tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3460000491133182522024-02-20T12:47:37.360-05:00Large Stage Live!If it's a live performance, whether music, theatre, dance, or opera,
and I attend it, I review it here. In the age of COVID-19, this description obviously includes live-streamed events as well. Occasionally, I will also review audio
or video recordings of the arts which have attracted my interest.Ken Stephenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15446161349713438016noreply@blogger.comBlogger500125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-346000049113318252.post-72606582257468604982023-04-21T07:28:00.000-04:002023-04-21T07:28:14.854-04:00French Romantic Beauty from Bryan Cheng and the NACO<div style="text-align: justify;">This week's concerts from the National Arts Centre Orchestra brought us a programme of striking and attractive Romantic music from France, with two works known as repertoire staples accompanied by one recently recovered work which had sunk into obscurity.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"> </div><div style="text-align: justify;">Actually, all three works have been rather obscure in live performances of late. Perhaps over-familiarity played a role, but I suspect that the major culprit is money. The need for orchestras to improve the revenue side of their balance sheets tends to push them into catering to their audiences' insatiable desire for Beethoven and Mozart, to the detriment of other composers. </div><div style="text-align: justify;"> </div><div style="text-align: justify;">Whatever the actual reasons, this week marked the first time I have ever heard the <i>Cello Concerto No. 1 </i>by Saint-Saëns in live performance, while the Franck <i>Symphonie </i>in D minor I have heard only once before, over half a century ago. High time the balance should be redressed, as also with the increasing exposure of both chamber and orchestral music by Louise Farrenc, represented here by the skilful and enticing <i>Overture No. 2 in E-flat Major, Op. 24. </i>The more thanks, then, to guest conductor Yan Pascal Tortelier for bringing to the Ottawa audience these marvellous performances in an eye-opening programme of French romantic music.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">The concert opened with Farrenc's overture, a concert work with no overt programme or story to tell, but which nonetheless captures plenty of drama -- indeed, it sounds as if it could quite easily be an operatic overture of the period. In classic concert-overture form, the work opens with a grand slow introduction, then moves into a faster sonata-form movement. The orchestra's strings showed their mettle in the extra-high-speed figurations of the principal theme and numerous subsequent passages. The contrasting lyrical second theme was played with smooth phrasing, and subtle manipulations of tempo added much interest. The overture told its tale in an action-packed seven minutes, winding up to a dramatic conclusion. </div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Ottawa-born cellist Bryan Cheng then joined the orchestra for the <i>Cello Concerto No.. 1 in A minor, Op. 33 </i>by Camille Saint-Saëns. Although not as lengthy as some concerti, this single-movement work embraces a wide range of different sound worlds, challenging both conductor and soloist to meet all the demands of the work. In company with the fourth piano concerto and the third ("Organ") symphony, this concerto stands as one of its composer's most successful experiments at marrying Liszt's and Schumann's ideas on cyclical form with clear classical structure.</div><p style="text-align: justify;">Cheng's reading of the solo part was filled with equal measures of Romantic fervour and classical clarity of line. This was clear from the opening, where the cellist leaps headlong into the first main theme immediately after a single staccato orchestral chord. This theme's curious shape, with its emphatic landings on off-beats, was clearly presented by Cheng (and later by the orchestra) at a comfortable tempo which gave it plenty of dash and fire without the dotted notes becoming hectic and effortful.</p><div style="text-align: justify;"></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Dash and fire in plenty were also heard in the soloist's numerous little cadenza-like passages dotted throughout the piece. Especially noteworthy was Cheng's fearless performance of several key passages at lower than normal volume levels, as if daring the orchestra to keep their end quiet too, quiet enough for the soloist to be heard. They did, very effectively, and the results added much magic to those gentler moments which can sound prosaic in other hands. <br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Speaking of magic, the most purely magical moment of the entire concert came with the beginning of the contrasting middle section, best pictured as an "insertion" between the exposition and development of what might otherwise be considered a conventional sonata form movement. This intermezzo, filling the role of the second or slow movement, began with Tortelier leading the muted orchestral strings in the lightest possible bowed staccato playing of the gentle, piquant minuet, a dance which to me always evokes an image of dancers rotating on a music box. Quiet, yes, but completely unified sound all the same.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Cheng's playing of the legato passages in this lyrical central section matched the orchestra in finding fantasy in the music.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">The return of the main theme in the final section found Cheng and the orchestra both ramping up the drama and fire of the playing even more, without ever spilling over into melodramatic excess. There was another moment of magical peace in the quiet meditation for the cello before the work wound up again to its emphatic conclusion. Well-merited cheers, for both the orchestra and the soloist. Bryan Cheng was then joined for his encore by principal cellist Rachel Mercer in an intriguing piece for two cellos by the renowned cellist, Paul Tortelier (Yan Pascal Tortelier's father), presented as a surprise birthday gift to the conductor.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"> </div><div style="text-align: justify;">After the intermission, the concert concluded with the orchestra's powerful performance of Franck's only complete symphony. The work was acclaimed by progressive musicians when it was premiered, and one might think that more would follow. But Franck's ultra-religious wife continually pressured him to write more "serious" music (which to her meant religious music) and he did, with results which must have pleased her by eliminating nearly all the unique sensual and technical qualities which make this symphony so remarkable. That was the world of music's loss.<br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;"> </div><div style="text-align: justify;">Tortelier's performance of this work never lost the big picture, but still highlighted many fine details which other interpreters miss. His first movement, as an example, retained the full measure of mystery and anticipation when the entire slow introduction repeats, note for note, after the first appearance of the main allegro theme. Many conductors would cheat by not returning to the original slow tempo or quiet dynamics. Also noteworthy was the tempo of the allegro, well within the workable range but a little slower than many conductors would choose. The payoff was the emergence of all kinds of intriguing details in the development section, which was thus able to get faster without overspeeding. Franck's use of multiple threads in the musical argument leads to all kinds of momentary but startling little harmonic clashes which would tend to vanish at a higher speed but which certainly registered here. The movement wound up with a majestic coda.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"> </div><div style="text-align: justify;">As in the concerto, Tortelier ensured that the plucked string and harp chords opening the second movement were played in a quiet, almost mysterious manner. This etched those chords into our memories, a good thing as they are the basic structural underpinning for most of the entire movement. The first statement of the actual melody featured sumptuous tone from the cor anglais. Also breathtakingly quiet were the rapid little tremolando string arabesques which begin what sounds like an independent episode before showing themselves to be a counterpoint to the chords and the cor anglais theme. The contrasting middle section brought delightfully sunny playing from the strings and winds.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">The finale opened with energy and gusto, and this was maintained by Tortelier right up to the finish line. Again, there were all manner of intriguing little touches which other conductors miss. Musicians and conductor relished all the strange turns of harmony to which the composer subjected the theme. Although there's really no way to make the grandiose reappearance of the slow movement's theme, fortissimo on the winds and brasses, truly convincing, Tortelier managed the transitions in and out of that strange interruption as well as could be. The entire symphony wound up a terrific head of steam in the rush to the finish line, entirely appropriate to Franck's vision.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">An uncommonly rewarding concert!</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">***************************** </div><div style="text-align: justify;">***************************** </div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><b><u><i>The Last Word</i></u></b></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">This review marks my 500th post in this blog. Some early articles combined more than one review in a single post, while later ones included several essays and in memoriams which were not reviews. In the end, it works out to 500 reviews in 11 years, as close as no matter. It's been quite a journey.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">This "half millennium" seems to me like a perfect place to say farewell.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Over the last year in particular, there have been times when I've been finding the reviewing task becoming more of an onerous duty than a personal joy and pleasure. There have been occasions when I've felt like I was simply repeating myself and retreading old ground. This, by the way, most emphatically does not refer to the concert at hand in this review! </div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">It seemed appropriate to me to end with a review of Bryan Cheng, a musician who is (with his sister and piano partner, Silvie) not only a remarkable artist but also a dear and valued friend.<br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;"> </div><div style="text-align: justify;">This blog started as a retirement project, and an entertaining hobby, but most of all as a chance to share what I had to say about the world of the performing arts. This sense that I have now said it all is, for me, the strongest reason to put this project to bed.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"> </div><div style="text-align: justify;">Thank you to all the loyal readers who have followed my efforts, and an especially heartfelt "thank you" to the artists who have so kindly tolerated my fumbling attempts to assess their work. I hope not too many of them have had to tear up the letters of protest which they started as an initial reaction to my reviews!<br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;"> </div><div style="text-align: justify;">But if that was the case, perhaps I had best end with the immortal words of Donald Francis Tovey, a musician and author whose words have provided me with so many apposite quotes: </div><div style="text-align: justify;"> </div><div style="text-align: center;">"Peace be to their wastepaper baskets, and to mine." <br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div>Ken Stephenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15446161349713438016noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-346000049113318252.post-21235170568353922072023-03-29T11:52:00.000-04:002023-03-29T11:52:02.659-04:00Toronto Mendelssohn Choir 2022-2023 # 3: The Glory of the B Minor Mass<div style="text-align: justify;">The Toronto Mendelssohn Choir crowned its season on Tuesday night at Koerner Hall with a powerful, majestic, thrilling performance of one of the most sublime works in the entire choral repertoire: Johann Sebastian Bach's <i>Mass in B Minor</i>, <i>BWV232.</i> </div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">The <i>B Minor Mass </i>is an extraordinary one-off among the great choral works for several reasons. First, its sheer scale renders it virtually unusable for the church liturgy as the music lasts for a good solid two hours, give or take a bit. Second, it is unlikely that it was ever performed in Bach's lifetime, since he finished it only in the last year of his life, 1749 (although there were performances under his direction of the majestic <i>Sanctus</i> and one or two other portions). Indeed, the earliest documented performance of the complete work finally took place over a century after his passing, in 1859. Third, this score makes great demands on the skills of singers and instrumentalists alike, demands which make it one of the most challenging works in the repertoire.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Bach created the <i>B Minor Mass </i>by bringing together numerous works which he had written earlier in his life, and then substantially recomposing many of them for this new purpose. In line with several of his other great works from his last years, it seems quite possible that he composed and assembled the <i>Mass </i>as a kind of textbook or anthology of the many stylistic possibilities for accompanied voices in the late Baroque era. With such a checkered ancestry, it's remarkable that the <i>Mass </i>has such remarkable unity-in-diversity<i>, </i>the music flowing forward with clear purpose and momentum through each of the liturgy's five main sections. </div><div style="text-align: justify;"> </div><div style="text-align: justify;">The key designation of "B minor" refers (as with Bach's short masses) only to the key in which the music begins -- that is, the key of the opening <i>Kyrie eleison</i>. From the first notes of the <i>Gloria </i>onward, with the appearance of the natural trumpets in D, the key of D major becomes the centre of gravity around which the remainder of the work revolves.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"> </div><div style="text-align: justify;">For this performance, the Toronto Mendelssohn Choir's Music Director, Jean-Sébastien Vallée chose to feature ten voices from within the Choir's professional core, the Toronto Mendelssohn Singers, as soloists in the various solo and duo numbers. </div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">While all ten did fine work, special praise is due to counter-tenor Simon Honeyman who sang three of the five numbers allotted to the alto/mezzo-soprano with crystal-clear articulation in the rapid passagework and a real sense of feeling above all in the penultimate <i>Agnus Dei</i>. Also particularly remarkable was the unanimity of style between Honeyman and soprano Sinéad White in their joyful <i>Christe eleison</i>. Due for special praise was Rebecca Claborn's beautifully shaped and phrased <i>Laudamus te</i>.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Above all, the <i>Mass in B Minor </i>stands or falls by the work of the chorus. Scholars have substantially concluded that Bach meant the music to be sung with one voice to a part, and many experts sneer at the idea of a chorus of one hundred as we heard on this occasion.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">The Choir's splendid clarity in the interwoven polyphonic lines could well give those scholars pause. The very opening <i>Kyrie eleison </i>displayed absolute clarity of texture, permitting the hearer to follow any one line out of the polyphonic texture with no difficulty. </div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">The Choir went on from strength to strength throughout the performance, from the lively, enthusiastic <i>In gloria Dei patris </i>to the formally shaped Gregorian chant lines of the <i>Credo in unum Deum</i>, and from the mysterious depths of the <i>Qui tollis </i>and <i>Et incarnatus est</i> to the joyful exuberance, even exhilaration, of the <i>Et resurrexit </i>and <i>Osanna.</i></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><i> </i></div><div style="text-align: justify;">More than any other moments, the Choir reached the heights of their performance in the grave majesty<i> </i>of the <i>Sanctus </i>and the <i>Dona nobis pacem.</i></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><i> </i></div><div style="text-align: justify;">With a decent-sized but not overlarge orchestra playing on authentic instruments, the audience was able to hear Bach's instrumental lines much as the composer would have heard them, particularly true of the D trumpets, the natural horn in the <i>Quoniam</i>, and the duet of two wooden transverse flutes. Matthew Larkin's playing on the chamber organ, the sole keyboard continuo instrument, created a secure underpinning for the entire performance.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Music Director Jean-Sébastien Vallée shaped the performance with care,
avoiding interpretive excesses and stressing above all the unity of
style from movement to movement. In that opening <i>Kyrie, </i>he had directed the Choir to a specially clear articulation of the lines, and his sparing use of that device throughout the evening always heightened the audibility of the parts without spilling over the edge. He also avoided excessively loud <i>fortes </i>and soft <i>pianos </i>in perfect keeping with Baroque-appropriate style. </div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">With all of these careful touches and many more, Vallée brought the entire world of the <i>B Minor Mass </i>to vivid life. The ecstasies, the meditations, the sorrows, the joys, and the overwhelming majesty were all there, and rightly so. </div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">The capacity audience in Koerner Hall were moved to sustained cheering at the concluding standing ovation. And no wonder -- this was, in every way, the finest <i>B Minor Mass </i>I have ever heard in a live performance.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: center;">************************* </div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Following that memorable concert on Tuesday night, the Toronto Mendelssohn Choir released news about the upcoming 2023-2024 season on Wednesday morning. The programme combines established masterworks with commissioned new work and innovative programming concepts. Two of the concerts will be performed by the Mendelssohn Singers, the professional chamber choir which forms the core of the larger Mendelssohn Choir.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">The season brings such established favourites as Orff's <i>Carmina Burana </i>and Verdi's <i>Requiem</i>, and less well-known works by Brahms (<i>Schicksalslied</i>), Handel (<i>Dixit Dominus</i>), Bach (<i>Christ lag in Todesbanden</i>), together with music by Fanny Mendelssohn Hensel and Clara Schumann and commissioned work from Composer in Residence Tracy Wong. A new arrangement of Schubert's song cycle <i>Winterreise </i>for soloist, piano, and choir, will feature baritone Brett Polegato. The favourite <i>Festival of Carols </i>will launch the Christmas season, and the annual collaboration with the Toronto Symphony Orchestra in Handel's <i>Messiah </i>will be another not-to-miss highlight.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">For full details, here's the link to the new season information on the Choir's website:</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://www.tmchoir.org/2023-24-season/" target="_blank"><span style="color: #a64d79; font-family: verdana; font-size: large;">Toronto Mendelssohn Choir 2023-2024</span></a></div><div style="text-align: justify;"> </div><div style="text-align: justify;"> </div><div style="text-align: center;">************************* </div><div style="text-align: justify;"> </div><div style="text-align: justify;"> </div><div style="text-align: justify;"><b><u><i>A Personal Note on my Experiences With the B MInor Mass</i></u></b></div><div style="text-align: justify;"> </div><div style="text-align: justify;">In my lifetime, I have only heard the <i>Mass in B Minor </i>performed live four times. Indeed, I probably shouldn't count the first one since I was singing for my first and only season in the Mendelssohn Choir in February of 1978, just a slight 55 years ago! I vividly remember the intensive rehearsing, with the choir and at home, trying to master Bach's vocal lines -- which have a knack of going to the most unexpected but absolutely logical places. Worlds apart from Handel, whose lines are much easier to sing because they don't play those kinds of tricks on you! Even after all these years, I can still pick out and recognize those tricky spots every time I hear the music in recordings, or live, as last night.<br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;"> </div><div style="text-align: justify;">I heard the work again in the late 1980s, at the Carmel Bach Festival in California. At that time, the Carmel Festival was still using a 1950ish style of performing, heavy, ponderous, and stately, which made for a reverent but not totally exciting performance.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">The third time was with the Toronto Mendelssohn Choir, quite a few years back (early 2000s?) at St. James Cathedral in Toronto. Much as I loved the Cathedral as a building and still do, it proved to be a far from ideal venue for large forces, the sound hovering between washy and muddy. Sadly, that venue was not kind to the Choir's undoubted skills.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Last night though, in Koerner Hall, I heard as fine a <i>Mass in B Minor </i>as I could possibly want, sung and played with skill, precision, and passion, directed with great insight, and blessed with a well-nigh perfect acoustic for a performance on this scale. A joy to any lover of Baroque choral music!</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div>Ken Stephenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15446161349713438016noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-346000049113318252.post-26983455801520706672023-03-26T16:57:00.004-04:002023-03-26T16:57:53.801-04:00National Ballet of Canada 2022-2023 # 2: The Energy In the Mix<div style="text-align: justify;">While the larger audiences flock to the established classics of story ballet, there's no denying that an artistic director's imprint on a ballet company is far more visible through the modern dance works, the commissions, and especially the mixed programmes of shorter ballets.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"> </div><div style="text-align: justify;">For this reason, I have been especially eager to see the first mixed programmes of Hope Muir's tenure as artistic director of the National Ballet of Canada.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"> </div><div style="text-align: justify;">Sadly, I had to miss the first one in November as I was out of the country, so this week I have finally gotten a chance to experience her touch in person.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"> </div><div style="text-align: justify;">This month's mixed programme marries one established classic of the National Ballet's repertoire with two premieres, one of them a world premiere of a commissioned work. Both choreographers of these new pieces are being introduced to National Ballet audiences for the first time. </div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">First, though, the established classic, which also led off the programme. George Balanchine's 1947 work <i>Symphony in C, </i>set to the sole symphony composed by Georges Bizet. It's always puzzled me a bit that some commentators refer to the "icy" quality of this work, because it's never struck me that way. Brilliant it certainly is, but I don't find it at all cold. It winds up to the most spectacular grand finale of any ballet I've ever seen, with over fifty dancers on the stage all at once in the final moment.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"> </div><div style="text-align: justify;">The National Ballet has a long and fruitful record of staging many major Balanchine works, largely thanks to their long-standing thirty-plus years relationship with legendary Balanchine <i>répetiteur </i>Joysanne Sidimus. Generations of the company's dancers have benefited from her insights into Balanchine's unique and distinctive style, to say nothing of her ongoing concern for the artists' well-being. Sadly, this show marked her final engagement before retiring. I know her work will be missed.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"> </div><div style="text-align: justify;">As for the performance, the <i>Symphony in C </i>requires a lead couple and subsidiary couples in each of the work's four movements, but the work of the <i>corps de ballet </i>is also critical to the piece's success, and with the diverse casting of those lead and subsidiary couples all around, it can quite fairly be regarded as a "company piece" -- certainly not just a vehicle for a couple of principal dancers.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"> </div><div style="text-align: justify;">Balanchine made extensive use of symmetry as an element of the choreography here, at every level ranging from the precise degree to which hands are turned up or arms lifted all the way to entire symmetrical stage pictures. All of the company did themselves proud on this occasion by nailing all these aspects of required symmetry to virtual perfection, while still dancing with plenty of energy in the outer movements and a lovely lyrical sense of flow in the second slow movement. The hurtling bodies of the high-speed scherzo still maintained an absolute sense of control, even in Balanchine's most fiendish moments of complex footwork. A treasurable performance.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"> </div><div style="text-align: justify;">One final note about <i>Symphony in C</i>: with this run of performances, the National Ballet became the first dance company ever to present this work with the dancers wearing flesh-toned tights matched to their individual skin tones. Balanchine's work is closely hedged around with copyrights and legal protections, and this switch from the original pure white tights was remarkable even more because the copyright holders permitted it than because the National Ballet wanted to do it. By the way, the effect is almost unnoticeable, certainly unremarkable, in performance -- unless you are specifically looking for it. Baby steps? Perhaps -- but small changes can have large impacts on the individuals involved. <br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;"> </div><div style="text-align: justify;">After the first intermission, we moved on to Rena Butler's <i>Alleged Dances</i>, a work commissioned by the National Ballet of Canada, here receiving its world premiere.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"> </div><div style="text-align: justify;">Where so much of contemporary dance can seem angular and very unlovely at times, what struck me more than anything about Butler's vision here was the fluidity of the movement, the frequent use of curved positions, of smooth flowing movements, with more continuous movement overall and less moments of stasis than in many contemporary works. It would be possible to trace many different artistic currents flowing through different moments in <i>Alleged Dances</i>, but I think that kind of blow-by-blow analysis would diminish the overall impact of the work as a whole. </div><div style="text-align: justify;"> </div><div style="text-align: justify;">I wish I could say the same for the music. Fruitful it may have been for Butler in stimulating her dance-making, but I found John Adams' music in<i> John's Book of Alleged Dances</i> to be among the more sterile examples of so-called minimalism in music that I've heard. I have nothing but praise for the work of the onstage string quartet, or the smoothness with which their playing melded with the pre-recorded track played on the sound system, but a little bit of Adams' music goes a very long way with me.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"> </div><div style="text-align: justify;">There were two curious (or perhaps not so surprising) overlaps between Butler's work and the final piece on the programme, David Dawson's <i>Anima Animus</i>. Both used musical scores stemming from the realm of minimalism. Both shows were costumed in effectively gender-free costuming by using plain leotards with solid-colour sections of varying shapes applied over the neutral-toned base -- brilliant red in <i>Alleged Dances </i>and stark black or white in <i>Anima Animus</i>. The effect in both cases was the same, although the means used were different; gender basically vanished as an element of the show, leaving a core fluidity of humanity to come through more clearly.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">The contrasts of white and black in Dawson's work gave strong connection to his theme of working within the duality proposed by Carl Jung, of the <i>anima </i>as the feminine element in the masculine soul, and the <i>animus </i>as the masculine element in the feminine soul. In dance terms, this meant that the choreographer worked with a strong dose of classical technique, but having the male dancers in key moments performing movements normally performed by female dancers, while the women performed movements more usually reserved for the male dancers. It was a fascinating piece for me, but also a bit frustrating, as I found it hard to get beyond trying to parse all the gender shifts that were going on. A second viewing would be helpful to allow me to focus on other elements of this complex, multi-layered work. </div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">I'd be more than happy to see either <i>Alleged Dances </i>or <i>Anima/Animus </i>restaged in the future, and certainly glad to see more work from either or both of these choreographers.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">In closing, a shout-out to the busiest performer of the entire show. The performance started with all the high-speed and high-energy cascades and notes in the string parts of Bizet's symphony. I <i>hope </i>the orchestra was led by someone else for that, but I don't know. Then, this busy musician had to lead the quartet in the equally energetic music of John Adams for Rena Butler's half-hour work. And finally, he was faced with the dizzying acrobatics of the solo violin part in <span class="yt-core-attributed-string yt-core-attributed-string--white-space-pre-wrap" role="text">Ezio Bosso's <i>Violin Concerto No. 1, EsoConcerto </i>for Dawson's <i>Anima/Animus</i>. This 2017 work included seemingly endless roulades and ostinato passages, along with lengthy stretches set in the high harmonics -- among other challenges. So, a definite shout-out is in order for the National Ballet Orchestra's Concertmaster, Aaron Schwebel, and the huge roar of cheering for him when he appeared at the curtain call was surely no more than was his due.</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span class="yt-core-attributed-string yt-core-attributed-string--white-space-pre-wrap" role="text"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span class="yt-core-attributed-string yt-core-attributed-string--white-space-pre-wrap" role="text">Hope Muir has certainly moved the National Ballet into new territory with this programme, and I look forward to more of her choices of repertoire in future seasons.<br /></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;"></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div>Ken Stephenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15446161349713438016noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-346000049113318252.post-87266981840739775942023-01-16T18:02:00.001-05:002023-01-16T18:02:40.245-05:00Toronto Symphony Orchestra 2022-2023 # 1: Mozart and Beyond the Infinite<div style="text-align: center;"> <i>It's odd, I could have sworn that I had made it to one Toronto Symphony Orchestra concert this year already (besides the </i>Messiah<i>), but I don't seem to have reviewed it. My bad.</i></div><div style="text-align: center;"><i><br /></i></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Saturday night I was at Roy Thomson Hall to hear the Toronto Symphony Orchestra and Toronto Mendelssohn Choir join forces again in a gripping, dramatic performance of the endlessly fascinating <i>Requiem, K.626 </i>by Mozart (using Robert Levin's completion). Just as fascinating and dramatic were the selections performed alongside it -- for once, not a full evening of Mozart -- and the unique approach to staging this performance. In his chatty and humorous remarks, guest conductor Michael Francis said that this unique programme was an attempt to assemble other works which reflected the wide range, from serenity and lyrical beauty to dramatic intensity and musical complexity, of Mozart's final and incomplete masterpiece.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">As soon as the orchestra and conductor were assembled on stage, the lights went down. The side stage door opened and a soprano voice was heard intoning a melody in the style of Gregorian chant. In a slow procession, four sopranos and four altos joined in the melody and walked, one by one, across the stage until they turned to face the audience, spread evenly across the width of the hall. Each singer carried a light to illuminate the music and their faces; all else was darkened.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">This was, as far as I know, the first appearance on a Toronto Symphony Orchestra programme of the remarkable medieval composer, abbess, and mystic, Hildegarde von Bingen. As the eight voices soared in the elaborate rising and falling phrases of her unique style, there was utter silence in the hall -- everyone was captivated. As the music entered its final section, the singer who had led the procession turned and completed her walk off the other side of the stage, the others following her one by one until the final notes of Hildegarde's <i>O virtus Sapientiae </i>faded slowly into the offstage distance.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Michael Francis then lifted his hands and, as the lights slowly came back up, led the orchestra directly into the opening chords of Mozart's <i>Masonic Funeral Music, </i>a striking and evocative tribute to two members of Mozart's Masonic lodge in Vienna. The deep tones of trombones and bassoons give this music a distinctive colour all its own, and the orchestra members did it full justice.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">After Francis gave his remarks, he next led the orchestra into a full-sized version of the extraordinary <i>Grosse Fuge </i>by Beethoven. Originally for string quartet, this is one of the most startling and challenging products of the final period of Beethoven's life. The TSO's remarkable string sections did splendid work in presenting all the complex and intertwining lines of this near-symphonic movement in which multiple fugal expositions seem to be taking place simultaneously. </div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">The final work in the first half brought back the Toronto Mendelssohn Singers, the small professional chamber choir embedded in the larger Mendelssohn Choir, to perform the impossibly beautiful <i>Miserere</i> by Gregorio Allegri. This complex psalm setting for two choirs and intoning tenor soloist has achieved worldwide fame in the form in which Mozart copied it down from memory after hearing it at the Vatican. As a side note, it's quite startling to hear the composer's very different original thoughts as recorded and released by the Sistine Chapel choir a few years ago. I don't know if Mozart elaborated the music instead of merely transcribing it, or if the editor of the familiar published text did so.<br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">In any case, tenor Isaiah Bell gave the leading tone chants from the top right level of the hall, the main choral body stood in the choir loft, and the small quartet second choir -- including the all-important soprano who has to sing a high C in slow and serene form in each verse, were on the top left level. This spatial dimension caused the music to fold in around the audience, and brought the first half to a conclusion every bit as entrancing -- in a literal sense -- as the opening procession.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">The programme notes made no comment about the irony of a concert orchestra featuring two works of unaccompanied choral music by composers who would have no idea of what such a body of players might be capable of doing, and wouldn't even know many of the instruments which the modern orchestra uses! That unique programme certainly set many people talking and reflecting in lobby during the intermission.<br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;"> </div><div style="text-align: justify;">And so to Mozart's immortal <i>Requiem</i>, which comprised the second half of the programme. I've made extensive comments about the magnetic drawing power and editorial difficulties of this work in two reviews of previous performances -- one being the traditional Süssmayr completion...</div><div style="text-align: justify;"> </div><div style="text-align: center;"> <i><b><span style="font-size: medium;"><a href="https://largestagelive.blogspot.com/2020/01/toronto-symphony-2019-2020-3-sublime.html" target="_blank">Sublime Late Mozart</a></span></b></i></div><div style="text-align: justify;"> </div><div style="text-align: justify;">..while the other was the Levin edition.<br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><i><b><a href="https://largestagelive.blogspot.com/2016/01/funeral-rites.html" target="_blank">Funeral Rites</a></b></i></span><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Michael Francis led the orchestra and the full Toronto Mendelssohn Choir in a performance which definitely stressed the drama and the intensity of Mozart's score, with such lyrical passages as the <i>Recordare </i>and the <i>Benedictus </i>coming as a relief from the power of so much else.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"> </div><div style="text-align: justify;">In line with contemporary practice, his tempi were brisk but not to the point of blurring except, perhaps, in the Offertory where the <i>Quam olim Abrahae </i>fugue was beset with muddy textures in the most complex bars of <i>stretto</i>.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"> </div><div style="text-align: justify;">Particularly welcome was the starkly powerful performance of Levin's biggest divergence from the well-known Süssmayr edition, the <i>Amen </i>fugue after the <i>Lacrymosa</i>, which can seem very much out of place from its surroundings if presented too lightly or speedily.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">The other big fugal movements, the <i>Kyrie eleison </i>at the beginning and the <i>Cum sanctis tuis </i>to the same music at the close, bookended a performance of the <i>Requiem </i>as fine as any I've heard.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">In part, this was due to the splendid contributions of the solo quartet. Soprano Jane Archibald, mezzo-soprano Susan Platts, tenor Isaiah Bell, and bass-baritone Kevin Deas each sang effectively in their respective solo moments, particularly in the <i>Tuba mirum</i>, in some ways the most operatic part of the score, where all four have to take a line in turn. However, it was as a quartet that they truly made their mark, the four voices balancing beautifully in the many passages where they sang together.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">The Toronto Mendelssohn Choir must have this music in their blood by now, having sung it so many times over the years. For all that, there was no hint of routine about any part of the performance. The choir articulated their notes splendidly where Francis called for that, without getting choppy, and sang with firm and beautifully phrased <i>legato </i>in other parts of the score. The large choral fugues were all sung with just the right mixture of clarity without edginess and power without shouting. A magnificent performance by any standard.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">The Toronto Symphony Orchestra plays this music with a great blend of strength and subtlety. The featured moments for trombones and winds, the textures of the strings in lighter passages, the nicely judged "enough but no more" of the timpani, all went together to provide a firm foundation and clearly Mozartean musical identity to the whole performance. Given the size of the orchestra and choir, I wondered at the use of chamber organ. It was largely inaudible except in a few quieter moments. The hall's main concert organ would, I think, have been entirely appropriate.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"> </div><div style="text-align: justify;">With a <i>Requiem </i>of such power and beauty, balanced by the unique presentation of four rare masterpieces in the first half, this ranks as one of the most memorable concert collaborations of the Toronto Mendelssohn Choir and Toronto Symphony Orchestra in recent years. Wouldn't it be wonderful to hear these same artists join forces in Mozart's incredible <i>Great</i> <i>Mass in C Minor, K.427? </i>That's a concert which I would call long overdue!<br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;"> </div><div style="text-align: justify;"> </div>Ken Stephenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15446161349713438016noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-346000049113318252.post-31909656164093268562022-12-18T17:51:00.002-05:002022-12-18T17:54:15.915-05:00"Messiah" and Me: A Personal Reflection<div style="text-align: justify;">Following on last night's splendid performance of Handel's immortal oratorio (see previous post), it seemed like a good time for me to reflect on my own long-running history with this work.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><i>Messiah</i> forms one of the earliest cornerstones of my lifelong love affair with the whole world of classical music. I grew up hearing Handel's work in all its majestic, playful, solemn diversity of style. Excerpts were sung at our annual pre-Christmas extended family party. Some of the adults sang selected solos, and the group joined in choruses. </div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">It was talked about at home too, due to my father's decades-long membership of the Toronto Mendelssohn Choir (over 45 years). In time, my older sister, my brother, and I all took singing lessons and all took a turn singing in the Choir as well. <br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">By now, we of the younger generation were singing some of those wonderful solo arias at the annual<i> </i>family <i>Messiah </i>fest. In one year, we actually worked our way through pretty much the whole of the first part, before wrapping up as always with the <i>Hallelujah </i>chorus. I've continued singing them all my life, sometimes with organ accompaniment, sometimes accompanying myself on the piano (we'll pass lightly over the hit-and-miss quality of my piano playing). Trying to sing Handel's most florid coloratura while sitting down and playing is an interesting challenge!<br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Mind you, I did achieve an odd distinction when I joined the Mendelssohn Choir myself for one season in 1977-78. We'd been intensively rehearsing and taping a lengthy work by Murray Schafer for the CBC, and the taping sessions ran right into mid-December. Thus, there was time for only one orchestral rehearsal before the annual <i>Messiah </i>performances, and no time at all to crack our scores before that one rehearsal. And right there was when the Toronto winter weather did me in, and I came down with a cold, losing my voice. I must be one of the very few members of the Choir, perhaps the only one in the last 90 years, who never actually sang <i>Messiah </i>with the Choir!</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">An odd side note: the idea that the Choir can do <i>Messiah </i>on next to no rehearsal got so ingrained in my thinking from this episode that I actually did a double-take when I saw in social media how many rehearsals were held with choir and orchestra for this week's concerts. Their rehearsing definitely paid off!<br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Looking back, I realize now that my family were participating in an old tradition of performing classical music at home. For many people, perhaps most people, this has died out as the arrival of recordings has made it unnecessary, since you no longer need to play or sing to hear the music. A pity. But no matter what, for me (as for so many other music lovers), Christmas has always meant <i>Messiah.</i></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><i> </i></div><div style="text-align: justify;">And this is odd, because Handel really composed the work to be performed in the Lenten and Easter seasons, and always and only performed it then. <i>Messiah </i>is odd in another way, too, among Handel's output of English oratorios, a form he basically invented. All of his other oratorios are dramatic narratives, concert operas in all but name. Even<i> Israel in Egypt, </i>although it lacks dramatic characters, is a thoroughly dramatic and narrative work.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><i> </i><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><i>Messiah </i>is another matter altogether: a purely Biblical text, meditating on the whole arc of the Biblical story of Christ from the annunciation of his birth to his final revelation as the enthroned Son of God at the last day of the world. The only narrative in the entire work comes in the four brief recitatives of the Nativity scene, leading up to the angelic chorus, <i>Glory to God.</i><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">I'm certainly not alone in the English-speaking world in finding that Handel's immortal inspiration has a powerful grip. Last night, I was brought to tears by the understated but deeply-felt <i>Behold and see if there be any sorrow like unto His sorrow </i>as sung by Michael Colvin. I've never heard it given with a greater sense of the meaning of the words, or with greater emotional intensity.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">For many people, the climax of <i>Messiah </i>comes at the end of the second part with the majestic <i>Hallelujah</i> chorus. Handel wrote in a letter that, when he was working on the score of <i>Messiah, </i>"I did think I did see all of heaven open before me, and the great God himself." It's common to assume that these words applied to the <i>Hallelujah </i>and perhaps they did.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">For me, though, the unfailing sense of the heavens opening comes in the majestic leading chords of the final choral fresco, <i>Worthy is the Lamb that was slain, </i>and then again a few minutes later in the first fortissimo outburst and the final massive cadences of the concluding <i>Amen -- </i>and the power of this music brings me to tears once more, every time I hear it.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"> </div><div style="text-align: justify;">There have been times in my life when I have grown tired of <i>Messiah</i>, when I've felt as if it's finally losing its grip on me. Bach's beautiful but very different <i>Christmas Oratorio</i> claims an equal share of my time when Christmas rolls around. But then, I sit down to listen at home, or (as last night) attend a top-notch live performance, and all that familiar music unfolds its beauty for me once more. And then the final chorus opens the gates of heaven, and I find that I've fallen in love with <i>Messiah </i>all over again.<br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div>Ken Stephenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15446161349713438016noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-346000049113318252.post-83481414673497344862022-12-17T23:53:00.000-05:002022-12-17T23:53:36.226-05:00The Eternal, Immortal "Messiah"<div style="text-align: justify;"> For the first time in too many years to count, I sat down in Roy Thomson Hall on Saturday night to enjoy the annual Toronto Mendelssohn Choir/Toronto Symphony Orchestra performance of<i> </i>Handel's grand, immortal <i>Messiah</i>.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"> </div><div style="text-align: justify;">Two factors drew me to this concert, after missing it so many times. One was the indefinable, but still quite strong, feeling that I desperately <i><b>needed </b></i>to hear <i>Messiah </i>after the ordeal of the last two winters.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">The other was the discovery that the Toronto Symphony Orchestra's Music Director, Gustavo Gimeno, was going to lead these performances himself.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">This is a real rarity. No TSO Music Director since Sir Ernest Macmillan, with the periodic exception of Sir Andrew Davis, has made a habit of leading these performances. It's become traditional to rotate one of the TSO's most popular annual events among the hands of assorted guest conductors. The orchestra says this is to allow for variations of interpretation, a very valid aim. But that's just what we are going to get here.<br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;"> </div><div style="text-align: justify;">These concerts mark Gimeno's first-ever occasion to lead live performances of Handel's eternally popular oratorio. This is actually not surprising. <i>Messiah </i>has a far less powerful grip on the popular imagination in continental Europe than in the English-speaking world. I was, then, even more eager to hear how this first-time interpreter would fare with a work which is far more challenging than many of us <i>Messiah </i>veterans like to admit, and a work which would not necessarily be a key element of the musical world in which he had grown up and studied.<br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Then there's the whole question of whether there would be any innovations in the sequence of numbers, the choice of numbers to be omitted, or the versions of various numbers to be performed. It's entirely possible to write a whole book about the history of <i>Messiah</i>, and the huge multiplicity of alternative numbers which Handel composed. Trust me, it's been done. I took my own briefer crack at "the <i>Messiah </i>problem" in my rare music blog, <i>Off the Beaten Staff</i>, five years ago. Here's a link to that post:</div><div style="text-align: justify;"> </div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><i><b><a href="https://offthebeatenstaff.blogspot.com/2017/12/will-real-messiah-please-stand-up.html" target="_blank">Will the Real "Messiah" Please Stand Up?</a></b></i></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"> </div><div style="text-align: justify;"> </div><div style="text-align: justify;">Enough preamble. Let's get right to the performance. As usual, these TSO performances fly somewhat in the face of the authentic performance movement by using a large choir, but keeping the orchestra down to a smaller, more Baroque-sized body. No qualms about authenticity from this listener. Handel was well-known in his day for always wanting more singers and more players than he had. More to the point, the musicians of the TSO by now have all had experience in the requirements and skills of authentic Baroque performance and demonstrate it with a will. The old days of thick, plush, Wagnerian orchestral sound in Handel are, thankfully, long gone.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Gimeno staked his turf right from the opening overture, adopting a whole sequence of what most would consider central tempi at the present day, generally free from excessive speeds or distortions of the basic pulse. What he did bring to the performance, generating added interest, was a whole range of subtle little variations in the dynamic levels, avoiding the general sameness within each number that most conductors prefer. Gimeno also stressed clear articulation of notes in some passages, while generally shunning some of the comical excesses of other interpreters.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">The only arguably excessive tempo was in <i>His yoke is easy</i> which lost its playful character and became hectic and effortful as the choir -- in just this one place -- struggled to keep up.<br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">As for changes in the assignment of numbers, there were few, and they were confined to the second and third parts. The middle section and <i>da capo</i> of<i> He was despised </i>and of <i>The trumpet shall sound </i>vanished altogether. The recitative <i>He was cut off </i>and the following arioso <i>But Thou didst not leave </i>were transferred from tenor to soprano. On the plus side, <i>But who may abide </i>was correctly assigned to the mezzo-soprano. Otherwise, the traditional sequence of numbers with the traditional cuts was observed.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">The orchestra of mainly strings, with a few winds, plus the necessary trumpets and drums, was for the most part effective, except that the orchestral tone tended to vanish altogether in the few passages where the choir sang full out. Continuo was provided throughout by a chamber organ, with nary a harpsichord in sight. Given the scale of the performance, it was just as well that Roy Thomson Hall's big concert organ was not used.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Although all four soloists had fine qualities and fine moments, I felt that the honours of the evening among them rested with tenor Michael Colvin. His characterization and feeling for the text made the recitative <i>Thy rebuke hath broken his heart</i> and the succeeding arioso <i>Behold and see if there be any sorrow</i> into a high point of emotional intensity. He then capped his performance with another dramatically conceived and fiery interpretation in <i>Thou shalt break them.</i></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><i> </i></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Mezzo-soprano Stephanie Wake-Edwards would certainly have challenged Colvin for the honours if she had been allowed to use her rich, contralto-like tone in the entirety of <i>He was despised</i> -- and I wish she had done so. In the first part, she brought dancing joy to <i>O Thou that tellest</i> and simple lyrical beauty to <i>He shall feed his flock. </i>The dramatic intensity of her <i>For He is like a refiner's fire </i>made a stunning contrast. <br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;"> </div><div style="text-align: justify;">Soprano Lauren Fagan sang throughout with simple lyrical beauty and soaring accuracy of high notes, all with no hint of overplaying her hand. A level of emotional commitment to match Colvin's would have been welcome in <i>He was cut off </i>and <i>But Thou didst not leave,</i> as also in <i>I know that my Redeemer liveth. </i>Lovely as it was, this aria somewhat skated over the meaning of the words.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Baritone Elliot Madore struggled with the coloratura of <i>Thus saith the Lord</i>, blurring the long chains of high-speed notes. He proved in much better form as the evening went on, bringing drama and accuracy to <i>Why do the nations </i>and <i>The trumpet shall sound.</i></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><i> </i></div><div style="text-align: justify;">The most exciting contributions of the performance came from the Toronto Mendelssohn Choir. The choral parts in <i>Messiah </i>equal in length and intensity the work of all four soloists together, and the reduced body of 100 singers rose to the challenge admirably. Diction was variable from section to section, obviously due to the varying numbers of singers in each section who chose to wear masks. </div><div style="text-align: justify;"><i> </i><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Aside from that one issue, the choir brought pinpoint accuracy to Gimeno's requests for articulation, and responded willingly to his unconventional but intriguing dynamic requirements. Equally clear were the long coloratura lines in such choruses as <i>And He shall purify </i>and <i>For unto us a child is born</i>. At one time, you might have heard the choir making a mighty shout in all the choral movements, but throughout the evening they held back the big guns, saving their full power for the <i>Hallelujah</i> chorus and the concluding <i>Worthy is the Lamb... Amen. </i>Most impressive of all were the times when the choir responded to the call for truly quiet singing, the voices reducing to a mere murmur while the text remained clear. </div><div style="text-align: justify;"><i> </i><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><i> </i>All in all, an auspicious <i>Messiah </i>debut for Maestro Gimeno, predictably nimble and stylish playing from the Toronto Symphony Orchestra, an enjoyable evening of singing from the four soloists, and a splendid performance from the Toronto Mendelssohn Choir.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Performances of <i>Messiah </i>continue for the next four nights (December 18/19/20/21) at Roy Thomson Hall. Tickets can be purchased from the Toronto Symphony Orchestra's website.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><br /><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div>Ken Stephenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15446161349713438016noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-346000049113318252.post-8273233618790411502022-12-07T12:09:00.003-05:002023-03-26T17:19:02.437-04:00Toronto Mendelssohn Choir 2022-2023 # 2: Festive Christmas Music From the TMC<div style="text-align: justify;">December 6 marked the return of a welcome Toronto Christmas tradition: the annual Festival of Carols from the Toronto Mendelssohn Choir, including the well-loved carol singalong.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Although the Choir did present a virtual Christmas program in 2020, and last year went with a shortened live or virtual concert which (to meet Covid rules) ended with a "hum-along", it was the full-throttle audience participation in classic Christmas music which so many had missed.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Indeed, the demand for tickets was so great that the Choir added a second performance on December 7 and a webcast of the concert on December 9!</div><div style="text-align: justify;"> </div><div style="text-align: justify;">With this event, the Choir launched the Christmas season with the kind of festive energy that, even at Christmas, isn't easily or often found. The Choir's performance in this concert was memorable, exciting, and bursting with joie de vivre. <br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Under Music Director Jean-Sébastien Vallée, the Choir and the Toronto Mendelssohn Singers performed a kaleidoscopic array of Christmas music, including arrangements of traditional carols and profound music of the Christmas season, representing a time span from the 1600s to the present day and a world view encompassing multiple cultures and regions.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Two of the most beautiful and touching works were premieres, with the composers present: <i>O Nata Lux </i>by Christopher Ducasse and <i>Heartbeat </i>by Shireen Abu-Khader, the latter a TMC commission. Ducasse's music gave more than a nod to the serene polyphony of the European Renaissance, while Abu-Khader's work incorporated Byzantine chant, fusing it with her own distinctive and heartfelt melodic language.<br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">There were many highlights in this diverse anthology of seasonal music. Right at the outset, the Toronto Mendelssohn Singers brought beautiful and coolly serene tone to John Sheppard's motet <i>Verbum Caro Factum Est </i>("The Word Was Made Flesh")<i>, </i>their voices soaring over the audience from the side gallery of the church.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">The dialogue of Gabriel and Mary in <i>Gabriel's Message </i>was given by soloists Jacob Abrahamse and Emily Parker, and both they and the full choir relished the light-hearted dotted rhythms of this traditional English carol in Olivia Sparkhall's arrangement.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Two other bouncy arrangements by Mack Wilberg, <i>Noe! Noe! </i>and <i>Ding! Dong! Merrily on High, </i>were given by the choir with ample energy and the signature precision we've come to expect. <br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Speaking of energy, organist Isabelle Demers at one point launched an improvisatory interlude with a few high-powered bars of Messiaen, and it's a pity that space couldn't have been made for her to perform the entire number, <i>Dieu parmi nous </i>("God Among Us") -- that being an obvious choice for the occasion.<br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;"> </div><div style="text-align: justify;">Soprano Rebecca McKay brought ethereal tone to her part in Donald Fraser's <i>This Christmastide.</i></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><i> </i></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Another delight was Donald Patriquin's arrangement of a lively traditional French noël, <i>Tous les Bourgeois de Chartres. </i></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><i> </i></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Among the most heart-touching moments of the entire evening was Paul Mealor's <i>In the Bleak Midwinter</i>, with Dan Bevan-Baker's luminous baritone solo over the quiet choral backdrop a true delight.<i> </i></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><i><br /></i></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Coreen Duffy's setting of <i>Adon Olam,</i> a traditional Jewish hymn of praise to God, created a harmonic atmosphere which was unique in this concert.<br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><i> </i></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Fortunately, the currently-fashionable styles of minimalist repetition of words or syllables (which only muddy the text), and wrong-note modernism in arrangements of traditional carols, were confined to only a couple of numbers. <i> <br /></i></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><i> </i></div><div style="text-align: justify;">The entire concert was arranged in six sets, lasting ninety minutes without an intermission. The eagerly-awaited singalongs were placed at the end of sections 2, 5, and 6 with the audience invited to rise and join in singing <i>O Come All Ye Faithful </i>first. Sir David Willcocks' splendid arrangement, a staple of church music since my childhood, brought tears to my eyes. <i>Silent Night </i>concluded the fifth set, and the high energy of <i>Joy to the World </i>brought the entire concert to a rousing conclusion.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Well, almost. Of course there had to be an encore, and of course that encore had to be that other grand old Christmas tradition, Handel's <i>Hallelujah </i>chorus. While the choir and organist tore into Handel's immortal inspiration with their customary flair, there may have been a few extra voices involved. I hope the choir, the conductor, and the audience located near me will forgive me for treating this as another singalong number but I simply couldn't resist -- I haven't had a chance to sing it for nearly a decade! And I don't think I was the only audience member singing along at this point either.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">The concert repeats tonight (December 7) at 7:30 pm at Yorkminster Park Baptist Church, and the webcast is available starting on December 9. Tickets for either the live or the webcast version of this splendid concert can be purchased at this link:</div><div style="text-align: justify;"> </div><div style="text-align: justify;"></div><div style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: large;"><b><a href="https://www.tmchoir.org/event/festival-of-carols-2022/" target="_blank">Festival of Carols 2022</a></b></span><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><i> </i><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><i> </i></div>Ken Stephenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15446161349713438016noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-346000049113318252.post-49745379103608731772022-12-01T10:44:00.002-05:002022-12-02T07:57:27.132-05:00National Ballet of Canada 2022-2023 # 1: Sad About MADDADDAM<div style="text-align: justify;">Although it was only a day after I'd returned home from a lengthy overseas trip, I simply couldn't miss the performance of the National Ballet's newest full-length work: Wayne McGregor's <i>MADDADDAM</i>, inspired by and based on the trilogy of novels by renowned novelist Margaret Atwood.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">This performance was all the more important to me, in that I had already missed the season-opening mixed programme which officially launched Hope Muir's tenure as Artistic Director of the company. In it, Muir had introduced new choreographers whose work had not previously been staged by the National, and that was a particular reason I was sorry to miss it.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><i>MADDADDAM</i>, on the other hand, comes from the hand of Wayne McGregor, a choreographer whose work I already know and admire (think <i>Chroma </i>and <i>Genus</i>), and is actually a long-delayed holdover from what should have been the last season of Karen Kain's tenure at the head of the company.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"> </div><div style="text-align: justify;">It is also the third major full-length work staged jointly by the National Ballet of Canada and Britain's Royal Ballet, and the first of the three to receive its world premiere in Toronto (the first two were <i>Alice's Adventures in Wonderland </i>and <i>The Winter's Tale</i>, both choreographed by Christopher Wheeldon).<br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">For all of these reasons, I approached the performance with considerable anticipation and excitement, and came away rather saddened that the work seemed to me to be a misfire in some (not all) ways.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">I hasten to point out right away that the dancers of the company were absolutely on top form throughout the performance. Wayne McGregor's signature choreographic style has the dancers bending, turning, twisting, and flexing in ways which appear to be impossible -- and yet they aren't because you just saw some of them do it. The National's remarkable company rose to the occasion, bringing all their passion, energy, and skill to bear on McGregor's choreographic challenges. I have only the strongest of compliments for their performances across the board.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"> </div><div style="text-align: justify;">That also applies to the National Ballet's house orchestra, which appeared as a pared-down live pit ensemble working successfully in conjunction with extensive pre-taped music, always a situation fraught with possibilities for things to go wrong.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Despite the best efforts of these dedicated performing artists, <i>MADDADDAM </i>comes across as a rather confusing, obscure, elliptical piece of work. </div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">The problems begin, I think, with the source material. Right at the outset, I have to wonder if there is really any feasible way to present, in a single 95-minute performance, the contents of a richly layered and detailed trilogy of novels. My sense, for what it's worth, is that this was an impossible assignment at the outset. The finished work, as far as I could tell, got around the difficulty by presenting a series of choreographic impressions rooted in the books, rather than attempting a narrative.<br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;"> </div><div style="text-align: justify;">The way in which the work was presented to the audience caused problems for most of the people I have discussed this work with, and with many other members of the audience -- to judge by the comments I heard around me at the theatre.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"> </div><div style="text-align: justify;">Atwood's novels have certainly not been read by everyone, and a short synopsis of the contents of the books would have been enormously helpful. What we got, instead, were a few isolated comments scattered through the three preview videos, and a few more elliptical statements in the extensive, scholarly, but curiously uninformative programme notes. All of this material was presented to the audience from a perspective that we were expected to be familiar with the novels already -- and this was a huge mistake.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"> </div><div style="text-align: justify;">Among other things, we had no guidance at all as to the meaning or significance of a number of named characters, who or what they might be, or what their function or purpose might be. <br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;"> </div><div style="text-align: justify;">It didn't help matters at all that the programme notes' references to the second act seemed to bear no relation at all to what we saw on stage. Certainly, I couldn't make the connection. <br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;"> </div><div style="text-align: justify;">Problems within the actual performance come down mainly to two key areas.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">The first is the extensive use of video and moving objects in the set designs. Difficulties began right at the outset with the moving projections of huge, ominous figures on a scrim as the dancers were beginning their choreography. Sadly, the dancers came off second-best as the enormous projections kept yanking our attention away from the on-stage movement -- a classic example of what's known in theatrical parlance as "pulling focus." Those projections forcefully <i><b>commanded </b></i>our focus and I truly sympathized with the dancers in their losing battle against their own stage set. </div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Matters were compounded when the huge "orb" on the stage began rotating slowly during a later part of the first act. Again, attention was diverted to the orb as we waited to see what it would do or what it would show as it turned. These mobile set effects did the the dancers an enormous disservice.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">The other key problem, for me, was the original score by Max Richter. I had fondly hoped that the tedious "minimalist" movement in music was at an end, but here it came again, full force. When a short, simple rhythmic or melodic fragment is repeated several times, it can (and certainly does) help to establish a mood or emotion, and that is a useful function. When it keeps repeating for another five or even ten minutes (as it seemed at times), mood or emotion is succeeded by boredom and then by aggravation which makes me want to scream, "Just play something different already!"</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">The only key to the music which we were given in an advance video was a quick fragment of a descending melody which would appear in the final minutes of each act. My relief was immense when I at last heard that melody beginning to emerge for the third time, and knew that the relentless musical tedium was finally coming to an end.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">To sum up: <i>MADDADDAM </i>is certainly a brave attempt at making dance out of some very challenging source material, and on a choreographic level it is strikingly powerful. Sadly, the power is often dissipated by the tedious music, the hyper-competitive videos and moving set elements, and above all by the lack of any programme notes which can give the audience an actual context to the impressions which are being danced on the stage.<br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div>Ken Stephenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15446161349713438016noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-346000049113318252.post-30183448690481861682022-11-05T20:14:00.000-04:002022-11-05T20:14:13.935-04:00Dynamic, Enticing Evening of Dance<div style="text-align: justify;">Ballet Kelowna has again come up with a real winner of a show to launch this, their 20th Anniversary Season.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">This small but enterprising company tackles pieces which rank with the most complex in (mostly) modern dance, and the artists continually draw the audiences into their world by the skill and energy of their dancing.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Energy, as it turned out, was an essential component of this programme. All three choreographers made large demands on the physical stamina and breath control of the dancers, requiring long stretches of high-stakes, high-speed dancing -- nowhere more so than in the final work```.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">The evening opened with a fascinating dance creation from Artist-in-Residence, Cameron Fraser-Monroe. In a completely common situation in the contemporary world, Fraser-Monroe's name suggests a strongly Scottish heritage -- and while that is a part of his family's history, it's as a member of the Tla'amin Nation that he most strongly identifies.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">This 2021 work, <i>taqǝš </i>(pronounced "TawKESH"), draws from the traditional story in which Raven returns the world's water that has been stolen by Frog and his friends. The dance made allusive reference to the story by using simple vignettes of key events in the story, but more so worked from a premise of incorporating the traditional dance of the Pacific Coast nations in partnership with the classical ballet tradition -- a challenging goal if ever there was one. </div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Fraser-Monroe's work had two memorable, not to say eye-catching moments. One came when Raven (McKeely Borger) took to wing to search for the missing water. His choreographic conception here evoked some gasps and expressions of awe from members of the audience. The other, soon after, was the moment when Frog (Seiji Suzuki) and his friends appeared, dancing and partying up a storm in celebration of their success in stealing all the water. Here, the brilliant green lighting and the angular, almost rock-music inspired movements of the company served to underline the fun-loving, jazzy quality in that section of Jeremy Dutcher's purpose-composed score.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Definitely, Cameron Fraser-Monroe pointed the way for more diverse and exciting fusions of classical European dance and the indigenous dance traditions of this land.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">The second work was Guillaume Coté's 2012 work, <i>Boléro</i>, set (no surprise) to Ravel's endlessly fascinating showpiece for orchestra. Set for a quartet of dancers (three men, one woman), the dance in <i>Boléro </i>exactly parallels the structure of the music by growing progressively more daring and more breathtaking as the piece progresses. Coté uses lifts as the central feature of the work, and the lifts get more and more complex and risky as the music evolves. In the final moment, the woman is launched forwards towards the extended arms of two of the men, the lights vanishing in a snap blackout before she actually lands -- a theatrical extension of a classic competition cheer team move.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Kelsey Hanna has used <i>Boléro </i>as her swan song, retiring from active dance after this memorable last performance. I know her colleagues and audiences alike will miss her artistry -- but what a fabulous moment to end a career, as all will remember her forever airborne and soaring in space.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"> </div><div style="text-align: justify;">After the intermission, the programme wrapped up with a significant world premiere, <i>In the Light of the Waking Sun </i>by Robert Stephen.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"> </div><div style="text-align: center;"><i><u><b>Conflict of Interest Alert:</b></u><b> Robert Stephen is my nephew.</b></i></div><div style="text-align: center;"><i><b> </b></i></div><div style="text-align: justify;">This half-hour work uses three of the four movements of Schubert's <i>Symphony No. 5 in B-flat Major, D.485</i><b> </b>(omitting the third-movement <i>Minuet and Trio </i>which is really a scherzo in all but name). What remains is a three-movement triptych, noted among musicians for its sunny good nature. Now, notice the title again.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"> </div><div style="text-align: justify;">Stephen's subtext was the gradual emergence of the world from the bleak two years of the pandemic, and the slow return of normal life in many ways. </div><div style="text-align: justify;"> </div><div style="text-align: justify;">The first movement sees the dancers moving in lively fashion about the stage, but avoiding direct interaction -- indeed, acting awkward and hesitant when such interaction almost occurs. At the end of the movement, the dancers suddenly surrender to the urge to hug each other. The slow second movement then becomes a series of <i>pas de deux</i>, with the slow reawakening of love and intimacy the subject matter. The vigorous finale brings us into a joyful, exuberant festival, hurtling bodies and flying feet going in all directions as once (and abetted by the uncommonly fast recorded performance of Schubert's music). </div><div style="text-align: justify;"> </div><div style="text-align: justify;">Four-fifths of the lightness and joy of the piece lies in the choregraphy. The remaining and significant one-fifth comes from the costumes created by Krista Dowson. Light, sheer, easily airborne fabrics are wedded to a gentle palette of pastel colours which seems the very essence of spring and summer.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">While Stephen's dance language here is predominantly classical, with modern highlights, the great success of this piece is the way in which he uses old traditional dance steps and processes to create a thing of beauty which is at the same time not new, yet entirely new. Point of reference or comparison quickly fall aside as you realize that <i>In the Light of the Waking Sun </i>bears only superficial resemblance to such distinguished forerunners as Balanchine's <i>Symphony in C </i>or Kudelka's <i>the Four Seasons</i>. The energy may resemble those works, but the net results are unique, and uniquely exhilarating for the audience.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Really, the same could and should be said of all three works on this fascinating programme. In each case, the audience was swept up in the strength of the choreographer's vision and the company's dancing, and the prolonged and energetic applause clearly testified to what a winning programme Ballet Kelowna has mounted to open this anniversary year.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div>Ken Stephenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15446161349713438016noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-346000049113318252.post-69079577110801894242022-10-31T16:05:00.000-04:002022-10-31T16:05:51.303-04:00Intensely Moving Dance Drama<div style="text-align: justify;">With this week's powerful and moving premiere performance of <i>A World Transformed, </i>Echo Chamber Toronto has created an entirely new genre of dance drama. </div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><i>A World Transformed,</i> at one level, is a combination of two separate but intertwined vocal recitals. The first part uses a tenor voice with piano, the second part a mezzo-soprano. At that level, it would be nothing more than the many other vocal recitals which use a theme to tie the disparate songs together.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">It's the inspired incorporation of evocative modern dance, from four dancers and two different choreographers, sparing narration, and a sophisticated lighting plot, which takes these two song recitals and melds them together into a dramatic experience of deep and subtle power.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">The theme and story alike is the terrible, senseless homophobic murder of 21-year-old Matthew Shepard in 1998. The first part of the performance focuses on Shepard himself, ending with his death. The second part, in an extreme contrast, focuses on his mother, Judy Shepard, who became and remains a prominent advocate for LGBTQ+ rights.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">The musical programme was curated by tenor Marcel d'Entremont and pianist Dakota Scott-Digout (who accompanied d'Entremont in the first part). They strung together a fascinating array of selections from such diverse composers as Vaughan Williams, Quilter, Britten, McCartney, Grieg, Tchaikovsky, Beach, Coulthard, and Purcell -- to name only a few.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">An intriguing result of this use of song was the way that the lyrics of the songs mattered far less than the evocative, atmospheric quality of the music, in shaping the drama as it unfolded. </div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">That was thanks to the choreography of William Yong and Laurence Lemieux and the dancing of Brayden Cairns, Zachary Cardwell, Evan Webb, and Johanna Bergfelt.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">In the first part, the story of the murder, Yong's choreography masterfully evoked the personality of Matthew Shepard and then the chilling events of the night he died. His dance language ranged across a wide gamut from easy lyrical movement to jagged, abrupt motion, with extended moments of stillness a critical element.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Without becoming in the least a literal depiction, the dance showed Cairns, Cardwell, and Webb beconing in effect a trio of Matthews, the three of them all moving in response to the events of the story as it unfolded.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Interaction between dancers and musicians is an essential part of Echo Chamber's mandate, and their interactions with tenor soloist Marcel d'Entremont, although sparingly used, were carefully judged for maximum impact. This was most true at the horrific climax of the story when d'Entremont released the three, one by one, from the "fence" which held Matthew Shepard prisoner -- actually, in an inspired moment of staging, the steel railing of the upper level gantry across the back of the stage.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"> </div><div style="text-align: justify;">The emotional anguish of this scene was amplified by the serene violin playing of Echo Chamber Toronto's Artistic Director, Aaron Schwebel, in Purcell's <i>When I Am Laid in Earth</i>. <br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Even more intense was the slow tableau that ended the first part, as the three dancers joined hands with d'Entremont in a line, moving slowly in and out and around each other, even forming a circle. Then the three Matthews laid slowly down in an interlocked formation on the floor while d'Entremont scattered flower petals over the dead bodies.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">These two scenes reduced me to tears in their dramatic truthfulness and depth of grief.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">The second act saw Jeanie Chung take on piano duty while Andrea Ludwig appeared as the mezzo-soprano soloist. Dancer Johanna Bergfelt sat on a bench, plainly struggling with emotions. Ludwig, on her first appearance, simply walked forward and delivered the first narration of the second part -- a quote from Matthew Shepard's mother, Judy. She then turned and faced Bergfelt and it became clear that the two women were both Judy Shepard.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Laurence Lemieux's choreography for this second part relied more upon subtlety than overt drama. The interactions of the two women were simpler, too -- face-to-face and eye-to-eye moments of stillness, or the moment when Ludwig slid smoothly down into a seat on the bench as Bergfelt stood up.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">One telling moment came when Ludwig was singing from a music stand by the piano. Bergfelt moved behind both her and Chung to the left side of the hall, and a strong horizontal light created a shadow play from Bergfelt's dancing on the brick wall of the space. This was only one of designer Chris Malkowski's many intriguing lighting effects.<br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">The final section of the second half opened with a remarkable moment of catharsis. After a brief piano introduction, Ludwig launched into<i> </i>the Beatles' song, <i>Blackbird</i>, and I was moved to tears again at the unmistakable sense of relief I felt as her voice carolled freely in this well-loved tune.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"> </div><div style="text-align: justify;">The final number, <i>For Good </i>from "Wicked," brought the entire company together on the stage, formed in a line as the singers shared the phrases of the song back and forth. <br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Echo Chamber Toronto has staged a number of remarkable shows through the last half-dozen years, but with this event Schwebel has moved his project forward onto an entirely different level -- more thoughtful, more sophisticated, more dramatic than any of his previous efforts. </div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">It was very clear from the opening moments of the performance that <i>A World Transformed </i>was indeed, as Schwebel said in his opening remarks, a collaborative effort, a communal project into which all of the artists poured their thoughts, their feelings, their ideas, their hearts. No wonder it became so impressive, so powerful.<br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div>Ken Stephenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15446161349713438016noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-346000049113318252.post-15140501797192469752022-10-28T16:55:00.000-04:002022-10-28T16:55:48.208-04:00Cellists Galore!<div style="text-align: justify;">Last Saturday night saw me at St. Andrew's Church in Halifax for a chamber music concert sponsored by the Cecilia Concerts organization. This year, the Cecilia Concerts' Musician-in-Residence is pianist Silvie Cheng, and this was the second of four concerts curated by her. The programme, entitled <i>Cellobration,</i> left her somewhat outnumbered, since the other musicians were a trio of cellists: Paul Wiancko, Andrew Yee, and Silvie's brother, Bryan Cheng.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"> </div><div style="text-align: justify;">Of course, Silvie Cheng wasn't really outnumbered because a musical collaboration of this sort is neither a race nor a contest.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"> </div><div style="text-align: justify;">It's often said that the cello is the instrument which most sounds like the human voice, so any concert involving a group of cello players is bound to create some beautiful sounds and textures. I've never been quite sure of the "human voice" comparison, but I do know from previous experiences that the multiplication of cellos definitely increases the warmth of the sound at the same time as it diminishes any edge on the tone. </div><div style="text-align: justify;"> </div><div style="text-align: justify;">It's all the sadder, then, that not many composers have written works for multiple cellos. Naturally, then, this concert had to turn to arrangements as part of the programme, a couple of them heard in this concert for the first time. But there were also some splendid works for solo cello and piano, including a couple of gripping contemporary works.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">The programme opened with the rhythmically fascinating <i>The Wheel</i> by Caroline Shaw. Andrew Yee gave a wide-ranging reading of this technically complex and musically substantial piece.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">The other major contemporary work was <i>1 for cello and piano "Shifting Baselines" </i>by Paul Wiancko. The work was written by Wiancko on a commission for the Cheng²Duo, but here was played by the composer himself, with both power and subtlety to spare. This is a particularly memorable composition, and I was gratified to hear it again.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">The first half of the concert ended with David Popper's serene and richly harmonized <i>Requiem, Op. 66, </i>for 3 cellos and piano. </div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Also memorable was the dramatic, even turbulent, <i>Le Grand Tango </i>by Astor Piazzolla. This, too, would benefit from repeated hearings. I can't resist the urge to say how thankful I was that this particular composer wasn't represented by either <i>Libertango</i> or <i>Bordel: 1900</i>, both of which are so overworked that no great harm would be done if the world's musicians set them aside for 20 years or so in favour of other and no less desirable Piazzolla compositions.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Duke Ellington's <i>Such Sweet Thunder, </i>cited as "Arr. Cheng" (I assume that means Bryan, but perhaps a joint effort) received a jazzy, upbeat performance that brought out the strong rhythmic patterns of the music.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">I've left my two favourite moments of the concert to the end. The traditional Catalonian song <i>El Cant dels Ocells </i>("Song of the Birds"), originally arranged by Pablo Casals for cello and piano, and here rearranged for the cello trio and piano by Paul Wiancko, brought serene melodic lines framed by the heartachingly tender birdsong trills at start and finish. </div><div style="text-align: justify;"> </div><div style="text-align: justify;">The grand finale, the <i>Peer Gynt Suite No. 1, Op. 46 </i>by Grieg, arranged by Cheng, created all sorts of fascinating effects by tossing parts of the music around among the four musicians. The two slower movements, <i>Morning Mood </i>and <i>Death of Åse </i>both took full advantage of the lyrical qualities of the three cellists. The finale, <i>In the Hall of the Mountain King, </i>then let loose a rip-roaring race to the finish line which seemed about as energetic as one could possibly get -- until the succeeding encore, whose name I didn't catch, shot past at an even more frenetic pace.<br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Throughout the concert, all four artists gave well-thought and deeply-felt interpretations coupled with impressive and subtle musicianship. A gala <i>Cellobration </i>indeed!<br /></div>Ken Stephenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15446161349713438016noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-346000049113318252.post-8162596188535771972022-10-19T21:01:00.000-04:002022-10-19T21:01:51.467-04:00Stratford Festival 2022 # 6: 2B<div style="text-align: justify;">My final Stratford outing for this year is <i>Hamlet</i>, directed by Peter Pasyk, and I'm tempted to refer to this as the "Concorde <i>Hamlet</i>" since a number of scenes flew by at what seemed like the speed of the legendary supersonic airliner from the last century.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">But then I immediately rein myself in and remember the many other moments in the performance which were allowed ample, and more than ample time to breathe -- and for us, the audience, to hold our breaths.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">In addition to this sonic-boom-or-bust pacing, the show was also distinguished by a universally strong cast and imaginative lighting, sound, and music effects.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"> </div><div style="text-align: justify;">As the Director's Notes in the programme explained, the text of <i>Hamlet </i>exists in three source versions, all quite different from each other -- the First Quarto, the Second Quarto, and the First Folio. The First Quarto is often referred to as the "bad Quarto" since it contains far less text that the others, and has lines and an entire scene which do not appear in the other versions. It's believed that the First Quarto may be a pirated edition or a shortened version for a touring company, drawn from an actor's copy. Thus, there's always the problem of which version(s) to use as source material for a production or a modern print edition. This production draws on all three extant texts. As well, there's the challenging length of the original texts -- well over 5 hours performing time in the Second Quarto and the First Folio, making it Shakespeare's longest play. Surgery, therefore, becomes so desirable for a modern audience as to be essential.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"> </div><div style="text-align: justify;">In this performance, the most notable surgery was the complete deletion from the play of the character of Fortinbras, Prince of Norway. This in turn means that the play ends with the death of Hamlet, with Horatio having the last word: "Good night, sweet Prince, and flights of angels sing thee to thy rest."</div><div style="text-align: justify;"> </div><div style="text-align: justify;">For the rest, I am not familiar enough with <i>Hamlet </i>to be able to identify any of the other excisions. I must confess that this has never been one of my favourite Shakespeare plays (<i>gasp! shock! horror!</i>).</div><div style="text-align: justify;"> </div><div style="text-align: justify;">With all that scholarly foofaraw out of the way, how did the production unfold?</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">On entering the theatre, the audience saw a large multi-panelled wall of mirrors spread across the balcony level of the Festival Theatre's famous thrust stage, with smaller mirrored panels lining the edge of the balcony itself. As the play unfolded, it became clear that the mirrored walls were actually one-way mirrors, and became see-through windows when lights came on behind them, illuminating offstage scenes that were in Hamlet's thoughts at the moment. </div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">The production was set in today's world, and such techno gadgets as Bluetooth earpieces and cellphones appeared and were used frequently, just as one would expect of young people today. That gave the world of the play a strong sense of familiarity which, oddly enough, made the violent action all the more dislocating to the viewers.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"> </div><div style="text-align: justify;">Amaka Umeh gave a fire-eating performance as Hamlet, pushing the envelope in every direction as if playing to a camera for a TikTok -- as, indeed, Hamlet did on several occasions. Unlike some other performances where Hamlet was content to act verbally mad, Umeh drove the role hard into the physical dimensions of madness, letting an expressive face and uncommonly flexible body underline the disjointed personality of the Prince until his discomfiture screamed to heaven. This performance was nothing if not memorable, although the sheer overplus of the portrayal might make some viewers uncomfortable.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">The next powerful centre of the performance came from Graham Abbey as Claudius and Maev Beaty as Gertrude. This pair of Stratford stalwarts presented a united front against Hamlet's extravagances in the early running, only to come apart even more believably at the seams as the truth came out. Beaty in particular made a stunning impact in her final moments in the last scene.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Matthew Kabwe created a Ghost of power and strength, a voice from the grave impossible to ignore. His key scene with Hamlet was one of the dramatic highlights of the show. All the more appropriate, then, that Kabwe should have been double-cast (not unusual, actually) as the Gravedigger. </div><div style="text-align: justify;"> </div><div style="text-align: justify;">Norman Yeung and Ijeoma Emesowum brought colourful presence and string vocal work to the duo of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"> </div><div style="text-align: justify;">Andrea Rankin's mad scene as Ophelia ranged all over the stage and all over the actor's vocal compass too, in a disintegration that might well have wrung tears from a stone.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"> </div><div style="text-align: justify;">As her father, Polonius, Michael Spencer-Davis played up the absurdity of the man who has nothing to say and contrives to say it over and over again. Fine work for those who feel that, with Polonius, the comedy is the key point. <br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">The principal cast were surrounded by a strong team of players in minor parts, including the attendant lords who came across more like a security patrol, and the travelling players.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">There is, of course, no such thing as a definitive <i>Hamlet </i>-- and there had much better not be. Within its own chosen limits, Peter Pasyk's production brings many strengths and an immense, almost unmanageable energy to the play. Is this a good thing? In the end, it still comes down to whether the individual audience member feels that the more frantic scenes are a good fit with the material.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"> </div><div style="text-align: justify;">A final note: there's been a lot of discussion about the casting of Amaka Umeh, a female person of colour, in the male role of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark. In fact, the show included many notable roles played by persons of colour. Umeh played the title role as a man, and showed more than ample ability to rule the notoriously challenging Festival stage in such a major and challenging role. So what's the problem? <br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;"> <br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div>Ken Stephenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15446161349713438016noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-346000049113318252.post-83583283052165539322022-10-15T12:21:00.000-04:002022-10-15T12:21:01.665-04:00Stratford Festival 2022 # 5: A Very Eventful Year<div style="text-align: justify;">The year 1939 is best remembered in history for the outbreak of World War II in September. In Canada, the spring brought a "first": the first-ever tour of the country by a reigning monarch, King George VI. In a practical sense, it was the royal tour that triggered the events which form the story line of the play <i>1939</i>, now appearing in its world premiere engagement in the Studio Theatre at the Stratford Festival.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">The real story of the play, though, begins far earlier with the establishment of the first "residential schools" for native children by Canada in the 1800s.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"> </div><div style="text-align: justify;">The script, commissioned by Stratford, was co-written by Jani Lauzon (who also directed the performance) and Kaitlyn Riordan. Lauzon's "Director's Notes" in the programme said it best, and I quote her here: "<i>1939</i>... focuses on the incredible resilience, courage, wit, and ingenuity of five incredible students."<br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">If this sounds too heavy for a night out at the theatre, don't be deceived. <i>1939 </i>is both witty and completely involving: hysterically funny one minute, heart-touching another, intensely painful yet another, and -- in the end and after the end -- deeply thought-provoking. <br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">The story takes place in a Catholic residential school in Northern Ontario. Five students are chosen as being among the best in English language studies to present a performance of Shakespeare's play <i>All's Well That Ends Well</i> when the King and Queen come to visit the school during the tour. Their Welsh teacher, the ageing and unmarried Miss Sian Ap Dafydd, dreams of a gloriously classic production with her students all sounding like Dame Ellen Terry. The students, though, soon develop other ideas of what to do and how to do it -- ideas which have little to do with the King and Queen, or Dame Ellen Terry, but a great deal to do with holding onto, preserving, and nurturing their own identities and cultures.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">This play-within-a-play takes on added resonance in this setting since Stratford is also producing <i>All's Well That Ends Well </i>this season. It's not essential to be familiar with the Shakespearean play in order to appreciate <i>1939</i>, but knowing it does give extra dimension to the experience of watching this one.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"> </div><div style="text-align: justify;">Joanna Yu's set design, on the intimate stage of the Studio Theatre, features multiple blackboards with chalk and erasers. As the play unfolds, the five students take turns writing or drawing on the boards during each scene transition, while all members of the company take it in turns to erase the boards as soon as they are marked up. The metaphor of erasing traditional words and designs is clear when it's done by the three settler characters, but less clear and much more thought-provoking when the students erase each other's writings and drawings.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"> </div><div style="text-align: justify;">Other than the chalkboards, there are several chairs which are normally laid on their sides in piles on either side of the stage, when not being used. Other props, such as desks and tables, are wheeled on or off as needed. <br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">In what is very much an ensemble piece, the actors portraying the five students all have key moments and significant scenes in the show. Richard Comeau, Wahsonti:io Kirby, Kathleen MacLean, Tara Sky, and John Wamsley each achieved a depth and strength in portrayal that allowed all of the moments, from comical to dramatically tense, to emerge in the most natural way. Quite a challenge in a script that often allows only a few words to create a moment or establish a mood.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">All five also excelled in creating the Shakespearean atmosphere with the short excerpts from <i>All's Well </i>that emerged at the end of the play. One of the most powerful scenes for me came when Jean Delorme (played by Wamsley), as a Métis the perennial outsider of the group, used Parolles' wonderful speech of renunciation from Shakespeare's play to tell his fellows how he felt about the treatment he received from them. </div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Also powerful was the moment when the five students, one by one, discarded the fake Hollywoodish "Indian" costumes and props which had been wished on them by the church community. From that point on, the power and truth of the entire performance really took wing, culminating in the circle where the five broke out into a traditional song -- apparently spontaneously. <br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;"> </div><div style="text-align: justify;">Sarah Dodd as Miss Ap Dafydd created a fascinating character, strongly and smugly colonial, yet often seeming just on the verge of breaking out of that shell to a true appreciation of the lives of her students.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"> </div><div style="text-align: justify;">Mike Shara drew plenty of laughs as Father Callum Wilson, creating a believable figure as the priest who can appreciate the importance or value of nothing but the church -- and the hockey team. Shara and Dodd made an excellent comic team in the multiple scenes where they struck sparks off each other.<br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;"> </div><div style="text-align: justify;">Jacklyn Francis was similarly impenetrable as the news reporter, Madge Macbeth, determined to find only what she wanted to find and see only what she wanted to see.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"> </div><div style="text-align: justify;">These three settler characters all veered close to the edge of caricature, but each also had moments of human vulnerability that saved them from tipping over that edge.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">The greatest impact of <i>1939</i>, for me, was the way that the five student characters put human faces on a narrative of inhumanity and indignity which is alls too easily turned into a faceless parade of numbers. This play explored the hundreds of subtle little ways in which the residential "school" experience undermined and devalued the humanity of the inmates -- and then went on, in a powerful affirmation of the human spirit, to show us how each of the five found their own ways to turn the whole terrible experience to their own use and advantage.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Out of all the plays I have seen at Stratford this year, this is the one I would call a must-see. <i>1939 </i>continues on stage until October 29 in the Studio Theatre at Stratford.<br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div>Ken Stephenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15446161349713438016noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-346000049113318252.post-16053956107469027982022-10-13T10:49:00.000-04:002022-10-13T10:49:29.348-04:00Stratford Festival 2022 # 4: The Richest Miser I've Ever Met<div style="text-align: justify;">The Stratford Festival has a long history of producing the works of Molière in English translation, This French author, who lived from 1622 to 1673, holds a place in French literature as central as the place of Shakespeare in English language and literature. Given that stature, the seventieth season at the Stratford Festival (which coincides with the 400th anniversary of Molière's birth) is a good time to bring on a new production of one of the master's best-known satirical farces, <i>The Miser.</i></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><i> </i></div><div style="text-align: justify;">The Festival has chosen to go with Ranjit Bolt's newly adapted version of his 1995 translation. Unlike the older verse translations used in some Molière productions, this is a prose translation and a very up-to-date one indeed. Free use is made of topical and local references, one assumes with the consent of the adaptor.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"> </div><div style="text-align: justify;">It's really to the point to refer to an "adaptation" rather than a translation, since Molière's humour is essentially verbal, and -- like jokes and puns in all languages -- stubbornly resists literal translation. The only hope is to replace such jokes with English-language jokes and puns which, if you're lucky, live in the same street as the French-language originals. Maybe.<br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><i> </i></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><i> </i>More confusing for anyone familiar with older translated texts is the renaming of the characters with contemporary English-language names. Thus, Harpagon (the miser of the title) becomes Harper, his son Cléante<i> </i>becomes Charlie, Frosine becomes Fay, and so on. </div><div style="text-align: justify;"> </div><div style="text-align: justify;">Designer Julie Fox has created an incredibly detailed and finicky Victorian-Gothic Revival-Horror Film fantasy of a stage set, every inch of which would look perfectly in place as the Carfax mansion in Bram Stoker's classic novel, <i>Dracula</i>. This impression is heightened by the dim, gloomy lighting of the stage that greets the audience as they enter the Festival Theatre, and the periodic rumbles of thunder which punctuate the pre-show.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"> </div><div style="text-align: justify;">Fortunately for the audience, that gloominess doesn't overlap into the performance itself, which is thoroughly contemporary in tone. In fact, it's a pleasure to report that, for a wonder, the company has not gone overboard and tried to drive the comedy into excess, preferring to let it unfold more naturally and humanely. This is not to say that satire is shirked by any means -- only that excess and overplus have been kept at bay for most of the show.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"> </div><div style="text-align: justify;">Most importantly, this applies to Colm Feore in the central role of the miserly Harper. His first flat-out moment of comic insanity comes in a perfect place, the final two minutes before the intermission. Fox's costume which clothed Feore in wrinkled trousers and baggy sweater with worn-through elbows tells half the story -- the weird collection of odds and ends of stuff around the stage tells us even more. He made very effective use of his turn-on-a-dime changes of mood and voice every time he suspects that someone is after his money.<br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;"> </div><div style="text-align: justify;">Of course, he has to go much farther in the courtship scene of Act II, appearing now in an elegantly-tailored lilac-coloured suit and matching top hat which certainly made my eyes pop. Even here, though, Feore achieved a remarkable balance of pushing the limits while still showing restraint. This was a true textbook example of how farcical comedy should be approached.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">So, for a different reason, was the performance of Jamie Mac as the butler, Victor. In this role, Mac drew plenty of mileage out of his expressive face, without ever taking it too far, and also made notable use of varying vocal tones whenever agreeing with everything Harper said. </div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Harper's son, Charlie, was given a more over-the-edge comedic portrayal by Qasim Khan. Charlie's special approach to life is underlined by a particularly flashy costume, and his quick physicality abetted the portrait of a man who lives by flash and dash.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Charlie's sister, Eleanor (usually referred to as Ellie), was given a rather more conventional, practical air by Alexandra Lainfiesta. This contrasted well with her brother's more vivid portraiture, and made her seem an ideal partner for Victor. </div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Beck Lloyd brought a more stereotypical look to Marianne, a character who veers perilously close to the edge of stereotype in any case. Vocally, I found her a bit wearing as her voice often sounded on the verge of bursting into tears in the old convention of the girl who cries to get her way or because she can't get her way. Frankly, I couldn't imagine what attracted Charlie to her -- but then, his speeches make it plain that he's completely enchanted anyway, and will undoubtedly learn much more about his dream woman once the enchantment wears off. Jung would have a good deal to say about this couple.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">The comedic prize of the show, in many ways, was the marriage broker, Fay. Dressed in slinky black leather with gold chains and a colourful coat over it, she looked like a refugee from Vegas -- or was it Palm Beach? Lucy Peacock made herself completely at home in this flashy costume, strutting and preening and sashaying about the stage. Her distinctive voice perfectly completed the portrait, drawling out the lines in a way that made the very sound of her voice amusing -- and the words she was speaking even more so. Inspired casting and outstanding performance, which nearly stole the show.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">David Collins proved an equally ideal choice for the role of Harper's wealthy friend, Arthur Edgerton. Collins is a Stratford regular, and always appears and sounds right at home in this wise elder type of role.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"> </div><div style="text-align: justify;">Steve Ross gave a fine comic turn as the detective summoned to investigate the theft of Harper's money. <br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Harper is also the <i>deus ex machina</i> who untangles the whole tangled mess of the plot, and here the extreme topicality of the adaptation of the script began to grate on me. There were just too many convenient coincidences, or synchronicities if you prefer, and I slipped out of the play and into the role of the cynical onlooker saying, "Yeah, right...." Trying to make this ending "go" will, I think, always pose problems for any company performing this version of <i>The Miser.</i></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><i> </i></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Director Antoni Cimolino has achieved one of his finest outings in the comedy/farce world here, pacing and building the show along nearly ideal lines so that there's always somewhere left to go until the last possible moment. While the stage pictures were rather conventional at times, they always worked well and the characters remained audible at all times.<i> </i><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Kudos to Stratford on a well-planned, well-played, truly funny production of this Molière classic.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div>Ken Stephenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15446161349713438016noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-346000049113318252.post-52304236522604198462022-10-10T19:12:00.002-04:002022-10-10T19:12:39.889-04:00Stratford Festival 2022 # 3: But Is All Really Well?<div style="text-align: justify;">It wouldn't be a tenth-year anniversary at Stratford without restagings of the two plays which opened the very first Stratford Festival way back in 1953. While I have seen several of the anniversary stagings of <i>Richard III </i>(including this year's outing), 2022 marks the first occasion I've seen its running mate, <i>All's Well That Ends Well</i>, in half a century -- since the 1972 Twentieth Anniversary Season in fact.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"> </div><div style="text-align: justify;"><i>All's Well </i>is an odd duck, theatrically speaking. The play has only half a romantic couple, and actually anticipates Bernard Shaw's favourite formula by having the drama revolve around the means by which Helen pursues and ties down Bertram, despite his best efforts to escape from her. </div><div style="text-align: justify;"> </div><div style="text-align: justify;">It's also odd, and more than odd, to try to figure out what she sees in him. He bluntly tells the King that he doesn't want her and won't marry her. He leaves France to avoid his fate when the King orders him to accept the marriage. He schemes and swears love to seduce a young Florentine girl, Diana, handing over his heirloom family ring to her with scarcely a murmur of protest. Brought back to France to face the music from his sleazy behaviour, he lies up and down to try to evade the consequences of his actions. Most modern women would tell Helen to run the other way, as fast as possible. </div><div style="text-align: justify;"> </div><div style="text-align: justify;">And yet, her behaviour is scarcely above reproach either, her clever stratagem exposing her (in modern terms) to a charge of sexual assault since she contrives to have sex with Bertram without his knowledge or consent. Also, as the programme note points out, there's more than a hint in her behaviour -- an uncomfortable hint -- of the contemporary obsessive stalker. The ending tries to follow the convention of "and they all lived happily ever after" but I'm sure I'm not the only person ready to put money on how soon this marriage will break down. Even by Shakespeare's standards, this is a play brimming over with awkward moral contradictions and conflicts that resist easy solutions. <br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;"> </div><div style="text-align: justify;"></div><div style="text-align: justify;">In any case, let's look at how this year's production, in the new Tom Patterson Theatre, unfolded. Director Scott Wentworth has helmed a classic Stratford production, handsomely costumed in Victorian dress (not unlike Tyrone Guthrie's original 1953 production), and with minimal props and set pieces whisked on and off. There were few fancy staging effects. Designer Michelle Bohn's set consisted simply of a dozen elegant Victorian "lady's chairs," arranged in two facing rows along either side of the stage, creating an instant and effective keynote to the period.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"> </div><div style="text-align: justify;">The first character to speak is the widowed Countess of Rossillion, here portrayed by Seana McKenna. In this play, McKenna's ability to dominate the stage is abetted by the frequent reappearances of the Countess throughout the play. We're never long allowed to forget that the supposed romantic couple consist of her son, Bertram, now the Count of Rossillion, and her waiting gentlewoman Helen. These relationships, together with her recent widowed status (the play opens with a pantomime of her husband's funeral) give her an uncommonly strong position of influence over subsequent events. </div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Jessica B. Hill gave a strong, multi-faceted account of the role of Helen, lacking only the last degree of vocal clarity -- at times, her voice became simply too inward and intimate, especially in soliloquy. Her frequent and vivid changes of facial expression were a delight, especially in the intimate environment of the Tom Patterson where her face could be "read" easily from all over the house.<br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Jordin Hall presented a forthright, occasionally brutal, Bertram. His sudden falling into hesitant, devious verbal mannerisms in the final scene was thus made all the more notable. Hall especially excelled in conveying just a slight degree of verbal underlining in key moments, all that was needed to point up the man's hypocrisy and devious nature.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"> </div><div style="text-align: justify;">Wayne Best was at his best in the insightful Lord Lafew, making for a most believable account of the man who hears more and sees farther than others around him. <br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Ben Carlson gave a performance of nuance and power as the King of France. His sickbed scenes were notably edgy and unnerving, and his final judgement scene lacked for nothing in tempered but none the less intense and believable emotions. <br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Kim Horsman captured both similarity and difference to McKenna's Countess in her role as the Widow in Florence. </div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Allison Edwards-Crewe gave a finely-shaped, unexpectedly tart and sharp-tongued view of Diana, the Widow's daughter, whom Bertram attempts to seduce.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">The production featured a delightful set of comic performances, in the clown roles which are such a joy of the Shakespearean repertoire. Lavatch may be the sexton in Rossillion, but Andre Sills all but brought the house down in this role with his overt sexual innuendos, both verbal and physical.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Irene Poole gave a scene-stealing portrayal of verbal and physical comedy in her role as the Florentine soldier who doubles as an interpreter.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">And that brings us to Rylan Wilkie, in the showstopper role of Parolles, Bertram's companion, who is the biggest liar and braggart in sight (and in this play, that's saying something). Wilkie achieved splendid comic effect, both physical and vocal, in the scene where he's being "interrogated" by "enemy" soldiers. His subsequent deflation and fall from grace was then played with equal sincerity and insight, making for a treasurable account of a particularly wide-ranging character.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">One of the reasons I like to sit along the sides of the Tom Patterson Theatre is the way that the stage pictures take on much more visual meaning when seen thus, on the long side of the narrow thrust stage. Director Wentworth achieved great variety in his staging, finding continually new ways to frame scenes and visually highlight the evolving relationships among his characters. His pacing of the production was equally strong and noteworthy.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><i>All's Well That Ends Well </i>may never be an easy play to like, but the company has produced a thoughtful production with many entertaining moments for this seventieth anniversary season, and made the play much more workable than theatrical experts of an earlier day would have thought possible. A rewarding afternoon of theatre.<br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">`<br /></div>Ken Stephenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15446161349713438016noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-346000049113318252.post-32875315864412379342022-10-03T10:48:00.002-04:002022-10-03T10:48:54.179-04:00Toronto Mendelssohn Choir 2022/23 # 1: The Pilgrim's Way<div style="text-align: justify;">The versatility of the renowned Toronto Mendelssohn Choir was on display in a new format at the season-opening concert on Saturday night.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"> </div><div style="text-align: justify;">This first performance featured 23 voices of the Toronto Mendelssohn Singers, the professional core group of the larger symphonic choir. </div><div style="text-align: justify;"> </div><div style="text-align: justify;">For this concert, the Singers moved to Jeanne Lamon Hall in the Trinity-St. Paul's Centre, a much friendlier acoustic environment for this smaller group of artists.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"> </div><div style="text-align: justify;">The major work on this concert was <i>Path of Miracles</i>, by Joby Talbot. This hour-long work absolutely defies classification. It's neither oratorio nor cantata, neither narrative nor meditative. Perhaps it could best be called a "musical experience." which invites the hearer into a level of participation in the actual pilgrimage along the Camino de Santiago in Catalonia and Galicia. </div><div style="text-align: justify;"> </div><div style="text-align: justify;">Talbot's music is already familiar to followers of the National Ballet of Canada from his full-length scores for the story ballets <i>Alice's Adventures in Wonderland </i>and <i>The Winter's Tale</i>. Here, Talbot's wide-ranging and eclectic musical language takes us into a different realm altogether, with the pared-down sounds of unaccompanied voices (and sparing use of chimes and bells) creating fascinating and complex textures in place of the sparkling orchestration of the ballet scores. Certain features, like melodic and rhythmic <i>ostinati, </i>missing or added beats,<i> </i>upbeat jazzy rhythms, and diverse <i>tempi</i> are used here as well, but to startlingly different effect.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"> </div><div style="text-align: justify;">Talbot's score casually tosses all kinds of technical challenges at the singers and the conductor. The Toronto Mendelssohn Singers under music director Jean-Sébastien Vallée triumphantly welded this sprawling array of elements into a gripping, unifying whole. And make no mistake, this remarkable work did indeed bring the entire audience along on the journey, right from the staged opening in which the basses and tenors grouped in a circle around the director, until they were joined by the sopranos and altos singing at the rear of the hall. That was only one of a number of simple but evocative staging effects integrated into the performance of <i>Path of Miracles</i>. </div><div style="text-align: justify;"> </div><div style="text-align: justify;">The sheer drawing power of the piece became abundantly clear at the conclusion when the final bars repeated <i>ad infinitum </i>while the singers and conductor slowly recessed down the central aisle and out the back of the hall, their voices fading slowly away into the distance while the audience sat in rapt silence, straining to hear the voices as they reached the vanishing point.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">The three works which opened the programme were by no means also-rans. Diedre Robinson's arrangement of the<i> </i>spiritual <i>Steal Away</i>, which could better be called a recomposition, presented aptly beautiful tone and phrasing, marred only by one or two individual voices which came searing through on high notes.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">The Choir's Composer-in-Residence, Shireen Abu-Khader, provided the heart-achingly sorrowful and gripping <i>I Forgive.</i> It's a setting of a last letter written by Egyptian activist Sarah Hejazi before PTSD arising from torture drove her to take her own life in 2020. Mezzo-soprano soloist Raneem Barakat memorably captured the anguish of Hejazi in phrases which often seemed to float in the near neighbourhood of the choral harmonies, rather than landing distinctly within any one chord. <br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Then came Elgar's <i>Lux aeterna</i>, although that title is misleading. John Cameron set the words of the Latin antiphon from the requiem mass to the music of the <i>Nimrod </i>variation from Elgar's famous <i>Enigma Variations</i>. Elgar himself did set the music with a poetic text in his late work,<i> The Music Makers</i>, although he did not use this Latin text. </div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">As for the piece itself, it seemed rather out of place among its companions. Although the thematic relationship was unmistakable, the music itself struck me as rather too conventional and backward-looking in such adventurous company.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">The near-capacity audience responded with rapturous applause and cheers at the end of the programme with that gently fading conclusion of Talbot's <i>Path of Miracles. </i>This remarkable musical and personal journey of this entire concert will, I think, resonate long in the minds of artists and audience alike.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div>Ken Stephenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15446161349713438016noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-346000049113318252.post-83826690317568429992022-08-26T16:51:00.002-04:002022-08-26T16:51:48.680-04:00Shaw Festival 2022 # 3: The Dissection of Morality<div style="text-align: justify;">George Bernard Shaw's <i>The Doctor's Dilemma </i>brings to its audience a comedic, powerful, and unquestionably timely examination of the ethics and morality of medicine and the value of life as a highlight of the Festival's sixtieth season.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Anyone who thinks Shaw is hopelessly wordy and incredibly dated or irrelevant had far better come and see this production before closing the book on that subject. </div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">One of the intriguing aspects of this script is that the play spares nobody in laying all of its varied characters open to the judgement of the audience. Unlike some of his works, our sympathy is not totally and irrevocably tilted towards any one person or point of view. At the end of the performance, we are left with more questions than answers, with conflicting visions of morality that are difficult or impossible to sustain, and with even more questions about what will happen next to several of the characters.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"> </div><div style="text-align: justify;">Plainly, the only way to approach such a richly layered theatre piece is to simply perform it, allow the various characters fair play to be themselves to the full, and let the chips fall where they may as far as the audience's reaction may go.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">This five-act play was designed by the author for the commercial theatres of London in his day, where the concept of a full evening with two intermissions was quite normal. The Shaw has decided to perform it with only a single intermission, and has also opted to place the intermission after Act II, leaving three full scenes to be gotten through in the second "half." As a result, the performance takes just about an hour before the single break, but something closer to ninety minutes after. Audiences be warned. But it does make sense; the dramatic continuity would be fatally compromised by a break any later in the show.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">At the outset of the play, we are given first the chance to meet the quartet of specialist doctors who represent one side of the dilemma. Diana Donnelly's production respects the need for each of these four to be entirely sincere about presenting their points of view, even though those views sound richly idiotic to audiences familiar with today's state of medical knowledge. The doctors' obsessions would have seemed somewhat less idiotic in 1906, and were in fact all rooted in theories actively promoted by doctors of that day. However, Shaw had his own views about health and none of the doctors are spared the satirical lash.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">The first is Dr. Colenso Ridgeon, who has just received a Nobel Prize and thus is at the very peak of medical fame. He is successively visited and congratulated by three colleagues, Dr. Patricia Cullen, Dr. Cutler Walpole, and Dr. Ralph Bloomfield Bonnington.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Sanjay Talwar brings a dimension of humanity to Ridgeon, a man who could easily come across as a stuck-up, arrogant snob. That sense of humanity becomes critically important as the play unfolds. Allan Louis as Walpole and David Adams as Bonnington give much more highly coloured performances, particularly when each has a pet theory of illness to apply to every case that crosses their path. Sharry Flett, as Cullen, is the only one who seems to have a grasp of the human dimension to medicine, a realization that a doctor must treat not merely the patient but the people around the patient. Flett uses a relatively moderate tone of voice to great effect, becoming by default the one real voice of compassion in the story as it unfolds. <br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">On the other side are two younger men: Dr. Blenkinsop (played for this performance by Kevin McLachlan) and Louis Dubedat, an artist (Johnathan Sousa). There is also Dubedat's wife, Jennifer (Alexis Gordon) -- and, in fact, we meet her first, pleading ardently for her husband's life. Ardour is Jennifer's chief audible characteristic and Gordon plays the ardour and the passion, driving it for almost all she's worth -- but doesn't overplay it. </div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Sousa, later on, shares the ardour and passion as Louis but -- and it is a noteworthy "but" -- where her passion is all for him, his is mostly for himself. Blenkinsop's passion is for his patients, driving him to neglect his own health so he can offer maximum service to the residents of the poorer neighbourhood where he lives and works.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">All three of these characters were given notable life and vibrancy, in their different ways, by Gordon, Sousa, and McLachlan.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"> </div><div style="text-align: justify;">Incidental to the main drama, but each illuminating in their different ways, were four smaller but significant roles: Ridgeon's assistant Redpenny (Michael Man), his receptionist/housekeeper (to judge by her costume) Emmy (Claire Jullien), the unfortunate Minnie Tinwell (Katherine Gauthier), and the Newspaperman (Nathanael Judah). <br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">The dilemma which arises for Ridgeon, and his colleagues, is the fact that both young men are infected with tuberculosis, and both are in an advancing state of the disease. Ridgeon's promising new lifesaving treatment for TB, which earned him the Nobel, can be given to only a limited number of patients at a time and his roster is full. He can squeeze in one more, but not two.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Who lives and who dies? It was a familiar refrain in the early days of the pandemic when hospitals in the hotspot areas were overwhelmed with patients, and doctors had to make such choices over and over. It's when this dilemma emerges that the audience realizes just how timely and contemporary this play actually is. Until this point, the satirical treatment of the specialists has made the carefully modern sets and costumes appear to be so much window dressing on a funny old play -- but now it becomes deadly serious, in the most literal sense of the word.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">That's just the first act. The remainder of the play is devoted to the working out of the consequences of this entire situation. In this working out, none of the characters are permitted to be the least bit perfect. One and all suffer from major flaws which knock the pedestals out from other their feet. What all the actors and the director have captured in an ideal way is the fact that each one continues to feel him/herself perfect, while mentally and verbally scourging some or all of the others. Shaw's observation of human nature is uncomfortably on point here -- especially since we, the onlookers, have undoubtedly done just that at some points during the first two acts.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">As in so many Shaw plays, the final resolution presents no resolution at all. The fourth act ends with the lengthy but curiously analytical death scene of Louis Dubedat. In this scene, the four doctors become a kind of Greek chorus, observing and occasionally commenting on the main action of Jennifer holding and comforting Louis. At this point, the production resorted to having Sousa speak into a flashy gold microphone and from that point on he became frequently hard to hear as the movements of his hands kept taking the mike away from the key point near his mouth. It was frustrating because this lengthy, quasi-operatic death scene is at least a fine piece of writing, even if it is rather too long to be entirely effective. </div><div style="text-align: justify;"> </div><div style="text-align: justify;">This is followed by the fifth act, a final confrontation between Jennifer and Ridgeon, in which far more questions are posed than are answered. To appearances, and especially from Gordon's strong presentation of her speeches here, Jennifer Dubedat has achieved for herself a resolution which Colenso Ridgeon has not -- but is that really true, behind her finely assured words? <br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">I could go on at much greater length, but the special genius of <i>The Doctor's Dilemma</i> is precisely the way in which the characters appear so certain in themselves but the audience is left so deeply uncertain, acutely and uncomfortably aware that many issues defy all attempts to find pat answers and neat solutions.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Gillian Gallow created extremely effective sets for each of the four locations. The condo set for Act I and the dinner table for Act II spread widely across the Festival Theatre's stage, emphasizing the spacious environments in which the rich and well-to-do get to live and work. The art gallery set for Act V adopted a stark and four-square look, reminding me of the cubist condo set in Act I. </div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">In between, we got the dark and paint-spattered home of the Dubedats. Said to be a loft, it actually looked and felt, and was lit, like a claustrophobic cellar with an uncomfortably steep staircase the only entry point. This constricted set was squeezed into the centre of the stage, surrounded by uncertain areas of shadow. Here, Gallow built a kind of miniature proscenium "stage" accessed by steps up a stack of milk crates, to act as a centrepiece, with the walls around it covered with Louis' paintings -- including a striking but surreal portrait of Jennifer.<br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Rachel Forbes designed costumes which gave identity and individuality to the doctors, the artist, the artist's wife, the young doctor, and the side characters. Her costumes for the party scene were noteworthy in presenting all the people in a different and brighter way, just as happens when real-world people dress up for a real party.<br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Michelle Ramsay's notable lighting designs presented a key link in creating the different worlds of the play: the modern sterile condo, the flashy party table, the dingy cellar, and the crisp gallery.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Above all, director Diana Donnelly has captured the key condition of giving full time and strength to all the viewpoints, bringing out in full the strengths and weaknesses of all the key characters, and letting all the ideas take their turn at centre stage -- all while keeping the play as a whole moving forward with effective momentum and clarity.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">I've enjoyed all three plays that I've seen at the Shaw this season, but <i>The Doctor's Dilemma </i>is the one that's made the strongest impact and given me the most thought -- and the most unease. I like to think that GBS would approve.<br /></div>Ken Stephenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15446161349713438016noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-346000049113318252.post-60829024822140419022022-08-24T18:12:00.000-04:002022-08-24T18:12:18.094-04:00Shaw Festival 2022 # 2: The Importance of Rethinking Things<div style="text-align: justify;"> For this sixtieth anniversary season, the Shaw Festival has undertaken what is only its second staging ever of Oscar Wilde's classic comedy, <i>The Importance of Being Earnest.</i> At first glance, this might seem utterly improbable since the play lies squarely in the time period which this Festival takes as the starting point of its mandate. But then, we remember that Bernard Shaw himself heartily disliked the play, and that Wilde's script satirically skewers the social conventions of the world in which it lives without suggesting anything better in the way of societal or human behaviour and thinking (central to Shaw's vision of the theatre) -- and suddenly the Shaw Festival's studied avoidance of <i>Earnest </i>makes much more sense.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"> </div><div style="text-align: justify;">On a purely practical level, how on earth is anyone supposed to come up with a fresh take on what is often cited as the second-most-quoted play in the English language? With two wonderful film versions to its credit, and any number of memorable stagings, it seems that <i><b>everyone</b></i> has ideas of how <i>Earnest </i>should be approached. Unlike the first-place most quoted play (<i>Hamlet</i>), <i>Earnest </i>simply doesn't allow nearly the same latitude in shaping characters and their motivations.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"> </div><div style="text-align: justify;">It's very much to the credit of this company, and of director Tim Carroll, that this staging of <i>The Importance of Being Earnest</i> does indeed blow the cobwebs off a venerable masterpiece, finding new, different and intriguing keys to pitch some of the most memorable lines and moments in theatre.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"> </div><div style="text-align: justify;">The key to this new look and sound, for me, lies in Kate Hennig's remarkably understated and underplayed Lady Bracknell. Actors everywhere have struggled for years to find ways of presenting Lady B that calls to mind neither the peculiar vocal tones of Dame Edith Evans nor the ice-cold facial expressions of Dame Judi Dench. Some, alas, go all the way into comic overkill in trying to avoid any resemblance. Hennig, you might say, scorns to try. She simply delivers Wilde's lines -- clearly, precisely, and with a minimum of undue emphasis -- and leaves it to the director and the other characters to craft reactions which clarify her terrifying impact. She also makes sparing but masterly use of a "speaking silence," a pause while she awaits a response from one of the others which would normally be considered professional suicide in comedic acting. Hennig's voice becomes the yardstick by which the clarity of all other actors on the stage is measured. </div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">The two young gentlemen in the play, John Worthing (played by Martin Happer) and Algernon Moncrieff (Peter Fernandes) are differentiated far more than most productions will allow -- Happer remaining relatively conventional at all times, while Fernandes goes much farther in shaping and stressing certain key words and expressions to give, overall, a much more effete impression. Fernandes is greatly assisted in this by the choice of designer Christina Poddubiuk to dress him in far more flamboyant clothes, a rare approach but one which the script certainly supports. Happer makes maximum use of the few but well-judged moments of physical comedy -- walking about the room on his knees in the proposal scene, for instance, or his sudden explosion of energy when the time comes to search for the notorious handbag.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">In line with this, the two young ladies are also differentiated more clearly than is often the case. In the hands of Julia Course, the Honourable Gwendolyn Fairfax is more clearly her mother's daughter than in many presentations, giving effective voice and face to her moments of anger or outrage. Only in Act III did I find her resort to an indignant squeak to be out of keeping. The diminutive Gabriella Sundar Singh's Cecily Cardew creates a complete contrast, using a delightful variety of vocal tones to show her relative inexperience in the thickly-layered manners of "good society." While her high-speed trotting about the stage becomes a little tedious on repetition, her sudden and well-judged spurts of anger on key pay-off words are masterly.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"> </div><div style="text-align: justify;">Together with Carroll, these two make extremely effective use of the height difference between them as the source of some fine comedic moments and memorable stage pictures.<br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;"> </div><div style="text-align: justify;">Jacqueline Thair as Miss Prism and Ric Reid as the Reverend Canon Chasuble found some lovely physical moments in their courtship scenes, and Thair's reactions to Hennig's voice ("Prism! Where is that baby?") were far stronger than one often sees, effectively so. In contrast to the clarity of others, I found both of their voices a bit soft-grained and less easy to hear clearly.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Neil Barclay as Lane and Graeme Somerville as Merriman both made the most of their opportunities, with stolid faces and rigidly respectful voices clearly conveying contempt for their supposed social superiors. The opening vignette of Barclay giving a virtuoso performance on the spoons is unforgettable.<br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Gillian Gallow's settings are both beautiful and distracting. The setting for Algernon's flat in Act I is contained (imprisoned?) within a picture frame which also has the unfortunate effect of swallowing some of the sound. The voice of Peter Fernandes was notably hard to follow in some parts of this first scene, although he became much more audible when Act II allowed him to escape the stricture of that frame.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">The parallel hedges of the Act II garden scene give scope for some amusing comic business as people move back and forth behind them. Then, in Act III, the huge wall of fake bookcases again distracts -- the colour choice making it appear as if the books are all turned with their open or page ends towards the outside world, rather than the bindings being shown as would normally be done. Nor are matters helped when Cecily stands, clearly looking at a solid wall of books, yet commenting on what she sees the men doing out in the garden.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Christina Poddubiuk's costumes effectively remain in period, time, and place, while still making use of colour choices to highlight the differences among the characters. </div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Overall, then, a highly successful and entertaining take on Oscar Wilde's eternally fascinating comedy of manners. <br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div>Ken Stephenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15446161349713438016noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-346000049113318252.post-36788199789042313722022-08-24T10:35:00.000-04:002022-08-24T10:35:34.338-04:00Shaw Festival 2022 # 1: Too Good to Be Ignored<div style="text-align: justify;">The hardest things to figure out after seeing a performance of Bernard Shaw's 1931 fantasia <i>Too True to Be Good</i>, which the author called "a political extravaganza," are the exact intentions of GBS in writing and staging this unique and unclassifiable play. </div><div style="text-align: justify;"> </div><div style="text-align: justify;">This sizable and oft heavy-handed script seems to undertake the attempt to solve all the problems of the world, rather like a later postwar and depression-era rerun of <i>Man and Superman</i>. Unlike its predecessor of the early 1900s, though, <i>Too True to Be Good</i> presents us with a group of people living in a morass of failure and dysfunction. The play arrives at no clear solution, no neat apotheosis, but instead ends with a lengthy sermon from the play's Shavian alter ego, a sermon which closes the play on a decidedly depressing note. To me, the final act comes across less like a theatre piece and more like a political pamphlet. It's a common problem with Shaw, but this play presents the problem in an acute form.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"> </div><div style="text-align: justify;"><div style="text-align: justify;">As so often in Shaw, the basic
authorial technique is to set up conventional expectations with each
character for the fun of destroying them, usually by presenting instead
their comic polar opposite. The stage dynamics, though, get fatally subverted when the entire last act becomes a reversal of the complete preceding action. As well, there are decidedly absurdist elements in the play which call to mind such other (and equally rare) Shavian oddities as <i>Passion, Poison, and Petrifaction</i> and also anticipate the later absurdist and existential angst of <i>Waiting For Godot</i>, among others.<br /></div></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Given these strange aspects of the show, it's not hard to see why <i>Too True </i>remains a relatively rare bird in live performance. That being said, it does pose intriguing problems for the cast, designers, and director in trying to somehow make this decidedly untheatrical creature "go" in the theatre. The artists must relish the challenge because this is the fifth time the Shaw Festival has taken a swipe at <i>Too True</i>. <br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Start with the cast. This play calls for a company of nine actors, one of whom plays two entirely separate roles in the first and last acts. The three central characters of the story are each a single person, but their characters shift in and out of a broad array of different self-presentations during the show. <br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Absurdism is very much to the fore when the first character to speak is<i> </i>The Microbe, played with notable élan and engaging presence by Travis Seetoo. Equally absurd is the notion that it is the Microbe which has been made sick by the moaning and groaning young lady under the bed covers (Donna Soares), and not vice versa. Then her mother appears, and we are certainly on familiar territory here with the anxious woman who only makes her daughter sicker with all the tonics and potions and prescriptions she demands from the doctor. However, when the sickroom gets invaded by two burglars and the young lady flies passionately out of bed to protect her treasured pearl necklace, beating the snot out of the burglars in the process, we realize that even this vignette is not all it seems -- and that is only the first of the astonishing reversals in this farrago of conflicting self-portraits.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">The Elderly Lady, a/k/a/ Mrs. Mopply, was played with an overplus of querulous anxiety and frenetic but futile energy by Jenny L. Wright. It was the one really overdone characterization of the show, but that's as it should be since the entire energy of the scene depends on her portrayal being wildly overdone.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">As The Patient, a/k/a Miss Mopply and later simply Mops, Donna Soares brought admirable energy to her dramatic reversal of character, and to all her later appearances -- including the scenes where she appears as a non-English-speaking inhabitant of a tropical country. In the end, in spite of the rough start from her mother, she becomes one of the few characters to actually find a way out of the morass of self-doubt.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Martin Happer presented an apt note of <i>weltschmerz </i>as the Doctor who must somehow placate Mrs. Mopply while trying to keep her from making her daughter's condition worse.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">This brings us to the two burglars who, as it happens, form together with Mops the triad of characters whose interactions drive the play. Marla McLean gave a memorably edgy performance as The Nurse, a/k/a Susan Simpkins, a/k/a Sweetie, a/k/a The Countess Valbrioni (I did mention that this play had a strong absurdist pedigree, did I not?). The best balancing act of the show comes as she gradually, ever so slightly, allows the uncertainty and fear behind all her bravado to leak out into public view. </div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Graeme Somerville gave a strong, play-centring performance as The Burglar, a/k/a Popsy, a/k/a The Honourable Aubrey Bagot. His character becomes the strongest mouthpiece for Shavian ideas through much of the show, somewhat echoing John Tanner in <i>Man and Superman</i>, but in the last act he endures the biggest slump into darkness with the lengthy final sermon of despair in which he tells us that, one by one, all his favourite ideals have deserted him. Somerville gave a valiant shot at making that bizarre ending both tolerable and somehow workable as theatre -- not that it can really be done, mind you, at least in my humble opinion.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">The final two acts feature a trio of British military characters who form part of an expedition sent to rescue an English lady who has been kidnapped by brigands. The commander, Colonel Tallboys (Neil Barclay), gives a textbook caricature of the British soldier who lives in impenetrable ignorance that anyone or anything outside of Britain even matters. The moment where he strikes Mrs. Mopply with his umbrella, and the dialogue of the succeeding apology scene, were memorable comic highlights.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"> </div><div style="text-align: justify;">Sergeant Fielding (again, Martin Happer) shows us the man of ideas trapped in a uniform. Jonathan Tan gives a notably disciplined training-manual demonstration of military etiquette, all the while proving to his superiors (and the audience) that he is the one truly competent soldier on the expedition. His full name, Private Napoleon Alexander Trotsky Meek, becomes entirely self-explanatory in context.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Director Sanjay Talwar has led the company in a well-planned presentation making use of all four sides of the Studio Theatre's arena configuration. </div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Joyce Padua's costumes, for the most part conventional, were effective. The one unconventional choice of course is the whole question of how one ought to costume a Microbe. Padua outfitted Travis Seetoo in a full-length showpiece of floppy, flowery, stuck-on bits, with red and purple the dominant colours and -- sure enough -- one or two of the stuck-on bits gave more than a nod to microscope photographs of the Covid-19 coronavirus.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Sue Lepage's sets created effective environments for each scene of the play without blocking the views of the action from any side, which sounds easier than it actually is. Her collection of rocks in the second and third acts were among the more effective fake rocks I've seen created for a stage, a point driven home when one of the characters (Mops?) casually picks up a rock and moves it to a new position while others comment on the action.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Nick Andison's lighting design created effective pools of light and shade in the sickroom of Act I, and then gave a much sunnier effect to the tropical second and third acts before finding a deep, cold colour palette for the lengthy final sermon.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">I did enjoy <i>Too True to Be Good</i>, and the quality of this performance was high. I'll leave it as an open question whether I would go to see another production in future. On the whole, I think not. I would prefer to chalk this up as one of George Bernard Shaw's misfires. And yes, all great creative artists have them.<br /></div>Ken Stephenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15446161349713438016noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-346000049113318252.post-15561115736782916832022-08-21T15:07:00.001-04:002022-08-21T15:07:43.628-04:00Golden Rings For Flute and Harp<div style="text-align: justify;">A new recital disc entitled <i>Being Golden </i>comes from well-known Canadian musicians: Suzanne Shulman on flute and Erica Goodman on harp. </div><div style="text-align: justify;"> </div><div style="text-align: justify;">In an intriguing fusion of musical styles, the programme nestles a unique new work from Toronto-based Scottish composer Eric Robertson in the midst of a diverse recital of music from France.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"> </div><div style="text-align: justify;">Robertson's 25-minute suite in eight movements, <i>The Rings</i>, creates a series of musical impressions of the role and meanings of wedding rings at different stages of a relationship. It was commissioned by Shulman to commemorate her golden wedding anniversary. It can also be taken as a landmark to celebrate the upcoming fiftieth anniversary of Shulman's and Goodman's artistic collaboration.<br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">For inspiration, Robertson turned to poet Gary Dault, a frequent collaborator. Dault wrote a series of brief but thought-provoking poems which became the source and framework of the composition. The poems are included in the leaflet accompanying the CD, along with Robertson's notes about the various movements.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Not surprisingly for a Scot, the rhythms and melodic turns of Scottish folk music crop up in numerous spots in Robertson's music. It's certainly not the first time that I've realized the aptness of the flute-harp combination for this musical style. The "Scottishness" is most overt in the opening movement, <i>Flame (A Sultry Strathspey)</i>, replete with traditional "Scotch snap" rhythms. Another classic moment comes in the sixth movement, <i>Seasons (Ae Fond Kiss)</i>, with the use of the traditional Scottish melody to which Burns set his well-loved song.<br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Mind you, <i>The Rings</i> is certainly neither all Scottish nor all folk-based. Robertson's music keeps ranging in and out of many and diverse sound worlds. The third movement, <i>Coming Around</i>, incorporates the "Scotch snap" again, in the context of a kind of passacaglia in which the harmonies, while remaining mainly diatonic, keep turning in the most unexpected and magical directions. The seventh movement launches into an exuberant outburst of dancing Handelian energy. </div><div style="text-align: justify;"> </div><div style="text-align: justify;">In the final movement, <i>A Geometry of Love (Bells), </i>Robertson works with the traditional art known as "ringing the changes" on a chime of six bells, and the resulting and varied bell peals permeate the first and last parts of the movement, shared between both instruments and highlighted by the contrasting calmer central section in which the slower bell tones in the harp accompany a lyrical melody in the flute. </div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Although this is a studio recording, the love and emotional commitment of the artists for this beautiful new score comes through loud and clear in every movement of the work. With its blend of apparent simplicity and great subtlety, Shulman's and Goodman's performance of <i>The Rings </i>will give much pleasure through repeated listening.<br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">This is equally true of the diverse selections of French music surrounding the main offering. The disc opens with the lively and upbeat <i>Swing No. 1</i> by Jacques Bondon, an aptly vigorous curtain raiser. </div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><i>Cinque piccoli duetti </i>by Jean Françaix showcase the witty, occasionally ironic, manner for which this composer is well-known. Just look at the bilingual title!</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><i>La plus que lente </i>by Debussy is a good example of this composer at his most poetic.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">The concluding group after <i>The Rings </i>is given over to music by Maurice Ravel: the <i>Pièce en forme de Habanera, </i>the famous and well-loved <i>Pavane pour une infante défunte</i>, and the less-frequent but intriguing <i>Deux mélodies hébraïques.</i></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><i> </i></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><i>Being Golden</i> is one of the most engaging (pun intended) and delightful new recordings which has come my way in many a moon. Shulman and Goodman give involving performances in all the varied styles of music in this recital. Throughout the programme, the fluid tones of the flute and harp are clearly captured, set against the warm acoustic of the historic St. Mark's Church in Niagara-on-the-Lake to magical effect<i>.</i></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><i> </i></div><div style="text-align: justify;">This new release can be purchased, either as a download or in the limited-edition compact disc, at this link:</div><div style="text-align: center;"><i> <span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></i></div><div style="text-align: center;"><i><span style="font-size: large;"><a href="https://shulmangoodman.bandcamp.com/album/being-golden" target="_blank">Being Golden</a></span> <br /></i></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><i><br /></i></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><i><br /></i></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><i> </i></div>Ken Stephenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15446161349713438016noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-346000049113318252.post-81935957091495857432022-08-02T18:11:00.004-04:002022-08-02T18:11:49.032-04:00Festival of the Sound 2022 # 15: Festival Wrap-Up and My Festival Top Ten<p style="text-align: left;"><!--[if gte mso 9]><xml>
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</p><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">The
Festival of the Sound for 2022 is now history. It was amazing! I think I will
always remember this one as “the Feel-Good Festival.” Every day, it seemed that
somebody or other would say, “It feels so <b><i>good</i></b> to be back here!” Or
else it was: “It’s so great to see you again!” Or both.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;"> </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">In
spite of the reduced length of the Festival (15 days versus the usual 23 or
24), and the reduced capacity of the concerts, the quality of the music-making
was as high as it’s ever been, perhaps even more so. Time and again, we heard
and saw that it wasn’t just the audiences who felt the joy of the return to
live music!</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;"> </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">Classical
chamber music has always been the bread-and-butter of this Festival, but
diverse styles are also firmly rooted in the programming. Blues, jazz, big
band, comedy, and some much more technologically up-to-date performances
involving live looping could also be heard.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;"> </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">Out
of all of that profusion of creativity and artistry, I once again set myself
the task of choosing my own personal “Festival Top Ten.” These aren’t
necessarily the performances that might be judged “the best,” however one
judges such a thing. These are simply ten special moments that resonated in my
memory after the performances.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;"> </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">Without
further ado, then:</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;"> </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;"> </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;"><b><u><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">Ken Stephen's Festival Top Ten!</span></u></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;"><b><u><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;"><span style="text-decoration: none;"><br /></span></span></u></b></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;"><b><u><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;"><span style="text-decoration: none;"><br /></span></span></u></b></div>
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and live looping technology.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;"><b><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;"> </span></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;"><b><u><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">9:</span></u></b><b><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span></span></b><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">Janina Fialkowska’s
fascinating master class session with rising star Bruce Liu.</span></div><br /><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;"><b><u><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">8:</span></u></b><b><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span></span></b><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">Leslie Fagan’s hilarious
take as the mechanical doll, Olympia, in <i>The Tales of Hoffman</i>.</span></div>
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<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;"><b><u><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">6:</span></u></b><b><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span></span></b><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">Amusing choreography in <i>Me
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<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;"><b><u><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;"><span style="text-decoration: none;"><br /></span></span></u></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;"><b><u><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">5:</span></u></b><b><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span></span></b><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">Suzanne Shulman &
Erica Goodman playing <i>The Rings</i> and encoring one movement.</span></div>
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as gripping, relevant, and unsettling as ever.</span></div>
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<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;"><b><u><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">3:</span></u></b><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Charles Richard-Hamelin’s sensitive
playing of Ravel’s <i>Le Tombeau de Couperin.</i></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;"><b><u><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;"><span style="text-decoration: none;"><br /></span></span></u></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;"><b><u><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">2:</span></u></b><b><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span></span></b><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">Hearing Janina Fialkowska
playing <b><i>both</i></b> of the Op. 40 <i>Polonaises </i>by Chopin – twice!</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;"><b><u><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;"><span style="text-decoration: none;"><br /></span></span></u></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;"><b><i><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">And
finally, my Number One memorable moment of Festival 2022…</span></i></b></div>
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<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;"><b><u><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">1:</span></u></b><b><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span></span></b><i><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">Nimrod </span></i><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">from the <i>Enigma Variations </i>by Elgar</span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">,
played by the National Academy Orchestra, in memory of Boris Brott. I cried.</span></div>
<p></p>Ken Stephenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15446161349713438016noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-346000049113318252.post-36266349618646482342022-08-02T18:03:00.001-04:002022-08-02T18:03:26.583-04:00Festival of the Sound 2022 # 14: Jazz Canada Weekend<div style="text-align: justify;"><!--[if gte mso 9]><xml>
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<![endif]--><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">By
tradition, the August long weekend is always reserved by the Festival as the
Jazz Canada weekend. Like everything else at the Festival, the scale of the
programme was reduced this year but the performances of three programmes in
this weekend were a spectacular success.</span></div><p style="text-align: left;">
</p><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">The
first was a Saturday night concert in the Stockey Centre by the Dave Young
Quartet. If you want really fine traditional jazz today in Canada, you’ve come
to the right place. Dave Young and his three collaborators have been spinning
out jazz standards practically ever since I was born back in the Fifties, and
their lists of personal contacts with the jazz greats of the past would make
any jazz fan’s eyes pop.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;"> </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">For
this show, the quartet was joined by vocalist Heather Bambrick, and her top-notch
jazz singing and hilarious patter between songs quickly transformed the entire
evening with more than a passing <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>resemblance to a Newfoundland kitchen party.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;"> </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">I’m
not by nature a jazz fan, but I remain endlessly fascinated by the skillful
improv work of the players (and Bambrick!), and especially by the effortless
flying fingers of Dave Young himself on his full-size string bass – no electric
guitar for this man!</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;"> </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">The
repertoire included some well-known tunes, and others less well known, but in
every number the instrumentalists produced some fascinating improv solos, and
Bambrick’s singing added the final touch of style and fun.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;"> </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">On
Sunday afternoon, the Stockey Centre filled right up again for the signature
rousing work of the Toronto All-Star Big Band. Their music harks clear back to
the dance bands of the 1930s and 1940s, the kind of music my parents’
generation danced to when young, and the ensemble of saxophones, trumpets,
trombones, piano, keyboard, bass guitar, and percussion gave a polished
performance that would have done credit to any professional troupe.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;"> </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">What
makes it even more amazing is that these are all young musicians – “young” as
in teenagers, in many cases – and the TABB is a musical training program, but
one which holds to incredible levels of quality and draws phenomenal
performances out of the young artists.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;"> </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">Many
of the numbers included the kind of choreography for the players that was a
hallmark of the era -- Glenn Miller’s famous “Pennsylvania 6-5000” wasn’t the
only big band number that had musicians popping up and down, swinging from side
to side in their seats, or calling out.</span></div>
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<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">The
ensemble includes a group of five vocalists who each displayed strong singing
voices and remarkable acting ability and stage presence. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;"> </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">The
real keynote of the Toronto All-Star Big Band’s performances is that they are
unfailingly fun, and the audience certainly enjoyed the fun to the full. Seeing
the whole crowd leaving at the end of the show with wide smiles spread across
their faces was a real tribute to this band’s quality of work and grasp of the
entertainment value of a well-staged show.</span></div>
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<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">On
Sunday evening, the Festival wrapped up with a final cruise – on a perfect,
calm, sunny summer evening. The Dave Young Quartet came along for the ride, and
entertained with two great sets of music, selecting some lower-key numbers to
suit the more laid-back atmosphere of the boat.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;"> </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">Great
music, beautiful weather, the unfailingly friendly staff of the <i>Island Queen
V, </i>and a last chance to exchange comments and memories about the last two
weeks with friends old and new – what better way to spend a summer evening?</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;"> </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">I’ll
have one more Festival post before I’m done: a wrap-up which will include my
Top Ten Festival highlights of the summer.</span></div>
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<p></p>Ken Stephenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15446161349713438016noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-346000049113318252.post-85294686786324162402022-07-30T15:45:00.000-04:002022-07-30T15:45:22.404-04:00Festival of the Sound 2022 # 13: The Thunder Sounds Again <div style="text-align: justify;">Friday brought just one performance at the Festival of the Sound, but it was one that brought the Festival to a powerful climax.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">The Festival remounted its stunning 2018 premiere production of <i>Sounding Thunder: The Song of Francis Pegahmagabow.</i></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><i> </i></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Francis Pegahmagabow is mainly renowned in non-native circles as the record-breaking sharpshooter sniper of the Canadian armed forces in World War One. In native communities, his significance is perhaps even greater as an early activist for native rights and equality, and a founder of the national native organizations which have growing influence over government policy today, and will have even more in the future.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"> </div><div style="text-align: justify;"><div style="text-align: justify;">As the struggle for truth and reconciliation continues, it's now evident indeed that <i>Sounding Thunder </i>is deeply relevant to that process, and will continue to be so, losing neither its power nor its timeliness. <br /></div></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><i> </i><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><i>Sounding Thunder </i>is an impossible work to categorize. Musically and dramatically, it's neither opera nor musical theatre, although it draws somewhat from the latter tradition. Theatrically, it's not so much a play as a dramatization of vignettes from a man's life story -- yet it's much more than merely a documentary. The story unfolds like a ritual, and as in any ritual, there are ceremonial landmarks to highlight key points on the journey. And it is powerful, that power stretching far beyond my ability to tell it.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Was this performance the same as the original 2018 mounting of the production? No. For one thing, there was more use made of simple, stylized dramatization of moments that were previously only narrated. A good example was the scene, early in the production, where the Deer Woman Spirit offers to sacrifice herself so that Francis can feed his family. The simple staging culminated in an orchestrated pair of gunshots, and the actor portraying the Deer Woman Spirit (Jodi Baker Contin) flung up her hands and whirled around as if falling. I heard several audience members gasp.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">I'm less sure on this point, but I think there was a more extensive use of both archival photos and art works as scene-setting projections on the large overhead screen.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"> </div><div style="text-align: justify;">Contin's performance in the central lament song had a raw power accentuated by her deep, rich voice, which brought tears to my eyes.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"> </div><div style="text-align: justify;">Keenan Keeshig in the role of Francis brought vivid visual sense to his momentary portrayals of key moments in the man's life, and his voice clearly projected all the emotions that Francis struggled to control and direct.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Brian D. McInnes, a great-grandson of Francis, gave again a clear and well-shaped reading of the principal narrations, which create the chain on which the episodes of the story are strung.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Larry Beckwith, also a veteran of the previous production, not only conducted the ensemble effectively but also brought a rich variety of shades of snottiness to his momentary portrayals of assorted military officers and Indian agents. </div><div style="text-align: justify;"> </div><div style="text-align: justify;">The chamber orchestra of seven musicians all performed with skill and care in the uniquely crafted musical soundscape of composer Tim Corlis. Special mention here must go to percussionist Beverly Johnston, whose broad variety of sounds, including the evocative handpan, did so much to shape the overall atmosphere and impact of the score.<br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">After the end of the performance, the three native performers (Contin, Keeshig, and McInnes) returned to the stage to host a Q & A session. I was grateful for the woman in the audience who asked about the creators of the native songs that bookended the entire show. Jodi Baker Contin herself wrote the first song, a song of thanks for the beauty of the land of Wasauksing on which the story occurs. Francis spent most of his life in Wasauksing, on what settlers call Parry Island, right across from Parry Sound.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">And it was Contin who explained that the final song, the one in which all musicians and audience slowly join their voices together, is a traditional song of farewell for those who have left this life. Suddenly, that final moment, always emotional, took on even more resonance -- not only because of all who have lost their lives in the pandemic, but also for the lives of the children who died in the residential schools, a sad and shameful chapter of history which has been brought forcefully to light since 2018.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"> </div><div style="text-align: justify;">It was, therefore, with powerful and mixed emotions, that I and others not of native ancestry, accepted the invitation to linger outside after the performance, to accept a gift of tobacco, and to lay it on the ground with prayer and thought. <br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div>Ken Stephenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15446161349713438016noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-346000049113318252.post-43094760059992588112022-07-29T10:43:00.002-04:002022-07-29T10:47:09.610-04:00Festival of the Sound # 12: In Spain and Vienna<div style="text-align: justify;">Thursday was another three-concert day at the Festival, and I'm sorry to say that my energy level ran out after the two afternoon concerts. What I missed was a multi-media performance with poetry of the two-piano version of <i>The Planets </i>by Gustav Holst. If I had to miss a concert, this was the one, since I have heard the work in piano reduction before and didn't enjoy it. Some pieces can be well-served by a skilled keyboard reduction but for me <i>The Planets, </i>with its extraordinarily imaginative orchestration,<i> </i>is not one of them.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">That being said, the afternoon concerts brought ample delights and wonderful music making.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><u><b>I: Tapeo: The Sounds of Spain</b></u></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Cameron Crozman delighted the audience with the third concert he curated, a wonderful analogy of music composed by Spanish artists, or composed in Spain, or inspired by Spain. That description covers a very broad range of possibilities indeed!</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">In his introductory remarks, Crozman gave us a good chuckle by explaining that "Tapeo" is the first-person singular of a very specifically Spanish verb -- it translates as "I am going to eat tapas."</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">The concert involved a wide assortment of instrumental combinations out of a string quartet and two pianists. </div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">The first of Crozman's musical tapas was a delightful duet for cello and piano by Catalan cellist Gaspar Cassadó entitled <i>Requiebros </i>-- a word which means "compliments," but often with a strong subtext of "flirtations." It's a robust dance number and always great fun for the audience.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Next came Crozman's own arrangement for cello and piano of the famous <i>Asturias </i>(original title: <i>Leyenda</i>) by Isaac Albéniz. This work was originally written for solo piano, and in it the composer replicated the strumming of the guitar with an obsessively repeated pedal note D in the middle of the entwining melody. Guitarists immediately took it to their hearts because it's so easily transcribed for their instrument -- not surprisingly! Crozman's arrangement, for me, was a misfire. To be able to fit that D in, he had to resort to incessant high-speed crossing of the strings, and this both blurred out the sound of the pedal note and gave the music an undesirable frantic edge (ideally, the piece should sound a bit langorous -- easy on guitar, somewhat tougher on piano).</div><div style="text-align: justify;"> </div><div style="text-align: justify;">Next, we heard the Bergmann Duo in a group of works consisting of the two Spanish Dances from <i>La vida breve </i>by Manuel de Falla, the famous <i>Malagueña </i>by Cuban composer Ernesto Lecuona, and wrapping up with the brilliant and vivacious <i>España </i>by Emmanuel Chabrier. These works inspired by Spanish dance brought a wonderful lift and flair in the playing of both pianists.<br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Violinists Karl Stobbe and Emily Kruspe then took the stage with a delightful take on the <i>Folies d'Espagne</i> by French Baroque composer Jean-Pierre Guignon. This work joins the long, long list of works which used the <i>Folies (</i>a.k.a. <i>La folia</i>)<i> </i>bass as a foundation for variations -- a list which includes Vivaldi, Corelli, and Handel as only a few of the more famous names. After playing the theme complete to start, the two violinists traded increasingly complex variations on the simple tune and bass, with the bass line represented in each case by just a few notes sketched in here and there by one of the two. It's surprising how clearly you can pick up and "hear" the famous bass line of <i>La folia</i> when so few of the actual notes are being played! The entire set of variations was a complete joy to the ear.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"> </div><div style="text-align: justify;">Next we heard a <i>String Trio in A Minor, Op. 14 No. 3 </i>by Luigi Boccherini, an Italian composer who spent most of his adult years as composer and musician in the court of Spain. This trio was plainly court music of the same era as Haydn and showed no stylistic differences to speak of from the German or Austrian music of the same period -- perhaps because the Swiss-Austrian Habsburg family ruled in both areas. Like much of its creator's work, it makes for pleasant, easy listening, although not overtly Spanish in character (for that, you have to go to Boccherini's guitar quintets).</div><div style="text-align: justify;"> </div><div style="text-align: justify;">The concert wrapped up with the beautiful, evocative <i>Oración del Torero, Op. 34 </i>by Joaquin Turina, for string quartet. The title translates as <i>The Bullfighter's Prayer</i>, and the music is most definitely prayerful in character, without sounding especially church-like -- an interesting feature.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"> </div><p></p><div style="text-align: justify;"><u><b>II: Canadian Pianofest # 10: Schubert and Mozart</b></u></div><div style="text-align: justify;"> </div><div style="text-align: justify;"> The second afternoon concert brought the tenth and last installment in this season's first part of the Canadian Pianofest (the series will continue next summer). Fittingly, then, this concert brought together two of the finest pianists we've heard: Janina Fialkowska (who curated the entire series) and Charles Richard-Hamelin. Before the concert, James Campbell (the Festival's Artistic Director) announced that this was the first occasion Janina Fialkowska had ever publicly played four hands or two pianos in her entire career. The event was certainly an auspicious debut, bringing together just two works: one of the great masterpieces for piano four hands with one of the great masterpieces for two pianos.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><u><b> <br /></b></u></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Franz Schubert's <i>Fantasia in F Minor, D.940 </i>opened the programme. It's all but a symphony for the piano, especially the final movement which, to me, cries out to be orchestrated. In four connected movements, lasting for about 20 minutes, the work moves through moods lyrical and agitated (first movement), turbulent and pastoral (second movement), lively and dancelike (third movement), before rounding off with a stern and powerful fugue, followed by a coda that ends quietly after one of the most remarkable cadences in all of music.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Fialkowska and Richard-Hamelin brought energy and poetry alike to this score, finding great power in the second movement's rigorous<i> Largo</i> and dancing the music away in the scherzo. The switches between power and inward reflection in the final pages rounded off a memorable performance, and the final cadence resounded in the memory.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">After a short pause to rearrange the stage, the artists returned for Mozart's <i>Sonata for Two Pianos in D Major, K.448</i>. Unusually in my experience, the two pianos were here arranged facing the same way so that the two players were again seated side by side, but at different instruments.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">This sonata was written by Mozart when he was 25, and the music retains a youthful energy and spring in its step, qualities which this performance shared in abundance. </div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">The <i>allegro con spirito</i> first movement was all of that: quick of foot, full of spirit, an exemplary burst of <i>galant </i>style, and an absolute joy to the listener. The <i>andante </i>second movement flowed easily and with great charm. The <i>molto allegro </i>final movement flew by in a whirl of rapid passagework and high spirits, with playing both accomplished and stylish from both artists.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">I don't know if Fialkowska's plans for next year include such an idea, but I would be more than happy to hear another joint recital from these two wonderful pianists any time they choose to give one!</div><div style="text-align: justify;"></div><p></p><p></p><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><p></p>Ken Stephenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15446161349713438016noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-346000049113318252.post-81339437946019247332022-07-29T09:25:00.000-04:002022-07-29T09:25:01.519-04:00Festival of the Sound 2022 # 11: Pianos Galore<div style="text-align: justify;"><p> </p><p>Wednesday at the Festival brought an intense round of three concerts, each of which featured the piano either totally, or in a fair degree. As a friend of mine who is <i><b>not </b></i>a pianist dryly observed, "By the end of the day, I will be all pianoed out." For those of us who are piano enthusiasts, it was a spectacular day.</p></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><p><br /></p></div><p style="text-align: left;"></p><div style="text-align: justify;"><u><b>I: Canadian Pianofest # 8: The Bergmann Piano Duo in Recital</b></u></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><u><b><br /></b></u></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><u><b><br /></b></u></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Piano duo ensembles are definitely exotic fish in the musical world. To
play a piece well, either on two pianos or four hands on one piano,
requires a degree of mutual trust verging on insanity, combined with a
willingness to take hair-raising chances and hope like mad that your
duet partner agrees -- and picks up on -- with that little <i>accelerando </i>that you suddenly felt was appropriate. An added hazard in four-hand playing: colliding fingers and fingernails are de rigeur. Voice of experience.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"> </div><div style="text-align: justify;">Seriously, though, I can't think of any other form of music making that forces two musicians into such close physical proximity, nor of any other form in which mutual give and take between the musicians becomes so critical to the success of the performance.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"> </div><div style="text-align: justify;">An amusing side note: when playing on two pianos, the Bergmanns use the "married position" which, ironically for the name, places the two players a piano's length apart and facing each other by fitting the two instruments as closely together as possible, with the curved cases wrapping around each other.<br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;"> </div><div style="text-align: justify;">The Bergmanns have been playing together as a married couple for many years, and like to assemble one of their typical programmes out of a very eclectic repertoire of original works and arrangements, ranging from the Baroque period right up into the twentieth century. </div><div style="text-align: justify;"> </div><div style="text-align: justify;">This recital began with an arrangement of a Bach aria from the cantata <i>Vergnügte Ruh.</i> It's one of the master's lovely, lyrical melodies, but the arrangement for 2 pianos inevitably involved doubling and extra voices, leading to a much more congested sound -- somewhat reminiscent of Stokowski's Wagnerian Bach transcriptions for full orchestra.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"> </div><div style="text-align: justify;">The centrepiece of the recital consisted of movements 2-3-4 from Rachmaninoff's <i>Suite No.1 in G Minor, Op. 5</i>, <i>"Fantaisie-Tableaux</i>." It was a little difficult to enjoy this wonderful music as the Bergmanns were treating each dynamic indication as specific to their personal instrument, leading to a loud, clangorous sound which was hard on the ears. The intense energy of the performance was admirable, to be sure, but more restraint would give much better results. Many interpreters will treat the dynamic marks as relating to the music as a whole. Such an approach would yield far more sense of fantasy in <i>La nuit... l'amour </i>and <i>Les larmes</i>, as well as allowing a much greater contrast when the pianists appropriately cut loose in the final <i>Pâques</i> with its endless cascades of bell sounds.<br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Far more rewarding were the selections from Astor Piazzolla, Chick Corea, Pat Metheny, and Egberto Gismonti, which wrapped up the recital. Much as I hate to keep sounding negative, surely there must be other worthwhile and interesting pieces from Piazzolla than the ubiquitous (and now tedious) <i>Oblivion </i>and <i>Libertango. </i>I've heard so many arrangements of those two pieces from so many performers that I'm beginning to think of Piazzolla as a two-hit wonder, and I'm sure that's an unfair assessment.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><u><b>II: Originals</b></u></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">A second programme curated by Cameron Crozman consisted entirely of works composed by Festival artists. In all, four composers were represented, and the diversity of their efforts yielded fascinating results.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">The first work was a two-movement piano quintet by Graham Campbell, the two movements being respectively entitled <i>Between Breaths </i>and <i>Snow Rider.</i> In fact, it was entirely possible to enjoy this melodious, mellifluous music without knowing the titles. Unusually among contemporary composers, Campbell doesn't shrink in holy horror from either clear rhythmic patterns or identifiable melodic lines, and his music is all the stronger for that than works from the Momentary Effects School of composition.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">I was especially intrigued by the number of times that this or that harmonic progression took me for a few seconds back to the France of Debussy and Fauré</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Marcel Bergmann contributed three works in all: <i>Run Around</i>, with violinist Karl Stobbe, <i>Blue Autumn </i>with cellist Cameron Crozman, and two movements from <i>Urban Pulse </i>with spouse and duet partner Elizabeth Bergmann. All three works featured ever denser keyboard writing, while still allowing the string soloists to be heard. In <i>Urban Pulse, </i>the densely dissonant writing for two pianos turned into a mass of sound from which only occasional melodic fragments emerged briefly.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Cameron Crozman presented his first composition, a cello solo called <i>Falling Forward</i>. The fragmentary nature of this music somewhat concealed the technical challenges of trying to wring many different kinds of melodic sound out of a cello without resorting to the "standard" full bow on the string technique. This piece intrigued mainly as a survey of those technical possibilities.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"> </div><div style="text-align: justify;">Finally, Ryan Davis gave three works in solo viola performances. The first was simply Davis and the viola. In the other two, he made use of the live looping technique to lay down multiple instrumental, percussion, even vocal tracks, before getting into his main live performance of the piece in question. </div><div style="text-align: justify;"> </div><div style="text-align: justify;">Unlike the performance last week by FreePlay, Davis had all his technical equipment right on stage with him so we could watch him creating each track as he went along, drumming on a percussion pad, creating special sounds on his instrument, and so on. From a technical viewpoint, it was fascinating to get such a behind-the-scenes view of the artist at work. Musically, I enjoyed the strong rhythmic sense that pervaded Davis' music, even at moments when a percussion track wasn't playing. I also appreciated the odd and yet somehow intriguing sound combinations that he created.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"> </div><div style="text-align: justify;"> </div><div style="text-align: justify;"><u><b>III: Canadian Pianofest # 9: Charles Richard-Hamelin in Recital</b></u></div><div style="text-align: justify;"> </div><div style="text-align: justify;">For the third time in the Festivaal, we sat down to a performance by a pianist who truly ranks as one of Canada's greatest exponents of the instrument today.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Charles Richard-Hamelin emerged from obscurity to win the second prize at the Chopin International Competition in Warsaw in 2018, and his career since then on the world's stages has gone from strength to strength.<br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">For this recital, Richard-Hamelin explained to the audience that, since each work led naturally into the next, he requested that applause be held until the end of each half of the programme.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"> </div><div style="text-align: justify;">The first half consisted of Two <i>Nocturnes </i>by Chopin, Op. 27 No. 1 in C sharp minor and Op. 27 No. 2 in D flat major -- a fascinating contrast of two impossibly near yet distant keys.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"> </div><div style="text-align: justify;">From the D flat piece, Richard-Hamelin moved smoothly onwards into the opening movement of th<i>e Piano Sonata No. 2 in B flat minor, Op. 35. </i>His performance, which included the full exposition repeat, was notable for finding more light and shade in this movement than many artists. </div><div style="text-align: justify;"> </div><div style="text-align: justify;">The scherzo was both fiery and precise in staccato, with maximum contrast as a result in the sweeping lyrical line of the trio. The final short-cut reminiscence of the trio at the end was a quiet moment of nostalgic reflection.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">The massive chords of the famous funeral march were beautifully shaped to avoid mere thunderous noise, and allow inner voices to emerge. The pastoral contrasting section in the midst of the march emerged as a moment of peaceful freedom from turmoil.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Speaking of turmoil, the extraordinarily athematic and almost atonal finale flew by in a whirlwind of excited disconnection, a most remarkable anticipation of the musical world a century later.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">In the second half of the recital, Richard-Hamelin turned to Maurice Ravel. He opened with the famous <i>Pavane pour une infante defunte</i>, followed by a brief <i>Prelude </i>which was among the composer's first attempts at writing music.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">These two pieces led in the most natural way into the six-movement suite, <i>Le tombeau de Couperin</i>. The name signifies perhaps a tomb, although in this context it would be better to call it a "memorial." The tradition of the <i>tombeau </i>or memorial commemorative piece stretches as far back in French music as François Couperin himself.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">The six movements were separately dedicated to six friends of Ravel who were killed in the First World War. If you didn't know that fact, you would never guess that association by listening to the music which is filled with light, life, and energy, all expressed with airy neoclassical clarity.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"> </div><div style="text-align: justify;">For those familiar only with Ravel's later orchestrated version, the original piano work takes the movements in a different order and includes two movements (<i>Fugue</i> and <i>Toccata</i>) which he omitted from the orchestration because they are so quintessentially pianistic in style. <br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Richard-Hamelin brought his signature lightness of touch on the keys to a piece which, more than any other, absolutely demands such skill. Right from the opening notes of the <i>Prelude</i>, it was clear that a master was at work here. The lovely dance rhythms and melodies of the <i>Forlane, Rigaudon</i>, and <i>Menuet </i>were an especial delight, while the rapid technical passagework of the <i>Fugue </i>and <i>Toccata </i>for once sounded like something much more than mere note-spinning.<br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">A truly remarkable conclusion to a rewarding and involving recital.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;"></div><div style="text-align: justify;"></div><div style="text-align: justify;"></div><div style="text-align: justify;"></div><div style="text-align: justify;"></div><div style="text-align: justify;"></div><div style="text-align: justify;"></div><div style="text-align: justify;"></div><p></p>Ken Stephenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15446161349713438016noreply@blogger.com0