The Old Year Flies Away -- Or How to Lose Your Marbles

You have to endure some promotional noise, but, once it gets going, this animated short is excellent. Nice soundtrack in Mozart's D-Minor Fantasy.

Local pride 2009: These five musicians made me proud to be a Torontonian over the past year

I can't repeat it often enough: Toronto is home to an embarassment of classical music and opera riches. What helps me bound out of bed every day (okay, some days there is a bit less bounce in my step than others) is not just the great hometown-made music I'm going to witness, but the amazing people that I will cross paths with.

I lost count of the number of times, over the past 12 months, that I spoke to visiting artists who commented on how welcoming and collegial the Toronto Symphony and Canadian Opera Company were. Contrary to big-company stereotype, they are functional families who are eager to welcome guests into their fold.

That's SO not like the infamous Coors Light billboard we saw this past summer that declared the brew to be "Colder Than Most People In Toronto." A big pfffffffft! to that.

I decided to put together a list of people who particularly warmed my heart with their talent, giving nature, humility and all-'round great contributions to Toronto's performing arts scene over the past year. Then I had to narrow it down to five, which I've listed in no particular order, to keep it democratic.

To all five of you, thank you for making Toronto a better place, and for helping keep classical music and opera relevant in this noisy world:

ALISON MACKAY, bass player, Tafelmusik Baroque Orchestra

About as self-effacing as a musician can get, Mackay has been stroking away at her double-bass at the back of the stage at Tafelmusik Baroque Orchestra concerts for as long as I can remember. Rather than treating it as a routine job, Mackay has become a font of creative ideas on alternative programming. Her most brilliant inspiration to-date was the Galileo Project, unveiled by Tafelmusik at Banff last year, and premiered in Toronto in January.

This was multimedia at its very best, working as an integrative force, not a series of add-ons. An orchestra playing from memory? Unheard-of. An orchestra following stage choreography? Impossible. Or so everyone thought.

Addendum on Jan. 5, 2010: I have removed the video from the Galileo Project that I had included here, on the request of Taflemusik, because it was not "authorized." If you need to see the "authorized" version, you can visit Tafelmusik's YouTube channel. 

RUSSEL BRAUN, baritone

In the prime of his career, Braun is welcome on the grandest operatic stages in North American and Europe, yet has chosen to remain firmly rooted with his wife (pianist Carolyn Maule) and kids in Halton Hills. Nothing showed off his generous nature better than the night in November when he stepped in to help the Canadian Opera Company celebrate its 60th anniversary without its star guest, tenor Ben Heppner. Although there were international stars on stage with him -- tenors Ramón Vargas and John Treleaven -- Braun was the real star in the quality of his singing and the graciousness he displayed on stage. 

Here is Braun singing "Mab, la reine des mensonges" at the Salzburg Festival last year, an aria from Gounod's Roméo et Juliette that he also sang at the COC's 60th anniversary gala:

PETER LONGWORTH, pianist

So much of any great city's great music depends on dozens of high-calibre musicians who are not marquee names, who don't have frequent-flyer points and whose finest moments come from collaboration rather than taking the spotlight. Longworth is one of those gems, ready to step in as piano accompanist, teaching at the Royal Conservatory of Music, and essential participant in fine chamber music such as we heard from the Duke Trio recital at teeny-tiny Heliconian Hall in May, and a Classical Music Consort presentation earlier in the spring.

Here is a typical instance of Longworth in action, at the Royal Consevatory's Mazzoleni Hall, accompanying young violinist Mark Johnston in Richard Strauss's Op. 18 Violin Sonata:

SHANNON MERCER, soprano  

There doesn't seem to be anything that this elegant, lyric soprano doesn't gild with her open attitude and golden voice -- from a disc of Welsh music that started out the year to a glorious Messiah with the Toronto Symphony Orchestra a couple of weeks ago. Brava!

PETER SIMON, president & CEO, Royal Conservatory of Music

It takes a very special person to completely revamp a hidebound, 125-year-old institution, raise tens of millions of dollars a year and oversee a massive construction project. Visionary, cheerleader, taskmaster and also artist. It's a very rare combo. Anyone -- and I do mean anyone -- who can accomplish this much is going to make as many enemies as friends, which doesn't make the tasks any easier to tackle.

Not only does the city now have a remarkable new recital space in Koerner Hall, it also has an institution that offers an intriguing educational alternative to a traditional school system that still owes far too much to the Victorians.

ASHIQ AZIZ, young firecracker, artistic director, Opera Erratica and Classical Music Consort

This 20-something Toronto native decided to return home from London, England with big ideas and plans to make Baroque and Classical-era music hip to his fellow 20-somethings. He hasn't let a lack of money or marketing muscle stop him, and his work, so far, has been impressive. Every city needs enterprising young people like Aziz to help keep the music scene fresh and vibrant.

Here is Aziz conducting his Classical Music Consort in the premiere of the third movement of Ian McAndrew's Sinfonia for String Orchestra in 2007. The video montage is McAndrew's own:

DEREK HOLMAN, composer

Now 78, this retired University of Toronto professor and church organist and choirmaster has been pushed to the sidelines as much younger voices make themselves heard. But who else could have composed the magical eight-song cycle, The Four Seasons, he wrote in memory of former Canadian Opera Company general director Richard Bradshaw. Premiered in June at the Four Seasons Centre by wonderful Toronto-based tenor Lawrence Wiliford and accompanist Liz Upchurch, the songs wove a magical art-song tapestry that was at once a celebration of life as it was an acknowledgment of how quickly is passes. Both Upchurch and Wiliford hope to be able to perform it again and again, which is the highest praise any composer could get. I hope that others will be tempted to approach Holman with commissions that may yield more such gems.

The Seasons have been kind to Antonio Vivaldi, but there's much more to hear

If you're not a fan of Baroque-era music, it's easy to think exclusively of Venetian composer Antonio Vivaldi (1678-1741) as the man behind The Four Seasons, a suite of little violin concertos that has stubbornly refused to be thrown off the bucking bronco of fad and fashion.

But there's a lot more behind this extremely prolific composer (he wrote nearly 600 concertos, alone). Like any great creative artist, he took the style of his time and fashioned it into something very much his own. His music is particularly full of life force rhythmically and he is a master of what I think of as the creative use of dissonance.

North Americans have not yet ben exposed much to the explosion of interest in Europe for the music of Vivaldi, performed on period instruments by a new generation of musicians who are pushing stylistic and dynamic boundaries in exciting ways. (Torontonians are spoiled by Tafelmusik Baroque Orchestra's regular programming of works by Vivaldi.)

Boston classical music station WGBH recorded a wonderful concert by the Venice Baroque Orchestra under its leader, Andrea Marcon, in 2002 at Emmanuel Church, a richly endowed old Boston institution with a fantastic music programme (temporarily being directed by living composer John Harbison). That all-Vivaldi concert is currently highlighted on National Public Radio's website for free listening.

It's fabulously well done.

Here's a brief clip of the Venice Baroque Orchestra in performance two years ago:

"O Fortuna" from Carl Orff's Carmina Burana grabs BBC Radio 2 popularity Prize

BBC Radio 2 revealed its People's Classical Chart yesterday, listing the Top 10 pieces of classical music most heard over the past 75 years on radio, television and in public places, as compiled by U.K. royalty-collecting organization PPL.

The most-heard piece was the stentorian "O Fortuna" opening movement from Carl Orff's 1937 oratorio, Carmina Burana. According to the BBC, the piece has recently figured on the TV reality-talent series The X-Factor. It is also used as a warmup song for a couple of notable soccer clubs.

The most popular recording of the piece dates from 1973, made by the Munich Radio Orchestra and Bavarian Radio Chorus, conducted by Kurt Eichhorn.

"Of course, we all knew the number one would be a 13th century Latin goliardic poem," said comedian Bill Bailey, in his radio introduction, the BBC reported yesterday.

The rest of the Top 10, in descending order (with the name of the most popular recording's conductor) are:

Vaughan Williams - Fantasia On A Theme By Thomas Tallis (Bernard Haitink)

Rimsky-Korsakov - Scheherazade (Charles Mackerras)

Tchaikovsky - The Sleeping Beauty (Mikhail Pletnev)

Schumann - Romance In F Sharp Major Op 28/2 (Joseph Cooper)

Delibes - Sylvia (Richard Bonynge)

Rachmaninov - Symphony No 2 (Vladimir Ashkenazy)

Holst - The Planets (James Loughran)

Tchaikovsky - The Sleeping Beauty (Valery Gergiev)

Schubert - Symphony No 5 (Neville Marriner)

Because no one can actually make out the words for "O Fortuna," YouTube is awash in comical parodies. Here is one with Canadian content. The real words first, though:

O Fortuna	O Fortune,
velut luna	like the moon
statu variabilis,	you are changeable,
semper crescis	ever waxing
aut decrescis;	and waning;
vita detestabilis	hateful life
nunc obdurat	first oppresses
et tunc curat	and then soothes
ludo mentis aciem,	as fancy takes it;
egestatem,	poverty
potestatem	and power
dissolvit ut glaciem.	it melts them like ice.
Sors immanis	Fate - monstrous
et inanis,	and empty,
rota tu volubilis,	you whirling wheel,
status malus,	you are malevolent,
vana salus	well-being is vain
semper dissolubilis,	and always fades to nothing,
obumbrata	shadowed
et velata	and veiled
michi quoque niteris;	you plague me too;
nunc per ludum	now through the game
dorsum nudum	I bring my bare back
fero tui sceleris.	to your villainy.
Sors salutis	Fate is against me
et virtutis	in health
michi nunc contraria,	and virtue,
est affectus	driven on
et defectus	and weighted down,
semper in angaria.	always enslaved.
Hac in hora	So at this hour
sine mora	without delay
corde pulsum tangite;	pluck the vibrating strings;
quod per sortem	since Fate
sternit fortem,	strikes down the strong man,
mecum omnes plangite!	everyone weep with me!

What do you do when you discover that a great artist is a nasty human being? Play on.

If the art is great, does it matter if the artist is a schmo?

That question refuses to go away, because, when we get down to it, the kind of restless, inquisitive soul that produces the greatest art can often be an irritating individual. The art lives on after the artist's death, so it's the art that matters, right? Well, the more you love the work, the more you tend to be drawn into finding out more about the wellspring of that work. You can't escape the person, in the end.

The composer that gives me the most grief is Richard Wagner. Before I became a music critic, I simply refused to listen to it or play it, on political grounds. But that changed when I had to take a professional interest. I had to acknowledge that Wagner was a master of his art, but the man still makes me deeply uncomfortable.

The same kind of conflicted feelings are bound to come up as we observe the 200th anniversary of Frédéric Chopin's birth on March 1. He is a Polish national hero and an icon for lovers of Romantic music everywhere, but the details of his short life are not as conducive to hero worship as the simple act of listening to, or performing, his compositions.

The opening salvo of a fresh appreciation of Chopin's legacy was fired by Michael Church in yesterday's Independent. Church writes of pianist Andras Schiff's opinions. The pianist has spoken at length of the greatness of Chopin's music, and has been a keen advocate for it. But:

After researching Chopin in depth for a biographical film, Schiff – who plays his music with rare sensitivity – condemned him as an anti-Semite, a self-invented aristocrat, a social snob, a dandy who hated contact with the rest of the human race, and a man totally without loyalty to his fellow Polish exiles. "A very strange person, very hard to like," Schiff concluded with haughty distaste. In other words, a great composer, but a rotten human being.

Of course there is much more to the story, and many more layers to consider in the appreciation of the music itself.

Let the debates continue...

Here is Polish pianist Krystian Zimerman playing Chopin's Ballades Nos. 1 & 2 with beautiful lyricism and power. There's no date on this TV studio recital, but I suspect it's from the late-1990s:

The best carollers of the year? The YouTube animals... by a whisker

Thanks to Bin for passing this along.

'Tis the day before Christmas, and this creature is about to stop stirring, even with his mouse

It's time for me to wish you a happy ___________________. I'll be back on Dec. 28.

Between the mall, parties, the radio and your neighbours' enthusiastic turns of the volume knob, you've heard every Christmas carol imaginable by now. Except for this merry trio, brought to us by the master of the musical Ho Ho Ha, PDQ Bach (a.k.a. Peter Schickele). For all the lyrics, click here.

First up: "O Little Town of Hackensack," sung by the Women's Choir of Celia Cruz Bronx High School of Music last week:

Second: "Good King Kong Looked Out," all the way from Washington state's Graham-Kapowsin High School Chamber Choir's Christmas concert on Dec. 11.

Last, but hardly least, "Throw the Yule Log On, Uncle John" (I suspect that the comma is optional), brought to us by the Northeast Madrallers:

Julian Lloyd Webber succumbs to the miraculous force of Venezuela's El Sistema

English cellist Julian Lloyd Webber spearheded In Harmony, a project to bring music education to underprivileged children in London that was modeled on venezuela's El Sistema. He hadn't visited Venezuela until recently, though. In yesterday's Telegraph, he gushed about what he saw. Near the beginning of his account, he writes:

In all honesty, there has been so much furore about El Sistema in the musical world that I was prepared to be disappointed. Instead, I returned convinced that, alongside the huge additional benefit of harnessing the power of music to improve social cohesion, I had seen the template for music education in the 21st century.

As I wrote in the Star last month, there are many similar efforts underway in the Greater Toronto Area. They need our encouragement and support.

Disc Review: A surprising Bach turn with Canadian content from Bethlehem

 THE BACH CHOIR OF BETHLEHEM

Bach Magnificat BWV 243, Cantata BWV 191, Vivaldi Gloria (Analekta)

**  (out of 4)

I was fooled by the capital letters on the cover of this CD, thinking that people in the small Palestinian city (pop. 30,000) had, amidst the seemingly endless social, political and military turmoil that surrounds it, found some way to found a classically Western Bach choir. How inspirational, I thought.

I noticed that there were several notable Canadians among the soloists: countertenor Daniel Taylor; tenor Benjamin Butterfield; and bass-baritone Daniel Lichti. Wow, I thought

I listened to the CD without reading the booklet. The choir, led by Greg Funfgeld, is very good --- if not as polished as our best. The small orchestra sounds fine. The soloists are excellent (they also include sopranos Julia Doyle, who is English, and American Rosa Lamoreaux.

These are nice, solid, readings of the Greatest Choral Hits of the Baroque Period: J.S. Bach's Magnificat and Antonio Vivaldi's Gloria, with Bach's short cantata Gloria in excelsis Deo (BWV 191) added to fill out the disc. (For full details on the album, click on the image.)

Only then did I open the booklet. I discovered that this choir is from Bethlehem, Pennsylvania. At 111 years old, the 100-singer-strong chorus calls itself the Oldest Bach Choir in America. They host an annual Bach festival, which was the excuse for making this recording last May at First Presbyterian Church in Bethlehem.

Here's where the review-rating part gets interesting. If these had been Palestinians, I would have given the disc three-and-a-half stars for the marvellousness of the effort behind the music, even if the music itself was not ideally interpreted. Although I feel for the decline of the former steeltowns of Pennsylvania, I don't see how this disc adds anything to the dozens of excellent recordings already out there.

How's that for fairness in reviewing?

Here's a a clip of the opening to Bach's Magnificat that I really like. The conductor is Phillippe Herreweghe. The instrumentalists are from La Chapelle Royale in Paris. The voices are of the Collegium Vocale.

In 21st century, more people are making fine music in more places for more listeners than ever before

Our editors all want summaries and appreciations to close the year -- and the decade. Mine are coming later this week, and will, without a doubt, be inspired by the optimism my colleague Mark Swed showed off in yesterday's Los Angeles Times.

He ended his article with these words:

... in the last 10 years, there was more music made by more people and delivered in more accessible ways to more places and at higher quality than ever before. We should only be so resourceful when it comes to feeding the world's population or saving the planet.

Hear, hear.

Swed starts his article with contempoary Argentine composer Osvaldo Golijov, who is the star of the Toronto Symphony Orchestra's 2010 New Creations Festival in late February:

Ten years ago, cultural commentators found it fashionable to forecast the death of classical music. That bit of silliness ended on Sept. 5, 2000, with an unlikely work by an unlikely composer in an unlikely place. The Stuttgart Bach Academy in Germany commissioned four composers from different cultures to write new passions on each of the four Gospels. The third work, devoted to St. Mark, was by Osvaldo Golijov, an Argentine of Jewish Eastern European descent who had studied in Israel and Pennsylvania and settled in the Boston area.

Golijov used what felt right, which meant flamenco and rumba, Cuban drums and a Brazilian jazz singer, a Capoeira dancer and a rocking Venezuelan choir. The stiff Stuttgart Bach crowd sat in stony silence throughout the 90-minute premiere. But when it ended, there was wild cheering and foot stomping for 20 unforgettable minutes.

Dawn Upshaw is going to be coming to Toronto to be part of the TSO Golijov fiesta, so here is a foretaste, singing "Ayre":