The stars align for a refreshing return dip into Pond Life while I'm off until Sept. 7

In preparation for my final break before the start of a new music season, I cleared my desk on Thursday and discovered an extra copy of Pond Life, the 2-CD recording of Ann Southam's magically meditative suite for solo piano, as premiered by Christina Petrowska-Quilico last year.

I slipped the first disc into my home system on Thursday afternoon and marvelled anew at how Southam uses the simplest sequence of tones, repeated over and over again with clever variations of pitch and note-value, to create a new world by changing our relationship with both tonality and time.

On Friday, I found Inger Whist's kind note on last year's blog post. Then I discovered that Quilico's live performance of Pond Life at the Glenn Gould Studio has been posted on YouTube.

In our sea of shinier and noisier distractions, Pond Life may never get the attention it deserves. And, in a world where the term genius is tossed around with abandon, it probably means little when I say that I think that the poetry and craft behind this piece of music is pure genius -- as distilled by decades of experience.

But the more time I spend with Pond Life, the more special it becomes.

As I sign off until Sept. 7, I can't think of a better way to reconnect with my inner self, while appreciating the beauty of late summer, than by listening to and immersing myself totally in Pond Life without distraction on interruption.

Accomplishing that is much more difficult than it sounds. But the rewards will be, I suspect, all the richer.

(For noisier moments between now and Labour Day, you can't go wrong with Weeks 7 and 8 of the BBC Proms. There's something fabulous on offer literally every day. For live music locally, check out the remaining concerts at the Toronto Music Garden.)

I'm going to repeat the passage by Lao Tzu, as found in Book 2 of the Tao Te Ching, an ideal textual accompaniment (again, this old translation is by D.C. Lau) to listening to Pond Life:

Great perfection seems chipped,
Yet use will not wear it out;
Great fullness seems empty,
Yet use will not drain it;
Great straightness seems bent;
Great skill seems awkward;
Great eloquence seems tongue-tied.

Restlessness overcomes cold; stillness overcomes heat.

Here is our introduction to Petrowska-Quilico's journey into Pond Life, "Spatial View of Pond 1." For the rest of the YouTube videos, click here:

xxx

Bayreuth Festival offering worldwide web a Wagnerian afternoon at the opera today

Bayreuth Festival photo 

From looking at the press materials, it might think that German industrial giant Siemens has taken over from Katharina Wagner as the name-brand behind the Bayreuth Festival today.

There's a children's opera already underway in a day of live transmissions from inside Festspielhaus, which include a live presentation of Tankred Dorst's 2006 production of Die Walküre that starts at 11 a.m., EDST (4 p.m. in Bayreuth).

It looks like a strong international cast, led by the stolid Johan Botha as Siegmund. The conductor is Christian Thielemann.

There have been public screening areas set out in the Volksfestplatz. The rest of the world can watch a high-definition live-streaming broadcast on a site set up by Siemens. The opera will be made available for on-demand viewing tomorrow at 5:30 p.m., EDST.

To set yourself up, click here.

Unlike many other web offerings, you have to pay for this one. The admission charge is 14.90 euros, which entitles the customer to view live, view once on demand, and grants access to a variety of backstage featurettes, much like what the Metropolitan Opera has been doing.

For a sneak sample of today's music, here's a pirate recording of Botha singing "Winterstürme wichen dem Wonnemond," from Act 1, on July 28. Edith Haller is in the role of Sieglinde:

Look Ma, no hands! China's Got Talent double-amputee piano star tosses limitations out the window

The word inspirational doesn't even begin to describe China's Got Talent contestant Liu Wei, who didn't let losing both arms get in the way of his desire to learn to play the piano.

BBC Proms give chance to listen to Arvo Pärt's mesmerizing setting of the Passion according to St. John

Finished in 1982, but not published until 1989, Estonian Arvo Pärt's setting of the Passion according to St. John is large-scale proof of the incredible power of the composer's unique composition style. The BBC Singers along with a host of able guests delivered a stirring performance of the hour-long work during BBC Prom No. 43 on Tuesday night at Royal Albert Hall -- a concert that's available for free streaming on the web for a week.

It may not seem like ideal listening material for the end of summer, but Pärt's music has a hypnotic quality that provides its own mind-clearing rewards.

The broadcast begins with a brief overview of everything you need to know about the music. The repeated note patters and voice-instrument doubling may seem simplistic on the surface, but they rapidly create a self-sufficient sound world, if you let yourself slip inside the music.

I may be reducing this down too much, but, essentially, Pärt puts all of his musical faith in the ages-old poetic power of repetition and variation. The vocal score below, showing three measures from Pärt's Miserere (1989), show in colour how he interweaves and staggers his musical motifs:

 

Upstart New York City company deconstructs, then reconstructs an o+p+e+r+a in its version of show-and-tell

Gershwin Hotel photo 

An assortment of singers, musicians and opera junkies began gathering at the self-consciously funky, budget-priced Gershwin Hotel, on Manhattan's E. 27th St., last night for a four-day dissection of Mozart's Così fan tutte, with all forms of live social media welcome.

Rather than present a fully ready director's vision of the opera, Operamission has broken it down into four parts, assembled an orchestra (via a call on Twitter and its blog three weeks ago) and a large pool of singers (all led by Operamission artistic director/conductor Jennifer Peterson), a dramaturg and scores.

The public has, for a $10 admission per night ($20 for a four-evening commitment), been invited to see the opera come to life spontaneously, as everyone discusses each scene, then performs it. The audience can tweet questions and comments on the fly, among other spontaneous gestures of interaction.

It's a fascinating idea, potentially the best kind of show-and-tell for people who really want to get inside a composer and librettist's minds, understand the challenges faced by an orchestra and appreciate the work that each singer needs to put in to make a stack of printed pages, and their accumulated patina of tradition, come to life.

It's a format that fits perfectly with the little-bit-of-this, little-bit-of-that bombardment of information and reactions we receive and generate every day.

But, ultimately, the real enjoyment and appreciation of any artform needs to include a mysterious layer of pixie-dust polish to hide the warts, to transform it from a mundane collection of parts into a work of art. We love the foie gras, not how it came to our plate; behold the sculpture rather than a sweaty man with a welding torch.

I wish I could be at the Gershwin Hotel this week. I also wish that, on Saturday night, the artists were able to reassemble in the lobby one final time, to present the opera from beginning to end, seamlessly, without a Tweet in sight.

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Here are four very different interpretations, as seen through the sextet, "Alla bella Despinetta" (If you're going to watch only one, I suggest the last):

First, from a much-loved 2006 Glyndebourne production of Così (Luca Pisaron is Guglielmo, Miah Persson Fiordiligi, Topi Lehtipuu Ferrando, Anke Vondung Dorabella, Ainhoa Garmendia Despina and Nicolas Rivenq Don Alfonso):

Here are the young people from a June workshop at the University of West Florida:

Now, a little something Hair-like from Doris Dörrie's imagination, at the Berlin State Opera in 2002 (Fiordiligi is sung by Dorothea Röschmann, Dorabella: Katharina Kammerloher, Guglielmo: Hanno Müller-Brachmann, Ferrando: Werner Güra, Despina: Daniela Bruera, Don Alfonso: Roman Trekel):

Words fail for this Mexian film of the opera by Jesus Rodriguez, from 1996:

Summer music camp more about experiences, memories and growth than about the music itself

And now for a moment of really bad music mated with amazing experiences.

We're coming up to the last two weeks of August, when literally everything musical takes a breather before Labour day. It's also a time when all the kids who've been at summer music camp come home with 30 new texting pals and a head full of memories.

I thought I'd do a quick troll of 2010 classical music camp moments on YouTube. The irony of these clips is that, behind all the musical problems lie a range of experiences that have helped these kids grow as musicians and as human beings. Invisible are the collaborative spirit, the mastery of technical hurdles and the mixing of music and friendship -- something that's a bit more rare during the go-go schedules of the school year.

If you've ever attended a music camp, this should bring back a memory or two. If you haven't, think about encouraging some parents or children you know to give it a try next summer.

This bit of Bach Brandenburg 3 is from Vivace Music Camp. This is a common name for music camps, and, because the peoeple who posted this video didn't leave details, I can't tell you where this is:

Here is the percussion ensemble from Camp Allegro -- same problem with figuring out the location, although I think this is in Atlanta, GA:

Always timely, here is Brahm's Academic Festival Overture, as heard in California's Sonoma County woods last month, at Cazadero Performing Arts Camp:

The prize for sheer fun has to go to this group of kids from a show-choir camp (I have no idea where this happened):

Conservative Salzburg belies the forward-thinking content of 90-year-old summer festival

Jürgen Flimm has been working hard to bring more adventurous artistic perspectives to the five-week-long Salzburg Festival. One of the world's most ambitious and highly regarded summer festivals, it is celebrating its 90th year, and runs to the end of the month.

I suspect that the festival isn't as fusty as some people think. Its setting in Salzburg, which can come close to feeling like a 17th and 18th century mitteleuropean theme park, circumscribes every picture with the environmental equivalent of a gilded frame.

I hope you can understand French, because Arte has an excellent profile of Salzburg's younger artists available on free Web streaming here. (Don't worry about the registration process, it's painless, free and they won't pester you afterward.)

Salzburg Festival photo 

Although it doesn't fall into the artistically adventurous category, one of this summer's Salzburg highlights is a new production of Gounod's Roméo et Juliette, conducted by Yannick Nézet-Séguin (who was there for the previous production in 2008) and directed by Bartlett Sher, the man behind the just-opened Dancap production of South Pacific at the Four Seasons Centre in Toronto. The cast is impressive, and includes some additional Canadian content: Mercutio is sung by Torontonian Russell Braun (pictured above).

BBC Proms' Bach Day resurrects massive orchestral transcriptions alongside period-performance finery

It was Bach Day at the Proms yesterday, all captured on audio and available for free streaming until next weekend.

The programme that most interested me was conductor Andrew Litton leading the day's final concert, made up of orchestral transcriptions of some of J.S. Bach's best-known works, supplemented by two new commissions.

The concert opens with Leopold Stokowski's incredibly ponderous reimagining of the Toccata and Fugue in D minor. I can't stand it, because, even though Litton does the best he can, the orchestration kills the essential life in the music.

It's too bad we only get to hear the beginning and end of a Bach orchestral suite arranged by Henry Wood, because these two movements, which follow the Stokowski, are full of light and life.

There is much more to hear, including a Proms premiere from the underappreciated Percy Grainger and William Walton's The Wise Virgins ballet score, all inspired by Bach.

If you feel like cleansing your palate between the two halves of the concert, you can listen to John Eliot Gardiner's rollicking readings (the opening of the horn-happy No. 1 sounds like a downtown traffic jam) of the Brandenburg Concertos with the English Baroque Soloists from earlier in the day.

The fantastic website includes extensive downloadable notes.

Canadian Jan Lisiecki the latest prodigiously talented teen to set fingers on a piano keyboard

I have a review of 15-year-old Canadian pianist Jan Lisiecki in today's Star, but I can't find it online, so I'm pasting in the version I submitted after the recital at Stratford Summer Music on Thursday morning. The final of the three programs is on today at 11:15 a.m. (The photo is mine, from Thursday's recital.)

STRATFORD -- It doesn’t happen very often in a lifetime that a classical musician comes along who is truly out of the ordinary. Yet, even in a world resplendent in accomplished performers bearing diplomas from fine music schools and prizes from prestigious competitions, 15-year-old Calgarian Jan Lisiecki is something special.

Even though the piano-playing teen has clearly not yet grown into an adult body, he dazzled a Stratford Summer Music audience at St. Andrews Church with a matinée Chopin program on Thursday.

It was the first of three different concert programs he is presenting with the Canadian Tokai String Quartet, honouring the 200th anniversary year of the birth of composer Frédéric Chopin.

On the bill were two showy solo pieces, the Op. 18 Grande Valse Brillante and the Andante Spianato and Grand Polonaise of Op. 22, paired with the first of Chopin’s two piano concertos, with orchestra part reduced for string quartet.

Although it’s not easy to judge a musician’s overall artistry from the works of a single composer, written in a specific style, Lisiecki immediately made clear that he has a pro’s flawless technique, delivered with a facility that made these virtuoso showpieces look easy.

This is one of the secrets to imbuing Chopin’s music with the right balance of emotion and nobility. The Polish-born pianist-composer was a prototypical Romantic, leading an emotionally tortured life, cut short by physical frailty. Exiled from his home, he surrounded himself with the great painters, poets and patrons of Parisian society. Yet, despite all the drama, most of his music is about a deceptive transparency and elegance.

Achieving this kind of interpretation was Lisieski’s ultimate triumph on Thursday.

Chopin preferred the music room to the concert hall, so intimacy is key. If you get overrought in an intimate setting, the sturm und drang can get in the way of the music.

In a smaller venue, like Stratford’s St. Andrew’s Church, the teenager played with a fleet restraint, while also carefully showing off carefully shaped musical phrases balanced delicately with the inner voices in the music.

With eyes closed, one could have imagined the artist at the keyboard as a mature musician bringing years of experience and insight to some of the most popular pieces in the classical piano repertoire.

Earlier this year, the Fryderyk Chopin Institute in Poland released a recording of Lisiecki performing the two Chopin piano concertos with Sinfonia Varsovia and conductor Howard Shelley. These are gorgeous interpretations whose validity was proven in live performance in this summer festival town.

Not that the Piano Concerto No. 1 sounded as robust without a full orchestra backing up the piano. Chopin himself used chamber adaptations of his concertos to make private performances easier to organize, but the string quartet version is a bit too thin much of the time, and was not played with much finesse or balance by the Tokai quartet.

Fortunately, because Lisiecki’s solo part was compelling, the lack of a full-bodied concerto sound from the strings was a lot easier to overlook.

Lisiecki and the Tokais present their third and final all-Chopin musical matinée on Saturday. The pianist is offering up some Etudes, a Nocturne and, with the string players, the Piano Concerto No. 2. (For full info., visit www.stratfordsummermusic.ca)

It’s worth the drive.

If you can’t make it, keep your eyes and ears open, as the patriotic teenager is set to begin studies at the Royal Conservatory of Music’s Glenn Gould Professional School in Toronto next month. There are also rumours of a major-label international recording contract being finalized very soon.

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As I've mentioned before, I feel uneasy about children on stage and even more uneasy about treating them like adults, from a critical perspective. But musical prodigies have been around for as long as there's been music. Whether or not it's immediately obvious, there is likely an ambitious parent of guardian working hard to make it happen in the background, using as a foil any child's enthusiasm for a task that brings joy to his or her elders.

Today, I just thought I'd do a quick survey of some famous piano prodigies, each of whom has an interesting personal story -- and each of whom became a far more interesting artist in adulthood. But, before that, here is a cleverly edited Los Angeles Times profile of 3-year-old Richard Hoffmann, made at the Pasadena Public Library and posted online in Jan., 2009:

Lang Lang in 1996, age 14:

Martha Argerich in the early-1960s, around the time she turned 20:

Ivo Pogorelich in 1980, age 22:

Hélène Grimaud, in a recent video. She was 16 when she won acclaim for a Rachmaninov album in 1985.

Glenn Gould, in his early 20s, I'm guessing, at home:

CD Review: Gaudy, high-contrast Chopin from boundary-pushing young French pianist Lise de la Salle

I brought a new, all-Chopin CD with me for the drive yesterday to see and hear 15-year-old Calgarian Jan Lisiecki give the first of three all-Chopin recitals for Stratford Summer Music.

You can read about yesterday's recital in tomorrow's Star.

The disc I brought along for the drive is by Lise de la Salle, who, like Lisiecki, had a public performance début at a young age, and was only in her mid-teens when she began serious work at a top-notch music conservatory.

Both pianists were performing Chopin's concertos live yesterday -- Lisiecki tackling No. 1 in Stratford, de la Salle enjoying No. 2 at La Roque d'Anthéron festival with Sinfonia Varsovia (who accompany Lisiecki on his Chopin CD).

De la Salle turns 22 this year, and has been recording for French label Naive for eight years. The Chopin album is her fifth. The others have garnered all kinds of critical praise. De la Salle has about as full a concert calendar as any human being can handle.

So, I slipped the CD into my car's audio system and was shocked. The disc opens with Chopin's four multi-dimensional Ballades, which run the gamut of moods, from quietly wistful to manic. De la Salle's technique is incredible, and she is capable of that silken touch that Chopin's quiet passages demand. But, otherwise, she commits every aesthetically self-indulgent crime imaginable, including playing quiet passages extra slowly and then speeding up whenever there's a crescendo.

The disc is the aural equivalent of an actor chewing scenery. Obviously, many listeners will be captivated, but I couldn't stand it. (Click on the disc cover image for details about this album.)

Every artist wants to put their individual stamp on an interpretation. Especially in the case of repertoire that's frequently recorded, they want to give listeners a reason to pay attention. But there is a point where individuality oversteps the boundary between compelling and attention-seeking, between tasteful and gaudy.

From the music marketers' point of view, there's also the issue of novelty. In the classical canon, it's not the music that is new, but the artist and their interpretation. Frequently, it seems, the quest for novelty trumps respect for art. 

Or am I just being a cranky critic?

Feeling a bit queasy from having these perennial issues rattling around in my brain, I sat down for Lisiecki's live performance and was treated to something completely different and refreshing. Oh, bliss.

Here is a promotional video made by Naïve for de la Salle's Chopin album, followed by two clips from earlier efforts (Liszt's take on a Prelude and Fugue in A minor by J.S. Bach, followed by two movements from Prokofiev's Roméo et Juliette suite):