Today marks Haydn's 200th death anniversary

Austrian composer Franz Joseph Haydn died 200 years ago, today. 

The 77 year-old had lived a full, successful and, by all accounts, happier-than-average life. He worked hard and had been lucky to live under the patronage of Prince Nikolaus Esterházy and his successors. 

Haydn left behind a huge catalogue of music, from settings of the Mass to pieces for all the main solo instruments. He wrote 14, or so, operas (which are no longer staged).

His main claims to enduring fame are symphonies and string quartets, which defined and refined the genre for the 19th century.

There are concerts around the world today in Haydn's honour. In Toronto, Tafelmusik presents the second performance of Haydn's most famous oratorio, The Creation, at Massey Hall, at 2 p.m. -- with a live broadcast on CBC Radio 2.

Here's a C Major setting of the canticle Te Deum, Laudamus (We Praise You, O God) by Haydn to start the day, from the 1994 Flanders Festival in Belgium, conducted by Sigiswald Kuijken:

Eve Egoyan's miraculous one-hour meditation

I can't say enough about the quiet, simple beauty of Canadian composer Ann Southam's new, one-hour piano suite Simple Lines of Enquiry, or about its sparkling interpreter, Toronto pianist Eve Egoyan.

Just released on the Centrediscs label, piece and pianist create a profound experience that transcends any and all musical genres.

The only thing you have to do is give it a chance.

Egoyan premieres the piece and launches the disc tonight at Harbourfront. But given the theatre's dry acoustics and the fabulousness of the disc, I'd recommend savouring the music at home, with the PDA and phone switched off and the front door bolted.

Simple Lines of Enquiry is true to its title. In 12 movements, Southam slowly, deliberately says out single lines of intervals from a 12-tone pattern. There are few chords or clusters to smudge that single line that, on the surface, mocks the 87 keys that are not being struck at the same time. But the intervals created by these lines engage each string's rich palette of harmonics, revealing secret sympathetic and dissonant vibrations that merge in a mesmerizing soundscape.

That sounds awfully intellectual-conceptual. But the result is meditation in its truest sense, where, if we allow ourselves the space and freedom, time stands still and we become suspended somewhere outside the three other dimensions, as well.

There is nothing here to scare a lover of, literally, any genre of music. And everyone stands to gain an escape from our busy, more-is-more lives.

The back page of the disc's booklet comes with a warning label: "This music is intended to be quiet. Please adjust your playback level accordingly."

The album also comes with a gorgeous poem by David Wagoner that resonates with Southam's and Egoyan's musical mantra:

Stand still. The trees ahead and bushes beside you

Are not lost. Whatever you are is called Here,

And you must treat it as a powerful stranger,

Must ask for permission to know it and be known.

The forest breathes. Listen, it answers,

I have made this place around you.

If you leave it, you may come back again, saying Here.

No two trees are the same to Raven.

No two branches are the same to Wren.

If what a tree or a bush does is lost on you,

You are surely lost. Stand still. The forest knows

Where you are. You must let it find you.

Concert details

Eve Egoyan premieres Ann Southam's Simple Lines of Enquiry tonight at 8 p.m., at Harbourfront's Enwave Theatre, 231 Queens Quay W. Tickets are $12 or $15 at 416-973-4000.

Copies of the album will be available for sale.

Related thoughts

Here's my review of Christina Petrowska Quilico's performance of Ann Southam's Pond Life, from the May 13 edition of the Star: I elaborated further in my blog entry that day.

If the essence of poetry is controlled repetition and variation, then last night's performance by Toronto pianist Christina Petrowska Quilico at the Glenn Gould Studio was musical poetry at its finest.

Quilico has made a career of championing the work of Canadian creators. Veteran composer Ann Southam couldn't hope for a finer advocate as the pianist laid out her 90-plus-minute suite Pond Life: Ponds, Creeks and a Noisy Riverwith elegance and clarity.

The recital marked the launch of Quilico's recording of the piano suite for the Canadian Music Centre's CentreDiscs label. Both the disc and the printed score are significant additions to this country's piano repertoire, and will hopefully catch the attention of performers and audiences beyond our borders.

Some composers write big, emotionally or technically aggressive music that leaps off the stage to grab the audience. Others slowly tease the listener's ears, stealthily insinuating their musical ideas into our consciousness.

Southam uses the latter method in Pond Life, mixing some techniques from 12-tone writing with the tried-and-true minimalist template of laying out short musical patterns in long, repetitive loops. Southam's secret weapon is a playful lyricism that winks and smiles atop and beneath the surface.

There are 11 sections in Pond Life, which was directly inspired by the sweet green and blue washes of colour in a 1986 painting by Toronto artist Aiko Suzuki, who died at the end of 2005. Slow, meditative movements alternate with tightly wound clusters of fast-moving piano keys to create a metaphor for the teeming life lurking beneath the pond's still, glassy waters.

Because Pond Life unfolds in a slow, circular manner, once the music has teased us in we can remain suspended within it seemingly forever. It was a truly magical experience – one that the disc allows us to repeat in the comfort of our favourite listening position.

There is more of Southam's magic coming later this month, when pianist Eve Egoyan presents the hour-long Simple Lines of Enquiry (also in honour of a freshly recorded CD) at Harbourfront's Enwave Theatre on May 30.

World's oldest queer community orchestra turns 25

Here's a bit of trivia about wonderful ol' Toronto: It is home to the world's oldest gay- and lesbian-friendly community orchestra.

The Counterpoint Community Orchestra celebrates its first 25 years tomorrow night at University of Toronto's MacMillan Theatre with that greatest of multi-purpose feelgood symphonies: Beethoven's Ninth (performed when the Berlin Wall came tumbling down and programmed by Heinrich Goebbels to encourage Germans to love their Führer more. How's that for versatility! Poor Beethoven.)

Despite music soothing the savage breast, and so on, symphony orchestras are as viciously political as any workplace. It's barely been 25 years since some (European) orchestras have felt comfortable in hiring women, so let's not even talk about prejudices in promoting certain people within the orchestra's ranks or recognizing same-sex partnerships in pension and benefits plans.

The world's continuing prejudices against same-sex affinities makes the Counterpoint Orchestra's 25 years all the more significant.

No doubt because of the strength and vibrancy of the Church-Wellesley neighbourhood, and the fact that Toronto is the country's prime arts magnet, there is a wealth of talented amateur musicians in the city.

Counterpoint rehearses at my church, so I've had a chance to hear them in action (the photo above shows them in their usual performance space, St. Luke's United, across the Carlton St. from my church). They are a community orchestra, so you can't expect professional polish from the playing. But the reasons that bring them all together every Monday night are not about polish, but about finding a few hours of personal fulfillment and community bonding through music. If that spirit and energy weren't present every week, the group would never have endured a quarter century.

And, after all has been said and sung, German poet Friedrich von Schiller's 1785 poem "Ode to Joy" is as inspirational and relevant to this group as to anyone who has read, said or sung its words.

Its first verse reads "Joy, beautiful spark of Gods,/ Daughter of Elysium,/ We enter, fire-imbibed,/ Heavenly, your sanctuary./ Your magic powers re-unite/ What custom's sword has divided/ Beggars becomes prices' borther/ Where your gentle wing abides."

Torontonian No. 2 in Montreal voice competition

Toronto-based soprano Yannick-Muriel Noah, 30, a former member of the Canadian Opera Company's Ensemble Studio, has won second prize at the Montreal International Musical Competition, following on the heels of a recent prize at the George London competition in New York. (The photo above shows her with Montreal jury president André Bourbeau.)

The prize comes with a $15,000 cheque as well as a spot in tonight's gala concert with the Orchestre Métropolitain under guest conductor Alain Trudel at Place-des-Arts. (To add extra spice to the event, special invited soloists will include Canadian tenor Joseph Kaiser, the handsome and talented lead in Kenneth Branagh's movie version of The Magic Flute.)

First and third places were taken by American singers. 

Top spot, and a $30,000 cheque, went to dramatic soprano Angela Meade, 31. Baritone Andrew Garland, 32, took the $10,000 third prize.

The awards ceremony, which introduces tonight's concert, will include announcements of all the special-prize winners.

CBC Radio 2 host Bill Richardson will devote Saturday-afternoon's usual four-hour opera-broadcast slot to an overview of the competition highlights.

The competition's official radio sponsor, the French-language counterpart to Radio 2, Espace-musique, has an audio-visual archive of the semi-finalists' recitals on its website.

My impression from viewing the performances on the Web archive is that the jury appears to have favoured a dramatic package over vocal beauty. All three are well-formed artists with interesting voices and plenty of stage charisma.

Local student first in symphony piano competition

Yesterday afternoon, the Toronto Symphony Orchestra announced the winners of its biennial competition for pianists aged 16 to 25. The competition was held last week.

The $8,000 first prize – which comes with a symphony concert date in the 2010-11 season -- went to 21-year-old Alexander Seredenko, a student at the Royal Conservatory of Music’s Glenn Gould Professional School and someone who has already impressed a wider audience at the free lunchtime concert series organized by the Canadian Opera Company in the Richard Bradshaw Amphitheatre. He has also been actively courting international competitions for the last couple of years.

Members of the five-member jury for the competition, which is organized and staffed by the Toronto Symphony Orchestra Volunteer Committee,  were Alberta composer Isobel Moore Rolston, teachers Ronald Turini and Marc Durand, TSO acting director of artistic administration Heather Slater and former TSO general manager Walter Homburger.

The other winners were:

20-year-old Calgarian Alexander Malikov, claiming second prize as well as best performance of a sonata

16-year old Calgarian Scott MacIsaac, in third place

20-year old Montrealer Ronny Michael and Samuel Deason, 21, also a student at the Glenn Gould School, took prizes for best performance of a Canadian work

Markham resident Leonard Gilbert, 16, was cited for best performance of a Romantic work.

In recent years, the competition had been sponsored by Bösendorfer, which meant that the competitors played on an extra-long, extra-shiny Imperial Grand. This year, the competition’s piano sponsor was Germany’s Schimmel, via its Toronto dealer, Robert Lowrey.

Last month, Lowrey invited me to sample the Schimmel concert grand that would be used in the competition. It’s a sweet instrument with a beautifully responsive action – an ideal, neutral piano that is as close to a level playing field as I could imagine.

The full details of the competition are posted on the Toronto Symphony Orchestra Volunteer Committee website.

Van Cliburn competition announces semi-finalists

The sole Canadian entry in the 13th Van Cliburn International Piano Competition was eliminated late last night as the jury picked 12 semi-finalists out of the 29 competitors.

They will perform solo, as well as in a chamber work with the Takacs String Quartet. The jury will then narrow the field down to six finalists on Sunday night.

The competition has been streaming the competition recitals live, then archiving the performances on its cliburn.tv site.

I haven’t had time to take in the more than 30 hours of piano music archived so far, but I’ve watched and listened enough to be in awe of the quality of these young artists.

There are two Italians who I find especially interesting. Both have made it to the semi-finals: 27-year-old Mariangela Vacatello, who is elegance personified, and slightly eccentric 22-year-old Alessandro Deljavan.

In search of a better Strauss Violin Sonata

I don't know if this happens to other people, but hearing a bad performance of a piece makes me appreciate what the composer was doing even more.

I had that experience at a desperately uninspired chamber music recital last night -- the final of five programmes presented by the Associates of the Toronto Symphony Orchestra at Trinity-St. Paul's Centre every season. 

Featuring violin, cello and piano, the evening groaned with particularly beautiful pieces, including Richard Strauss's Violin Sonata. It contains every single attribute that draws people to Strauss' music: dramatic expressiveness, rich, slippery harmonies, and enough technical challenges to keep everyone on the edge of their seats.

Strauss wrote the Sonata in 1887, as he was preparing to devote his energies to opera and symphonic writing. This piece let the world know that he was ready.

Last night's cellist, TSO acting principal cellist Winona Zelenka, was fabulous in the well-known Fantasiestücke by Robert Schumann, even though accompanist Gergely Szoklai played as if he were afraid someone might hear him.

Things went downhill with the Strauss Sonata. Since there was no space for a print review in today's Star, I felt free to escape during the applause.

In the Sonata, the piano and violin are in constant, sometimes vicious dialogue, but there was no connection between the two performers. Szoklai again played softly, jumbling many passages into a mumbled mush.

The violinist, Arkady Yanivker, technically fine, refused to open up to the music's emotional pleas and consistently flattened musical phrases that should have sprung from his bow in graceful arcs.

Practically quivering with the need to hear this gorgeous music played better, I had to listen to a better interpretation.

There's an excellent ATMA recording from last summer by talented Canadians Paul Stewart and Jonathan Crow, left, that also includes sonatas by Edward Elgar and Maurice Ravel. I highly recommend it.

Since I can't put their interpretation on this page, I've turned to wonderful Chicagoan violinist Rachel Barton Pine to give us the third movement of the Violin Sonata. Performed at a dinner, this isn't an ideal sample -- but her interpretation is:

Great view through Glass fragments

There's a great, short portrait of 72-year-old American composer Philip Glass in this morning's Independent, in honour of a concert of his chamber music in London tomorrow, and his first-ever Proms program in August.

The interview manages to be personal as well as raise some interesting issues. I like how it reminds us how difficult it is to find a footing as a composer, even when you are exceptionally talented. Here's an excerpt:

Glass didn't earn a living from his music, in fact, until he was 42. Until then, he drove cabs, shifted furniture and worked as a plumber. "I was careful," he explains, "to take a job that couldn't have any possible meaning for me." Stories of famous-composer-actually-working-man-shock from that period abound. The art critic Robert Hughes was astonished to find the avant garde composer mending his dishwasher. On another occasion, a woman tapped on the side of his cab and told him that he had the same name as a "very famous composer".

Here's A Gentleman's Honour, a short piece for Philip Glass from 1982, incorporated into a longer work. The Photographer, in 1983, honouring moving-picture pioneer Eadweard Muybridge (1830-1904). Although the short, repetitive musical figures are vintage Glass, the electro-keyboard sound and pah-pah voices come straight from the pop music of the day.

American Wing at the Met a study in contrasts

My partner and I were lucky enough to attend the opening of the new American Wing at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City last Tuesday.

I think a great musical accompaniment to what follows is "Prelude" from the Suite for Two Pianos by Amy Beech (1867-1944), the first successful American woman composer and pianist. Here it is, played by Susan and Sarah Wang:

The grace and openness of the glass-walled court at the entrance to the American Wing (itself framed by a neo-classical limestone facade) has been enhanced by a very nice collection of sculptures and architectural pieces.

At right, we look away from the entrance to the new rooms, toward the Tiffany archway that once graced a Florida mansion. Click on the images to make them larger. (All photos courtesy of my shutterbug partner).

Most significant for me was how the juxtaposition of styles in the American Wing beautifully demonstrates the significant aesthetic shifts at the turn of the 20th century. There's a parallel in music, as a new generation of composers struggled against the overwrought emotionality of late-19th century Romanticism.

At the Met, I especially loved the transition from the Victorian parlour to the American Arts & Crafts spareness of Frank Lloyd Wright:

Left: A parlour, circa 1870.

Right: The reconstructed living room of a Wright-designed house and furnishings in Minnesota, circa 1912-1914.

Our favourite piece of furniture was a New York City-made armoire by the Herter Brothers, dating from the late 1870s. 

Its clean lines and fine inlay work is inspired by Ming Dynasty furniture.

The look follows the principles of elegance and simplicity (a reaction to Victorian heaviness) espoused by the Aesthetic movement. 

One of its chief proponents was British critic Charles Locke Eastlake, who wrote an influential book called Hints on Household Taste in 1868.

Our collective disengagement from the arts

A couple of times every season, I get seized with the feeling that the majority of people won't ever see music, film, opera or theatre as a means of aesthetic or intellectual engagement.

Be it Beethoven's Ninth or Wolverine or La bohème or Jersey Boys, our night out is a form of refuge or escape from the kids (or the parents), the boss, or whatever other little crosses we have to drag around every day.

The practical producer and artist will respond with the safest offering. After all, everyone needs to make a living. And the bigger the organization, the steadier the inflow of cash needs to be. Just check any symphony orchestra season and count the Mozarts, Beethovens and Brahms's for proof.

This particular symbiosis is hardly likely to do much for the lively side of the lively arts. Yes, of course, there are great performances -- many, in fact. But the kind of spark that can shove audiences out of their ruts is rare.

Yet, when a John Doyle or Robert Lepage or Baz Luhrmann come along, we suddenly find ourselves beaming at the marvellousness of their imaginations. Better yet, if we engage in some form of creativity ourselves, instead of just being consumers of it, we can forget ourselves and our troubles -- and our peeves -- altogether.

As one musician explained to a large group recently: Try to sing happy birthday to the person you hate the most, and you'll find that you can't sing and stay mad at them at the same time.

American music-education guru Eric Booth has come up with an interesting take on this situation, published in the current issue of Chamber Music Magazine. His essay is directed at the professional artist and I disagree with his need to turn to scientific theories to make the point, but there is a lot of truth to what he writes.

In a choice passage, Booth turns to Jim Collins, a keynote speaker at last year's National Performing Arts Conference, in exhorting people to remember what the arts are all about by abandoning the canon in favour of greater creativity.

Booth continues: "Artistic expression is not just the province of artists; it appears spontaneously, irrepressibly, throughout each of our lives, mostly in forms and venues not identified with Art with a capital A. So how have we let the identity of art get quarantined as an occasional pricey event in a special building?"

Toronto is lucky to have hundreds of people who, in so many different kinds of ways, work on street level to do exactly that. But they are hardly the mainstream. And most of them wouldn't be able to put a roof over their heads if they didn't work as teachers, waiters, or sales clerks at Indigo or HMV.

Do we really want to be marked in time as the age that, besides losing touch with the production of our food and the human face of labour, lost the ability to engage in unmediated creative activity?

Here's a closing message, Responsibility, brought to you by Toronto avant-musicians Toca Loca and composer Myra Davies:

Virtual growing pains at Cliburn competition

A Korean architect once told me that it's best not to live above the 9th floor, because one becomes disconnected from the earth's energy if one goes higher. This means that the sky-high dweller will eventually become disconnected from reality in their day-to-day life.

That piece of advice (unheeded, as I live 31 floors above the noise and chaos of Bloor St.) made me think of how we expect everything we want to be free and instantaneous on the Internet. These twin demands fly in the face of the tremendous costs in both time and resources to get the really exciting, live stuff out to the world's Internauts.

I had to remind myself of this as I sat grumbling at the computer yesterday, trying to make sense of the herky-jerky initial feed from the start of the Van Cliburn piano competition yesterday. A note from the webmaster suggested Firefox as the best web browser to use (a browser I've tried and rejected, and wasn't about to download again).

Fortunately, by early evening, the video and audio were synched and flowing smoothly. The camerawork is very nicely done, with periodic close-ups of the pianist's hands. The audio is pretty decent, too.

I wasn't able to sit and watch for the whole evening, but I caught part of Spencer Myer's performance, rendered in vivid detail, including the cascades of sweat on his face that kept sending treacherous droplets onto the keyboard.

I left the bulk of my watching to the promised archive. Thinking I would catch up this morning, I went to the competition's feed site and found that none of yesterday's performances had been archived by 8 a.m. EDT.

I guess it will take some time to get it organized. I should already be grateful that I can share in one of the world's most prestigious piano competitions without having to fly to Texas. Even if I were there, I wouldn't get the backstage peeks that organizers have included as part of the live web feed. There is also a lot of other stuff to watch, including featurette profiles of each competitor, on the site.

A little patience is really not too much to ask in return.