass!

Equally spectacular in their very different styles were the opening O Fortuna from Orff's Carmina Burana, the hair-raising Dies Irae from Mozart's Requiem, Leonard Cohen's Hallelujah, and the powerfully moving The Hour Has Come by Srul Irving Glick.  Since Carmina Burana is usually sung by a much larger chorus, singing in unison, this was actually the first time I had ever heard the ferocious discords sprinkled throughout the piano part in the third verse of the song.  Normally, those discords are submerged by the singers.

Lydia Adams made sure the audience had to work too.  We had not one but two sing-along numbers.  No bonus points are awarded for correctly guessing the names:  Beethoven's Ode to Joy and Handel's Hallelujah.  

Of course, it wouldn't be a Festival of the Sound Gala without some comedy, and this was amply provided when the men of the choir sang the opening chorus, We Sail The Ocean Blue from the G & S operetta H.M.S. Pinafore.  This was succeeded by the delightfully wacky personal appearance of Little Buttercup herself, in the person of Mary Lou Fallis -- making a most welcome return to the Festival.  Buttercup is usually sung by an alto voice, but Fallis tossed in a gratuitous high note at the end which I'm sure has never been heard from any previous exponent of the role.
A small personal footnote.  I first met Mary Lou Fallis "just a few years ago" when I joined the St. George's Youth Choir in Toronto at the age of 15.  That choir always presented a G & S operetta every spring, and Mary Lou was the stage director of the piece that year.  It was -- you guessed it -- H. M. S. Pinafore!
Fallis also gave me -- and, I'm sure, quite a few others in last night's audience -- a first introduction to a unique Canadian literary personality:  Sarah Binks.  The introduction came in the form of three numbers from A Sarah Binks Songbook by Canadian composer John Greer.  Greer, of course, was setting lyrics from Paul Hiebert's comic novel.  The three songs were gravely identified in the programme as Hi, Sooky, ho, Sooky (Valse serenata), The Song of the Chore (Canzone Rustica), and Square Dance (Hoe-Down).  From which titles it is apparent that Greer is as accomplished a leg-puller as Hiebert himself.

Listening to Fallis in these hilarious comical numbers, I was transported back in time to the very first time I heard her perform at the Festival, back in the 1990s, when she sang some popular songs from the turn of the last century.  Greer's music captures exactly that same olden-timesy air, and suits the poetry right down to the ground.  Incidentally, the audience were all given sheets with the lyrics of these songs to make sure we got the joke.  Fallis has such splendid diction that the sheets weren't really that necessary for most of us.

I've saved the best for the last.  The main course of this musical confection was a brand-new work, written especially for this occasion by Canadian composer Eric Robertson.  The Festival of the Sound and the Elmer Iseler Singers both have a long and honourable history of commissioning new work from Canadian and international composers, but this was a little different.  Robertson's piece, set to a text by Gary Michael Dault, was a gift from the composer to both choir and festival.  It's no exaggeration to say that it was also a gift to the audience, as the buzz in the lobby afterwards amply confirmed.

The Sound: A Musical Evocation of Georgian Bay is a substantial work in five extended movements, running (at a guess) not far shy of an hour in total.  It's scored for speaker, choir, piano, string quartet, double bass, flute, clarinet, and percussion.  The five movements are entitled Water Music, The Rock, The Trees, Clouds, and Air.

It's beyond my scope to try to analyze the character of this work on a single hearing.  The music is definitely evocative of its subject rather than pictorial.  The work is predominantly (but not entirely) diatonic, with long melodic lines that are often avoided by contemporary composers.  Overall, it remained pleasing to the ear, but that doesn't mean that the music avoided challenging the audience to remain attentive and involved.  Dault's text, partly delivered by the speaker and partly sung by the chorus, similarly demanded attention -- lest one might miss the beautifully turned phrase here, or the sly little insinuation of humour there.

Renowned Canadian actor Colin Fox delivered the speaker's role with splendid clarity, pointing up key words and thoughts with subtle insight.  Whether speaking alone or over the music, Fox maintained an ideally brisk but unhurried pace.

The choir at several points had to take up a phrase which Fox had just spoken and examine it in more detail, as it were -- another feature that highlighted key points in Dault's writing.

The instrumental ensemble had some sections which challenged them with bits of music interspersed with rests of varying lengths.

The real stature of the piece emerges when the hearer realizes that the varied styles used to musically depict different aspects of "the Sound" are all intertwined and related to each other in different ways, giving the work an overall unity that you might not suspect from this description.

The enthusiastic applause -- and the prolonged cheering for composer Robertson -- were entirely merited.  I'd be more than happy to sit down and listen to this work again.  I certainly hope that it will be taken up and widely performed in the future.


Saturday 6 July 2019

Toronto Symphony 2018-2019 # 6: Meeting Gustavo

Some of the audience may have been attracted by the programme: an enticing mixture of Prokofiev, Sibelius, and Stravinsky.  But I suspect most of the near-capacity crowd at Roy Thomson Hall yesterday were there for the same reason I was: to see the Toronto Symphony Orchestra's next Music Director, Gustavo Gimeno, in action -- and to hear the results.

Mind you, the programme was nothing to sneer at: opening with the magnificent Violin Concerto of Sibelius, and moving on to Prokofiev's delightful Classical Symphony, the concert then concluded with the colourful suite from The Firebird, Stravinsky's folk-tale-based ballet.  After the concert, there was an onstage talk chaired by the TSO's Chief Executive Officer, Michael Loden, with Maestro Gimeno and violin soloist & concertmaster Jonathan Crow, for which the audience were invited to submit questions in advance (questions were also taken from the floor).

I'm actually going to start with the talk, and then go backwards to the concert itself because of a few revealing comments that were made in that discussion.

First point to mention: Jonathan Crow spoke of learning the Sibelius concerto when he was a student of 15 years age, but then stated that he never visited it again until this year -- a quarter of a century later.  That startled me -- I've always thought of the Sibelius as a repertoire cornerstone, but perhaps it's not so much in favour now as when I was a youngster, back in the old stone age.

Second, Gustavo Gimeno spoke of his musical background as a percussionist and teacher of percussion.  This is the first time I've ever heard of a conductor coming from that particular background -- more comment later.

Finally, Jonathan Crow spoke very pointedly of his positive experience working with Gimeno, as concertmaster, as soloist, and also as last-desk player (Crow sat in the back desk of the second violins during the second part of the concert).  He said that, although the experience was different in each role, the common thread was his feeling that Gimeno was interested first and foremost in helping him give his best, most musical performance in each role.  That's a strong endorsement from the leader of the orchestra.

So, with those pieces of information in hand, to the music.

The Sibelius Concerto is a classic example of the romantic style of concerto in which the soloist mainly plays in alternation with the orchestra, rather than in partnership.  Long passages of the solo role are either unaccompanied, or supported merely with ostinato or long-held drone notes.  Gimeno's conducting in this work was eminently straightforward and free of interpretive touches, so as to give Crow the maximum leeway in shaping the solo part.  Crow's playing throughout was marked by a strong feel for the heartbeat of the music, which can seem elusive in other hands.  He displayed rich, clear tone on the low strings and equally clear, clean sound in the high harmonics.  His account of the finale developed plenty of bounce and spring, without losing the music's essential character -- which was so memorably defined, for all time, when Tovey described it as "a polonaise for polar bears."

After the intermission, Gimeno led a brisk, bright interpretation of Prokofiev's Classical Symphony, the composer's first symphonic essay.  His performance caught the witty air so essential to this miniature masterpiece, and the woodwind playing sparkled throughout -- most notably in the showy wind flourishes of the finale.  Gimeno rightly called for the wind players to take a special bow after this work.

In the 1945 score of the Firebird by Stravinsky, Gimeno was able to cut loose more, leading the orchestra through a vigorous, sharply rhythmic interpretation of this most pictorial of the composer's ballet scores.  There was again much beautiful playing from the winds, and the strings too in the quieter movements.  A resounding, ear-slamming thwack from the bass drum launched the brutally driving Infernal Dance of Kastchei, with all the off-beat rhythms securely placed at a fast, rugged tempo.  The final peroration of the Hymn brought a finely-shaped crescendo, spectacular emphasis in the brass chording, and a last phenomenal outburst in the final chord.

And what of Maestro Gimeno's conducting?  It's actually a delight to watch a conductor who doesn't provide you with too much to watch.  In fact, it's a positive relief after the podium gymnastics of some of the guest conductors I've seen through the decades, gymnastics which can and do interfere with my appreciation of the music.  Gimeno's bearing on the podium and style with the baton brings to mind the adjective "aristocratic."  While appearing totally at ease with his work, his stance is always upright, his beat remains crystal clear at all times, and his use of the baton is marked by rare precision combined with ease of motion.  And that style is where it's easy to see that our new maestro previously worked as a percussionist!

From the concert, from the response of the musicians at the end, and from the post-concert talk, I came away with the strong impression that the Toronto Symphony Orchestra has made a wise choice for its new music director.  I hope that his five-year tenure beginning in a little over a year (September 2020) will bear out my prediction.  In the meantime, we have two more opportunities to hear his work in the coming season, and I intend to be on hand for both.


The Voice in the Tree

In the world of musical theatre, one of the rarest of rare birds is an original musical based on no previous source material.  The vast majority of musicals are derived from previously staged plays, films, TV shows, or previously-published books.  If you can't have a completely original musical, then the next best thing is a musical where the author of the original source worked on the adaptation.

The Theatre on the Ridge Festival in Port Perry is currently staging the premiere of a new musical, Willow Quartet Musical, based on an established favourite of regional theatres in Ontario, Willow Quartet by Joan Burrows.  The book for the musical was written by Burrows with Ron Cameron-Lewis, and the music composed by Jason Saunders.  All three creators share credit for the lyrics.

With so many of Ontario's summer theatres continually embracing the tired old credo of "gotta keep it light," this show comes as a refreshing change.  Willow Quartet Musical uses some humour, some honesty, some humanity, and some wonderfully evocative singing to tell a story of a family reacting to tragedy.  If that sounds too heavy, I can assure you that the show is truly entertaining, involving, and definitely life-enhancing.

Book, lyrics, and score all work together to create this beautiful balance between the polar opposites of joy and sadness, fun and pain.  The song lyrics have been carefully placed at points in the book where the music can clearly take us farther than the spoken word, rather than being scattered all over every page.  For my money, there's nothing worse in musical theatre than an unnecessary or unmotivated song.  Then there's the theatrical magic provided by the onstage company, about which more anon.

The musical score is impressive most of all for what it doesn't do -- this score doesn't try to take control of the entire show. Saunders has created songs and instrumental underscorings which support and enhance the characters and storytelling, without drawing attention to their own characteristics.  Michael Mulrooney's scoring sensitively presents the music in a low-key way entirely appropriate to the intimate space of the Town Hall 1873 theatre, where the show is performed with a 3-piece ensemble of keyboard, string bass, and drums, skilfully led by music director Carol Salamone.

Most of the songs, then, move in a moderate or slower tempo, with emotional content in the music and lyrics lying somewhere in the neighbourhood of regret, nostalgia, and memory.  One exception is Josh's upbeat song about riding a motorcycle -- a burst of emphatic energy which is almost shocking in the context, after the reflective feel of so much else (designedly so).

Melanie Baker's set gave a simple evocation of an outdoor location: a small porch with two chairs on one side, backed by a window frame, a clothesline across the back, and the titular willow tree in the form of a stylized stump against the opposite corner of the proscenium with a single branch drooping out from the curtain.

In the very first scene, it was abundantly apparent that the young man, Josh (played by Nathan Simpson) was not actually physically present in this place, being neither seen nor heard by the other characters.  His anxious desire to somehow break through to the people he was addressing was palpable and believable -- the example of Our Town springs to mind.  The unfolding story revealed by degrees the account of his death in a motorcycle crash in Italy.

It's a challenging role for the amount of time Josh has to spend on the stage, but not speaking -- yet still having to react to the actions and voices of the others.  Simpson for the most part handled this well, although there were one or two moments when I felt that he might have detached during one of his breaks between lines.  His flying leap onto the table, and the vigour and power which he then brought to the motorcycle song were both engaging and invigorating.  So was the equal energy of his storm scene.

As Josh's grandmother, Marjorie, Roz McArthur-Keyes brought to her character a nice mixture of common sense combined with a twinkle in the eye.  With that, she added a strain of sensitivity to a deeper level of life, below the surface.  It's this sensitivity that leads her to talk to the aged willow tree.  Little does she realize that Josh is standing right there, leaning against the trunk -- but then again, maybe she does sense his presence.  McArthur-Keyes clearly opened up that possibility through her body language.  Her singing made good use of a deeper vocal range to create a mood of world-weariness.

At the centre of the play are Josh's parents, Kim (Ashlie White) and Ben (Lyle Corrigan).  Both had fine physical presence for their respective roles.  The crisp attack in their speaking voices in the early scenes told us a great deal about their relationship.

Corrigan's firm singing voice added much to his vocal numbers, while he displayed many subtleties in expressing his emotions, apart from the bigger moments.  I felt he was at his best in the final scenes of the show, after Kim's return.

White's clear voice carried melodic lines well in her songs.  Since the story of the play is plainly her story, it did no harm for her to develop some of the bigger emotional reactions.  Her unwillingness to deal with her grief came through loud and clear.

The final character, Jim, is a classical musician and composer who comes into Kim's home in the country as a boarder during the time of the local music festival.  Chris Daniel had great presence in this role, and definitely captured the single-mindedness of the creative artist at work during the hilarious quartet scene.

His beautifully poised singing voice matched well with Ashlie White and made their romantic duet at the end of Act I a thing of true beauty.

The turning point, and the most memorable moment of the show, arrived at the end of Act I when Jim (who had been working in the barn with Ben) asked about the motorcycle he uncovered, and thereby triggered the big crisis which finally revealed all the pain that had been simmering away under the surface.  Kim and Ben shot right into an overdrive marital argument which was magnificent, as they fired off all the tension that had wrecked their relationship without the actors ever going over the top or losing vocal control.  Chris Daniel was equally impressive in portraying Jim's unending bewilderment as their whole story played out before him in one intense scene.

The second act of the show then went into Kim's journey to acceptance, with both White and Corrigan finding some fine moments on the journey that both, in truth, were taking at the same time.  Particularly appealing was Ben's naughty-schoolboy manner when he made his final big admission in the last scene.  But Ashlie White gave her finest work of the show in her description of the trip to Italy which ended her relationship with Jim.  This set up a lovely moment of reconciliation as both parents understood and felt at last the driving force that ruled their son's adventurous life.

Throughout the play, the complex relationships among these three key characters remained always clear and believable, and the dynamics of the scenes unfolding among them were at all times equally truthful.

Director Carey Nicholson, the Artistic Director of Theatre on the Ridge, shaped the entire production with a sure but gentle hand, bringing ample variety in rhythm into the scenes while still keeping the entire show moving briskly along.  Transitions into and out of songs were smooth and easy.  Her carefully-judged approach allowed the entire production to remain lively and engaging, even while dealing with some heavy-weight human issues.  That's one of the most important secrets in this kind of piece.

For its remarkable insights in the book, the fine music in the songs, the vibrant performances of all the cast, and the net overall result as all fuse together, Willow Quartet Musical is a memorable and exciting musical theatre piece, and well worth seeing.

Performances of the show continue at the Town Hall 1873 theatre in Port Perry through July 13.