The fine classical music keeps on coming, even in the dog and beach days of summer

As I prepare for 10 days of staring mindlessly at (and, hopefully, splashing joyfully in) the Atlantic, I've done a quick perusal of what's available and what's coming up.

There's no lack of choice for people looking for quality classical programming at no cost, which can be enjoyed from the air conditioned comfort of home or (if you have a data plan) the mobility of your favourite portable electronic device.

For the true, live experience, check out the Toronto Summer Music Festival. If I were in town, I definitely wouldn't want to miss pianist André Laplante's Chopin and Liszt programme on Aug. 3 at the MacMillan Theatre.

I'll be back on Aug. 10.

BBC Proms:
-There is a long list of concerts available for listening, a mix of popular core repertoire with new British music.
- In a light vein, coming up on Saturday is Sondheim at 80, featuring Bryn Terfel.
- The full listings for the week of Aug. 2 are here. Aug. 8 features a visit by Canadian pianist Louis Lortie, playing Mozart in a programme that also includes some Messiaen, Elgar and Brahms, conducted by Andrew Davis.

Verbier Festival on medici.tv:
-There is much to choose from in the video-on-demand section.
-Coming early Saturday morning is a solo piano recital by Nicholas Angelich, who is always a treat.
-Sunday afternoon's festival-closing closing presentation is Richard Strauss's Salome, conducted by Valery Gerghiev, and featuring Deborah Voigt in the title role.

If you feel like something a bit more hip, check out Arte Lounge (for which Torontonian Measha Brueggergosman has done several introductory interviews). It is a much more adventurous counterpart to Bravo! TV's Live at the Rehearsal Hall.
-My revelation was young pianist Martin Helmchen. You can catch clips of "Regard des anges" from Olivier Messiaen's Vingt regards sur l'enfant Jésus, as well as a hyper-articulated "Courante" from J.S. Bach's Keyboard Partita No. 6.

 

Ben Heppner picks favourite music for Sunday segment on Jazz FM's Host Your Own Radio Show

Jazz FM photo

Toronto's Jazz FM 91.1 has sent out a release saying that Ben Heppner is the star guest of Sunday evening's edition of Host You Own Radio Show, which airs at 10 p.m. Station president Ross Porter will be on air, too.

This guest spot has become a feature of the station's fundraising drives. People can give money and put in a request to have a show dedicated to their musical pleasures.

In La Scala Romeo and Juliet ballet production, there's more fighting behind the scenes than on stage

Teatro alla Scala photo

I've just read a theatrical horror story that made me think of the Marx Brother's Night at the Opera crossed with the most biting satire one could imagine about mounting a production -- except that it's all real.

In the style of current TV storytelling, I'm going to introduce it from the closing paragraphs, then let you click on the link to read the harrowing journey to that moment. It's a long but gripping read, as Britain's Classic FM presenter Natalie Wheen chronicles, in The Arts Desk, every hairpin twist and turn in a new production of Kenneth MacMillan's classic 1965 choreography for the ballet Romeo and Juliet at Teatro alla Scala, in Milan.

(When I interviewed Italian soprano Serena Farnoccia earlier this year, during her wonderful turn in the Canadian Opera Company's production of Maria Stuarda, she mentioned that she doesn't accept many opera engagements in Italy anymore, because of the headaches leading up to opening night.)

Granted, there's plenty of nail-biting before every first curtain. But this is scarier than most.

Here is how Wheen's story ends:

At 8pm, the theatre is full with Milan in its finery. Kevin Rhodes enters the pit in his evening dress, his orchestra in shorts and T-shirts. I wondered whether they were the faces he expected to see.

So the bustle of the market starts, the swashbuckling swordfights, Juliet and the nurse and meeting the unlucky Paris. The team holds its breath before the opening to the Capulet’s ball - which seems to go pretty well – swags and candelabra more or less all present. The change to the Balcony scene works its magic – until someone knocks a fader and a great streak of white light blares across the stage.

And you could hear everyone in the theatre thinking, “For goodness sake, why can’t they get something as basic as that right?”

And here is how it all began.

As a soundtrack, here is a clip of Andrei Gavrilov playing the "Montagues and Capulets" scene from Sergei Prokofiev's score on the piano (in case you didn't know, Prokofiev composed everything at the piano, then worked out the orchestration afterward):

15-year-old Canadian piano sensation Jan Lisiecki coming to concert venues near Toronto

 

Teenage Calgary pianist Jan Lisiecki is the classical world's equivalent of Justin Bieber (ardent fans gushing over an angelic face framed by those currently fashionable sideways licks of hair), except that Jan really has musical talent.

Coinciding with the 200th anniversary of the birth of Frédérick Chopin, the only child of a Calgary Polish-immigrant couple has been charming the world with his interpretations of that Romantic composer's music.

All year, Jan has been performing the two piano concertos, as well as a selection of solo pieces. In May, the Fryderyk Chopin Institute in Poland released a disc of Jan playing the two concertos with Sinfonia Varsovia and conductor Howard Shelley. (For CD info, click here.)

The disc really is beautiful. Jan's playing -- recorded in 2008 and 2009 -- is technically flawless and the music is shaped elegantly.

Jan also has his own YouTube channel. The Chopin and Liszt pieces here are much less convincing.

Given how many times Jan has played his Chopin repertoire in the last six months alone, I'm willing to bet that what an audience may hear tomorrow could be very different from what he has recorded in the past.

Fresh from concerts at the Festival of the Sound, Jan is heading Hamilton-ward today for an all-Chopin concert tomorrow night at Mohawk College for the Brott Summer Festival.

On Aug. 12, 13 & 14, Jan returns to Ontario to perform three separate programmes of Chopin with the Tokai String Quartet at Stratford Summer Music.

If you want to immerse yourself in the world of Jan Lisiecki, you can visit his website.

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Someone like Jan presents a challenge for me. As a rule, I don't review students. Jan is 15, but he's released his first disc and has the travel calendar of a professional.

I have a philosophical opposition to encouraging child prodigies, thinking they should go through as normal a childhood development process as possible. However, I also realise that a huge proportion of the world's great musical artists set foot on the stage well before adulthood, and needed that early encouragement and acclaim to bring them to wide attention.

I can only hope that Jan will find his happy balance between music and the rest of life, and continue to treat an eager public with what, at this point, looks like a keen, unaffected artistry.

CD Reviews: 19th century Russian piano music long on charm, short on sustained interest

Naxos recently released two new discs of piano music by 19th century Russian Antons: Rubinstein (1829-1894) and Arensky (1861-1906), both nicely interpreted by American pianists.

The label wants to record as much of Western music as it possibly can. Having begun this project nearly a generation ago, we've reached the stage where there isn't an automatic case for appreciating the compositions being dusted off. 

Knowing how tastes change from one age to another, it's possible that, if the planet is still spinning, someone in 2110 might find something of enduring value in these collections of short pieces. If nothing else, this is an easily accessible document of the musical sensibilities of people born before the advent of sound recording, without having to go look for old scores and learn how to play the pieces.

Most of the pieces on the Rubinstein disc, recorded by Joseph Banowetz in 2008, are world-premiere recordings. These pieces are much better suited to long winter nights by the fire than a concert hall. They're charming but, after the first few minutes, manage to sound remarkably similar despite the fact that the disc spans 42 years of Rubinstein's output. The music is full of repetition, which doesn't help. 

This is anodyne, beige music, with all of the impact of great-grandma's tea-rose wallpaper and gold-bordered china. Rubinstein's real legacy is the founding of the music conservatory in St. Petersburg, which helped nurture later composers we hold so dear.

(As far as these world-premieres is concerned, there is a huge archive of Melodyia recordings somewhere in a Moscow basement, which, if it doesn't contain some of these pieces, means that even the ultra-conservative Soviets didn't find much of value in this music.) For all the details, including some sound samples, click on the disc image.

The music of Arensky, a product of Rubinstein's pioneering teaching, is more technically complex, more virtuosic and, consequently, better suited to a public piano recital. He was one of Sergei Rachmaninov's teachers -- a legacy that this album makes clear.

Adam Neiman's fleet, elegant interpretations (also recorded in 2008) of these Etudes and Esquisses makes for very pleasant listening. Visually, we have a tasteful, modern stripe instead of tea roses.

If I had to keep one of these two albums, I'd choose this one for its breezy feel. I certainly wouldn't mind hearing some of the 12 Etudes, Op. 74, or the six lovely Op. 52 Esquisses, subtitled "Près de la mer," (Near the Sea) in live performance. For details, click on the disc image.

Here is Richard Alston playing an Etude from the Pièces Charactéristiques, Op. 36, which are not on the disc. This interpretation lacks Neiman's finesse:

Placido Domingo up for live, on location broadcast of Rigoletto in Mantua on Sept. 4 and 5

I'm trying to imagine the advance planning, preparation, rehearsal and overall logistical complexity of mounting a live broadcast of Verdi's opera Rigoletto on location in Mantua. But that's exactly what the BBC and Italy's RAI are planning to do on Sept. 4 and 5.

Expected to sing the title role is evergreen, ever-ready Placido Domingo.

You can read all the details in yesterday's Guardian.

The cost of this sort of enterprise must be staggering, as well, costing, I'm sure as much as a full-scale, full-run new production of the same opera for a stage. It says a lot about the undimmed appeal of opera that there is money available to do this.

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On Feb. 7, I blogged about what one could call some reset-in-Toronto operas, just for fun (my top suggestion was La clemenza di TTC).

Toronto couturière Rosemarie Umetsu (who has slipped some pretty impressive gowns on Measha Brueggergosman, Karina Gauvin and Nicole Cabell, among other artists) responded with a couple of great suggestions, which I never posted here. The Mantua Rigoletto reminded me that I still had her note:

'Lucia di Landsdowne+Bloor'
The neighborhood has cleaned up considerably, however a few years back and Donizetti may not have needed the inspiration of Sir Walter Scott to write Lucia (di Lammermoor). Not to mention, the number of locals that may answer to the name Lucia's to cast!! 

'The Barber of Yorkville'
Given it probably holds the largest number of hair salons per capita over one little plot of land in Toronto!

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Here's a little clip of a different kind of live, on-location opera, courtesy of Chcago's experimental Redmoon Theater:

Summer performance by Marc-André Hamelin as fresh as the sea air around him

Photo: Cathy Fuller 

There's a 19th century town on a quiet bay nestled on a small rocky cape about an hour north of Boston where comfortable city people go during the summer to breathe in the the fresh, salty air and admire the work of the local colony of visual artists.

Rockport, and it's chamber music festival was graced by one of the world's finest pianists, Marc-André Hamelin, last month, to help inaugurate the Shalin Liu Performance Center, its new concert hall overlooking Sandy Bay.

Boston radio station WGBH recorded the concert, and NPR has packaged it with a background article as well as a 6 minute interview with the Montreal-born pianist. Click on the picture for all the details.

Avilable for a free listen is Alban Berg's Op. 1 Piano Sonata, Franz Liszt's B-minor Piano Sonata, a short Tchaikovsky-inspired Hamelin Etude and a gorgeous little picturesque by Leopold Godowsky: Gardens of Buitenzorg.

Multitasking may the the greatest myth of our time

The electronically mediated live-concert experience is now officially a culture-wide phenomenon.

At the concert Sting gave last night with the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, I noticed that the common practice of capturing a live concert on camera or video has caught on with older audience members. The couple you see appeared to be in their late 60s (and I didn't ask for their permission to take this shot, so I've blotted out their heads).

As I fussed with my Blackberry and balanced my reporter's pad on my lap, I was missing out on the musical moment happening just a few metres away, reminding me of how multitasking may be the greatest myth of our times.

One task will always take precedence over another. Curiously, it's the act of mediating something actual that usually takes precedence over experiencing the moment.

In texting while driving, we are focusing on the text, not the streetcar to our left. In capturing a live concert on camera or video, we are focused on the viewfinder screen, not the performer(s).

Isn't it like staring into your lover's face while thinking about how you forgot to clean the lint filter on the dryer a couple of hours earlier?

I think the (perhaps illusory) slower pace of summertime might be the right occasion to do a daily focusing exercise, where you consciously empty your head of other thoughts while focusing on the scent of a wild rosebush in bloom, the creeping oranges and purples of a nice sunset, the sweet waft from a bakery as you walk by, or on a beautiful piece of music.

You can't engage all your senses in the electronic world. But you can in real life.

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One of the interesting people I've met recently is Alec Dempster, a Mexican native who has  been playing ethnomusicologist with traditional son jarocho music from that country's folk traditions. He is now spreading its gospel in Toronto through his band, Con pan.

Besides being an accomplished musician, Dempster, is an old-fashioned renaissance man, who is a dab hand at graphic arts. He's showing off his wares today from 1 p.m. to 9 p.m. (at table A27) at the New Bloor Festival, an attempt to turn an overlooked stretch of Toronto's main east-west thoroughfare into a place worth investigating.

You can find out more about Alec by clicking on the poster.

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And now, just because it's available, is a clip of French pianist Alexandre Tharaud playing the simplest of pieces -- Erik Satie's Gnossienne No. 1 -- at the Edison Music Awards gala last month:

Farmer-turned-tenor Anthony Rolfe Johnson cultivated the finest kind of craft

It's one of those gloomy, raining mornings that seem all the more grim because it's summer, and I'm thinking about the incredible artistry of a singer who thought he would rather be a farmer, and who ended up cultivating crop after crop of exquisitely cultivated music.

English tenor Anthony Rolfe Johnson died on Wednesday, aged 69, after a long battle with Alzheimer's.

There's a nice appreciation of his life and contribution to art song and opera in yesterday's Telegraph.

The singer appeared as comfortable on the opera stage as in recital, in Baroque repertoire or the 20th century.

Here he is as Orfeo in Act III of Claudio Monteverdi's great opera, accompanied by John Eliot Gardiner and the English Baroque Soloists:

Here are three examples of his exceptional song talents: "Abendstern" by Franz Schubert and Francis Poulenc's "Bleuet" (accompanied by his longtime accompanist Graham Johnson), followed by Ivor Gurney's take on "Down by the Salley Gardens: (accompanied by david Willison):

I'll close with Benjamin Britten's bleak setting of "Before Life and After," by Thomas Hardy. Johnson is at the piano:

A time there was--as one may guess
And as, indeed, earth's testimonies tell -
Before the birth of consciousness,
When all went well.

None suffered sickness, love, or loss,
None knew regret, starved hope, or heart-burnings;
None cared whatever crash or cross
Brought wrack to things.

If something ceased, no tongue bewailed,
If something winced and waned, no heart was wrung;
If brightness dimmed, and dark prevailed,
No sense was stung.

But the disease of feeling germed,
And primal rightness took the tinct of wrong;
Ere nescience shall be reaffirmed
How long, how long?

When to applaud at a classical concert is a debate that isn't about to end anytime soon

The Guardian's music critic, and BBC Radio presenter, Tom Service notes in a short review of a Proms concert that the audiences at Royal Albert Hall are beginning to applaud enthusiastically between movements of concert pieces, and thinks it's a Good Thing.

There are two opposing camps in the classical music world. One says that applause should be held until the end of a symphony, concerto or song cycle. The other says that listeners shouldn't have to bottle up their appreciation if there are moments of silence available to express it.

People from the second camp remind us that reverential silence is a 20th century phenomenon, not something that has existed at concerts since the first public auditoriums were built in the 17th century.

The debate leaves me feeling conflicted. There are some pieces of music that, to my mind, demand silence between movements. I can't imagine applauding between sections of Bach's B-minor Mass or Shostakovich's 'Leningrad' Symphony or Schubert's Winterreise song cycle. But, during more lighthearted fare, it feels less jarring to let loose with a cheer or two.

Some conductors will hold up a silencing hand while keeping their back rigid toward the audience, in an attempt to keep clapping under control.

On Tuesday night, Ben Heppner -- who otherwise chatted amiably with the audience between sections of his recital -- valiantly stared at the ceiling, tight-lipped, as his Stratford patrons clapped promiscuously between individual art songs. Few people got the message.

Ultimately, clapping between movements doesn't matter nearly as much as my true pet peeve at classical concerts and recitals: the one or two people who begin to clap and shout before they've heard the final chord.

My ideal concert experience includes a moment of silence, perhaps even 15 seconds of silence, after a particularly moving piece of music or breathtaking performance. It's not a question of reverence, but an almost physical need to savour and absorb the beauty of what has just transpired. 

For me, the premature expostulators destroy that moment and, because the last notes are not allowed to linger for a moment in the concert space, I take it as a sign of disrespect toward the composer, the interpreters on stage, and my own need for a moment of quiet reverence.

On Tuesday night, a couple of people began to clap in the middle of a song, just because there was a moment of silence as the mood shifted, mid-poem.

Were those people really listening?

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Something to check out on BBC Radio 3's iPlayer menu of Proms concerts is pianist Maria Joao Pires, who gave an all-Chopin solo recital last night at Royal Albert Hall.

Ironically, in his introduction to the recital, Tom Service tells the audience, "You are encouraged not to applaud in order to maintain the sense of nocturnal reverie."