Peter and the Symphony a great introduction to the meaning and magic of orchestral music

 Last spring, Toronto Symphony Orchestra music director Peter Oundjian, former CBC Radio 2 host Eric Friesen and some helpful people still working at the public broadcaster, sat down to map out a summer-long series, running every Saturday afternoon, that would provide and light and lively introduction to the world of orchestral music.

Oundjian, an engaging, warm personality and the sensitive Friesen made a great pair as they took listeners through the form, from the 18th century to the present in Peter and the Symphony.

CBC Records, which said it would stop issuing classical albums, recently produced an 11-CD set from the 11-part series. It's well-worth considering for anyone who loves the sound of a symphony orchestra, yet who does not have a deep background on the history and evolution of the genre.

The series begins with Haydn's "Trauer" Symphony (No. 44) and Mozart's "Jupiter." We get insights into a variety of Most Popular works, including Beethoven's Ninth, Berlioz's Symphonie fantastique, and Tchaikovsky's Sixth. The most recent one on the list is Symphony No. 2, by John Corigliano.

Click on the image for all the details.

Authenticity online: British Library allows virtual browsing of original Messiah score

A facsimile of the original score of Messiah, by George Frideric Handel, has been in print for a while. Now you can flip through Handel's own finished score -- all yellowed pages and ink blotches-- on the British Library's website. It worked beautifully on my computer, using Silverlight. 

Click on the image icon to get there.

Handel's pencil mark for the first aria, "Ev'ry valley," says "Mr. Beard," tenor soloist for the first London performance, in 1743. You can see what Handel trimmed and changed -- how the great choruses and arias we know today took shape.

You can zoom in and out of the page spreads, and there is an excellent spoken guide available for each set of pages that provides all kinds of interesting background tidbits.

If you like Baroque music, but have never seen a composer's original, it comes as a shock to realise how many notes for the continuo players (accompaniment) are not there. The harpsichord and organ players, for example, would have improvised their parts, based on a set of rules and traditions.

But thanks, thanks, thanks be to choristers

While sitting in Tafelmusik's performance of Messiah last night, I thought of all the people who get vocal training, don't go out into the world as professional soloists, but end up singing in professional, semi-professional, church and community choirs. Each and every one of them is as valuable to making fine choral music as a Renée Fleming or Placido Domingo are to a Met opera production. They have to practise and learn the same way as the soloists do. They have to look good and sound fine no matter how tired they are -- just as the soloists do. Yet rarely do they get acknowledgement for their time, effort and interest.

Here's one of the entries in Tafelmusik's Singalong Messiah contest, the Newman Centre Festival Singers, from University of Toronto. For details on the winning entries, click here:

Free lunchtime viola-and-piano recital should be a nice break from pre-Christmas madness today

I wish I had time today to check out the free lunchtime recital at the Four Seasons Centre, which should be good for holding Christmas madness at bay outside the Richard Bradshaw Amphitheatre's clear plate-glass windows.

Violist Theresa Rudolph Koczó -- who plays with both the Canadian Opera Company and National Ballet of Canada orchestras -- takes a solo turn with Toronto pianist Jeannie Chung (I met her while shopping for a car at dealership a few years ago. A single mom has to do everything she can to put bread on the table, and she was enthusiastically selling cars and SUVs). On the programme are: Schumann's gorgeous quartet of Märchenbilder, a familiar late-Brahms treat, the F Major Sonata for Viola and Piano, Op. 120 No. 1, and a couple of old Fritz Kreisler chestnuts.

The recital starts at noon. Try to get there early, or there may not be room for you.

To give you a teste, here are Pinchas Zuckerman and Robert Neikrug performing three Märchenbilder two years ago in Frankfurt:

Last-minute CD reviews: Magdalena Kozena, Belcea Quartet, Martha Argerich and the sins of Rossini's old age

I've listened to so many new CD albums this fall without writing reviews. So, before they go stale, and as a contribution to any last-minute gift suggestions you may need, here are four nice candidates. For full album details, click on the cover images:

Piano

MARTHA ARGERICH & NELSON FREIRE Salzburg (Deutsche Grammophon)

This live, two-piano recital from this year's Salzburg Festival is pretty spectacular. Duo work between two solo stars is not a guarantee of a great concert, but, in this case, both pianists had played this program many times before, helping them find the same wavelength from beginning to end, playing their all, both technically and expressively. It's a nice, varied program: Brahms' Variations on a Theme by Joseph Haydn; Rachmaninov's Op. 45 Symphonic Dances; the "Grand Rondo" by Schubert; and, ending the recital with a flourish, La Valse, by Ravel.

Here's a clip of Argerich and Freire playing some Rachmaninov in Japan a few years ago:

ALESSANDRO MARANGONI Rossini Péchés de vieillesse 3, Album pour les enfants adolescents (Naxos)

Italian pianist Alessandro Marangoni, 30, has been romping his way through the 56 piano pieces Gioachino Rossini tossed off in the 10 or so years before he died in 1868. He may have dedicated them to "fourth-class" pianists everywhere, but it takes a first-class artist to make them worth hearing. Marangoni's third set of these "Sins of Old Age" contains a set written -- who knows why -- for teenagers. As with the first two albums, he approaches each little creampuff as if it were serious music, with technical brilliance and a keen sense of dramatic narrative.

The style of these piano pieces is so odd, in context of the mid-19th century. Rossini was born a year after Mozart's death, yet lived to the year when Brahms German Requiem has its premiere. Yet these piano pieces owe more to bel canto opera than anything else. The titles, on the other hand, sound like Erik Satie's anti-Romantic fantasies: "Impromptu anodin," "Prélude convulsif," "Hachis romantique," and, funniest of all, "Ouf! Les petits pois!" (Bah! The little peas).

Chamber

BELCEA QUARTET with VALENTIN ERBEN Schubert Quintet and G & D minor String Quartets (EMI)

This 15-year-old English string quartet has garnered enthusiastic reviews practically since day one. But this two-disc, all-Schubert album is truly spectacular in how they manage to extract every bit of emotional expression without over-burdening the flow of the music is remarkable. I think this recording could become a reference for anyone who loves the minor-key intensity of the two minor-key quartets, including the "Death and the Maiden," from 1824, as well as the great String Quintet from the final months of the composer's life in 1828. The double cello parts, filled here with guest Valentin Erben, of the Alban Berg Quartet, give it a particular depth, which the Belcea mines with great depth.

To give you a taste of their work, here is the Belcea Quartet in the third movement of Ravel's F major String Quartet:

Vocal

MAGDALENA KOZENA Jakub Jan Ryba Czech Christmas Mass (Deutsche Grammophon/Archiv)

Just as Handel's Messiah is part of Christmas tradition in the English-speaking world, the Christmas Mass by Czech composer Jakub Jan Ryba (1765-1815), is integral to this time of year in the Czech Republic. Because Czech mezzo Magdalena Kozena is now a big international name, her label has decided to reissue this 1998 recording with Capella Regia Musicalis and conductor Robert Hugo. Kozena is always a pleasure to listen to, and all the performances here are excellent. But the music itself -- a festival mass setting in the grandest of styles, reminiscent of Haydn, but without his playful sense of invention -- is nothing to rave about. I found myself getting irritated with Ryba's lack of imagination, while at the same time being glad that I was being exposed to music that is virtually unknown in North America. The booklet contains the full text and translations, but has no background on the artists who made this disc 11 years ago at the gorgeous Church of Our Lady of the Convent in Kladruby, and its 1726 Burkhardt organ.

Here is the Agnus Dei-Communio sequence from the Christmas Mass:

Men and boys choirs offer free lunchtime seasonal music break today at Roy Thomson Hall

If you want to get away from the hubbub for an hour at lunchtime today, Roy Thomson Hall's free noon-hour concert series offers a seasonal treat from the Victoria Scholars, left, and a group of senior boys from St. Michael's Choir School. 

Director Jerzy Cichocki knows how to get a beautifully balanced sound of of these groups, and chooses from a broad range of choral periods and styles.

I once wandered in to one of these concerts at the last minute, thinking there would be plenty of empty places left in the 2,400-seat auditorium. I was wrong. So it's best to arrive a few minutes early.

Sang the little boy to his ukulele: I'm Yours

This is the sweetest little bit of something. I wish I knew who the timbit strummer is:

In case you're forgetting what Jason Mraz's original sounds like, here it is:

British researchers invite Web listeners to vote in exercise on Darwinian musical evolution

In an interesting twist on the 150th anniversary of Charles Darwin's On the Origin of Species, a group of researchers in biological sciences at Imperial College, London, led by Dr. Bob MacCallum, are running an experiment on musical evolution. They created a group of musical parents -- "loops" -- which are then propagated, nurtured or killed via Internet participation at darwintunes.org.

The effort is an interesting, electronica-pop-focused game. Because it evolves on the basis of note patterns rather than a combination of factors, such as tone rows or scales, harmony, drones and possible counterpoints, just to mention a few tools in the Western composer's toolbox, this isn't really a slice of cultural evolution as seen under a microscope, but an interesting exercise in capturing the mood of a moment. 

This morning, the site was up to 25,000 ratings, so the music loops are getting more sophisticated. Because the music is built on short, repeated note motifs, it is, essentially, what we would call minimalist. I would love to see how the finished result compares with today's favourite electronica and new-music artists working within a similar style.

Will it be survival of the slickest?

Participating properly demands a bit of a time commitment. You have to register first (which isn't complicated), so don't expect to be able to start instantly.

This video explains the project in brief:

Alec Baldwin enthusiastically signs on as New York Philharmonic's radio voice

I'm recovering from a flu (during a work-related call on Friday, the other person asked me which flu. Does it really matter? I replied. She laughed and agreed that feeling icky is feeling icky) and have to face a day full of church-related seasonal musical obligations. So, with brain focused on other things, I'm passing on some good reading from the two American coasts:

EAST

New York Times file photo

Today's New York Times has a great story on how Alec Baldwin (I'm addicted to 30 Rock, and love his boss character) has become an enthusiastic spokesperson for the New York Philharmonic. He is now hosting the orchestra's regular concert broadcasts on the WFMT radio network.

In the article, we find out that he tried trumpet lessons in Grade 4, quit to concentrate on sports, but that a seed of interest was planted when a music teacher insisted on playing classical music in the classroom.

The "on" button finally got pushed when Baldwin had begun working as an actor:

An epiphany came when he was 24 and acting in a soap opera, “The Doctors.” In one scene Mr. Baldwin’s character enters a hotel room and turns on the radio before he is to be killed. The casting director, Roger Sturtevant, happened to be on the set.

“Music comes on, this evocative music,” Mr. Baldwin said. “And I turn to Roger, and he was laughing.” “What’s so funny,” Mr. Baldwin asked. “He looked at me like I was a complete idiot. And he just said. ‘It’s Berlioz’s ‘Symphonie Fantastique,’ ‘The March to the Scaffold.’ Everybody knows that.’ And I didn’t know that, and I felt like an idiot that I didn’t know that. And that was the beginning.”

WEST

Today's Los Angeles Times includes a feature by music critic Mark Swed following up on life after Esa-Pekka Salonen's final concert as music director of the Los Angeles Philharmonic at the end of last season. While professionally fine for the Finnish-born conductor, the last few months been rough on the personal side, including getting mugged by three men (one carrying a gun, one a knife) in London.

Philip Glass symphony premiere struts out on stage with the help of multiple crutches

A long note from a friend, musing on Wednesday night's Toronto Symphony Orchestra concert -- which repeats tonight at Roy Thomson Hall -- made me think of how our lives are filled with crutches.

Am I implying that the crutches are a bad thing? No, not at all. Here's an example of how crutches can be used in a creative way, based on this TSO programme. The first three are positive, hopefully coaxing people to listen and think about new music they might otherwise have ignored:

Crutch 1: It's hard to get people to buy tickets to a concert of new music -- in this case the world premiere of a violin concerto by Philip Glass, and a short, recent work by another American composer -- so program it alongside an old warhorse, Beethoven's "Pastoral" Symphony.

Crutch 2: In a musical world saturated with incredible talents, its hard for soloists -- especially those who no longer have the claim to novelty to generate interest -- to distinguish themselves. Violinist Robert McDuffie convinced Glass to write a new violin concerto for him, which he is planning to tour in concert over the next couple of seasons.

Crutch 3: Few living composers enjoy mass awareness. So, it's tempting to go for the big name, Philip Glass, whose vast output has gone from the fringe of new music in the 1970s to the mainstream in the 21st century, which includes movie soundtracks.

Crutch 4: Glass makes an association in the concerto's subtitle, "The American Four Seasons," with the work of Baroque master Antonio Vivaldi. The hope here is to add a layer of interest among a general symphony audience by invoking one of the best-recognized, most-loved pieces of classical music ever written.

Crutch 5: The TSO wants to look more hip, so, rather than associating the new music as a natural evolution or response to traditional compositional rules, music director Peter Oundjian, chooses to apply Glass's usual label of minimalist to Beethoven as he introduces the piece of music.

Crutches 4 and 5 may actually distort the listening experience because the relationship between Vivaldi's Four Seasons and Glass's Violin Concerto No. 2 is one of large form only, not of content. I dealt with the last item, an historical distortion, in my blog two days ago.

Are these distortions the price we all have to pay for the positive power of making associations? Perhaps.

What do you think?

Star's Santa Claus Fund an antidote to a giftless Christmas

I've been asked to remind you, in the midst of all the parties, shopping and dashing to and fro, not to forget Toronto families who may not be having the happiest of Christmases. 

There are many worthy possibilities for your time or money. Among them is the Toronto Star Santa Claus Fund, which is just past the $1 million mark in its goal to raise $1.5 million this year, so that 45,000 needy kids in the city can get a Christmas gift box.

In that spirit, I'd like to share one of my favourite seasonal poems, by Christima Rossetti, "Love Came Down at Christmas:"

Love came down at Christmas,
Love all lovely, love divine;
Love was born at Christmas,
Star and angels gave the sign.

Worship we the Godhead,
Love incarnate, love divine;
Worship we our Jesus:
But wherewith for sacred sign?

Love shall be our token,
Love be yours and love be mine,
Love to God and all men,
Love for plea and gift and sign.

Here it is, in Reginald Morris's endearing, plain-as-brown-paper setting, sung in 1994 by the choir of King's College, Cambridge.