Tonight in Toronto, you won't find a crazier head trip than Myra Davies' 50-Minute Ring at Music Gallery

Some artists are meant to live on the fringe; their aesthetic, their view of seeing the world, filters and re-interprets and creates in a way that will rarely connect with an audience that doesn't want to be provoked or teased. And if the artist can't ruffle any plumage, they feel they haven't done their job.

Myra Davies is one of those people. In 2006, the sometime alt-musician and spoken-word artist spent some time in an alternative venue presenting her own twisted, 50-minute take on Wagner's Ring of the Nibelung cycle. She returns for one performance tonight, at the Music Gallery, with a group of like-minded provocateurs: sound artist Christopher Willes, pianist Gregory Oh and visual artist Lee Henderson.

What's intriguing about this mutant show is that it's more about the relationship between us and the Ring, than it is about the operas themselves. There's no crazier head trip available for $20 tonight in Toronto.

For all the details, click here.

Here are a few pictures from four years ago, compiled into a video clip. The Walt Disney song is, erm, an extra, I guess:

Controversy over choice of winner brews at International Chopin Competition in Warsaw

There is controversy after every single major music competition as judges square off against each other and the audience squares off against the judges and against each other. It's one of the byproducts of passionate engagement.

The goings on in Warsaw this week are a case in point.

Since 1955, the International Chopin Piano Competition has been held every five years. It enjoys a lot of prestige, based on helping launch the careers of Maurizio Pollini (who won in 1955), Martha Argerich (1960) and Garrick Ohlsson (1970). It turned Yundi Li into a sensation when he won in 2000.

The 2010 winner is Russian Yulianna Avdeeva -- not the audience favourite. Here is the story from thenews.pl. The headline reads Controversial Chopin Competition Verdict Stuns Music Lovers:

The consensus before the verdict was announced late last night was that Ingolf Wunder of Austria, who eventually shared the Second Prize with Lucas Geniusas of Russia/Lithuania, was the more worthy of the top award than Avdeeva of Russia.

Musicologist Marek Dyżewski, a former rector of the Music Academy in Wrocław, told Polish Radio that the Russian pianist failed to communicate the beauty of Chopin’s music in her interpretations.

In his view, the result could be harmful for the future of the Warsaw Chopin Competition as the best pianists may feel reluctant to take part in the event, anticipating an unfair verdict.

Kacper Miklaszewski of the  Ruch Muzyczny periodical says that Avdeeva has all the makings of a classical music star who is able to attract the crowds, but her interpretations lack the spirit of Chopin’s music.

Lidia Kozubek, a prominent pianist of the older generation, describes the verdict as “terrifying”.

In an interview for the news.pl, jury member Kevin Kenner,  Second Prize winner at the Warsaw Competition in 1990, justified the decision.

“Avdeeva has a very deep understanding of the score, the kind of relationship to the score  which no other pianist in this competition had. She looked into the score for her creative ideas. It was the source of virtually everything she did and she was also one of the most consistent competitors throughout the event,” he said.

Jury Chairman Andrzej Jasiński admitted that if the jury had taken into account solely the interpretation of the concerto in the final round Ingolf Wunder would have been the winner.

 In addition to the Second Prize, Wunder received special prizes for the best performance of a concerto and of the Polonaise-Fantasy.

A graduate of the Universitat fur Musik und Darstellende Kunst in Vienna, Wunder  is currently continuing his studies under the guidance of the eminent Polish pianist Adam Harasiewicz, the winner of the Chopin Competition in 1955 and for many years a resident of Vienna. 

In an exclusive interview for the news.pl, Wunder said: “I owe Harasiewicz my way to understanding Chopin. Life, and also playing Chopin, is a guest, and I am just at the beginnings  and I have much to learn. Harasiewicz definitely led me in the right way and made me understand Chopin’s music, something I did not have five years ago.”

Commenting on Wunder for the news.pl, Polish pianist Pawel Kowalski said: “His playing is a mixture of technical perfection and a very Polish spirit. You can hear he was spending hours with Adam Harasiewicz who won the Warsaw Competition 55 years ago.  People were saying at the time that Harasiewicz played like Rubinstein. Wunder’s playing is in the same category. He has no technical problems whatsoever. There is simplicity in his phrasing. His pianism is absolutely perfect. [Polish composer] Witold Lutosławski once said: ‘the music begins where the words end’.”

 

The competitors' performances were streamed live on the Web and have been archived them on the competition's site. So you can reach your own conclusions.

You can hear Avdeeva's finals performance of Chopin's E minor Concerto here. It's smooth, but certainly not memorable.

The sole Canadian competitor, Leonard Gilbert, didn't make it past the semi-finals (Stage II). You can listen to his playing here.

I don't want to take anything away from Chopin or this prestigious competition, but my main qualm about this whole thing is I really don't see how we can judge the merits of any artist with the music of a single composer.

DVD Review: André Previn as music world’s man of many faces and places

André Previn: A Bridge Between Two Worlds
(Unitel Classica)
*** (out of 4)

Jazz people know and love him, as do fans of Hollywood film scores, opera and classical music. Over his 81 years, André Previn has led a remarkably productive, eclectic and acclaimed career as a composer, pianist, conductor and eager collaborator.

He has even spent time as tabloid fodder, when he took on Mia Farrow as the third of his five marriages.

Although pretty slim, this DVD offers up a tidy, nicely balanced, 51-minute version of this-is-your-life, André Previn, made by Lillian Birnbaum and Peter Stephan Jungk in 2008. The sole bonus is an excellent live performance from the Mozarteum in Salzburg, from 2000. It features Previn at the piano, in Mozart’s Piano Quartet in G minor, K.476.

In the doc, we see Previn in a live musical piano duo with Oscar Peterson, on British TV doing comedy with an orchestra in black-and-white and, best of all, we get to appreciate him through the lens of the important women in his life: Farrow, ex-fifth wife, violinist Anne-Sophie Mutter, and soprano Renée Fleming, who premiered his opera adaptation of Tennessee Williams' Streetcar Named Desire.

Much of the talking is done in taxis, minivans and trains, giving the impression that Previn is always on the move. On one train, he says that his constant search for new challenges has a simple motive: If you say you’re happy with what you’re doing and want to keep doing it, “that’s when you get old and stale.”

It’s an inspiration (or kick in the ass) for people in any field, at any age.

 

Exultate Chamber Singers open 30th season Friday with two of the 20th century's finest Requiem settings

On Friday, the excellent Exultate Chamber Singers open their 30th season with my favourite setting of the Requiem Mass -- the one by Maurice Duruflé (1902-1986). They will also sing the powerful music of Duruflé's English organist-composer counterpart, Herbert Howells (1892-1983) -- including his very different Requiem.

The choir will be led by its founding artistic director, University of Toronto professor and St. Thomas's Anglican Church music director, John Tuttle. This is Tuttle's final season with the choir, which was born out of a group of university students who wanted to keep working with him after graduation.

Tuttle is being replaced next season by New Zealander, Dr. Karen Grylls (she is the second Kiwi to take over an excellent local choir, joining Elise Bradley, who became the artistic director of the Toronto Children's Choir in 2007).

Friday's concert is being accompanied by Matthew Larkin at the organ of St. Thomas's Church, 383 Huron St. (just south of Bloor St.). Tickets will be available at the door $15-$25, or you can call 416-971-9229. You can check out the choir's website here.

To give you an idea of what Howells' Requiem sounds like, here is a clip from the Sidney Sussex Choir from Cambridge visiting Memorial Chapel at Stanford University last year:

It takes a lot of guts to tell a composer that their new piece is not in any shape to be performed

Imagine a man walking past a new made-to-measure shop and seeing a nice-looking suit in the window. He walks in, tells the tailor he's a size 42, would like something in a grey Glen plaid with pleated and cuffed trousers the following Friday afternoon, pays in full and then walks out.

This is just asking for trouble on delivery day, isn't it?

I was wondering last night at the Soundstreams concert how often commissions for new music happen exactly like this.

Very, very few composers write on spec; most work to fill commissions that come, usually, because the commissioner has some experience with this composer's work -- but not always. Often, the piece has to be programmed for a subscription season well before anyone has seen a finished score. Sometimes the finished score doesn't arrive until two weeks before performance night, meaning that, aside from last-minute tweaks, one is stuck with the fabric and cut, like it or not.

In my review of the concert, I didn't have the space to say how awful I thought two of the three premieres (Javier Alvárez's Dias como sombra and Analia Llugdar's El sueño de Aquiles) were. A third piece, Raúl Tudón's 2009 Rhythmic Structure of the Wind, was interesting in its improvisational potential, but ultimately more of a curiosity than a composition.

Do I hate new music? No. But when people experiment without using the full potential of your accompanists (four skilled percussionists, in this instance), deconstruct the text so that it becomes unintelligible and fail to tie it all together with a coherent narrative thread, what's left to enjoy?

On the other hand, risk-free music is not an option for a living artform. Too many orchestras, opera companies and soloists prefer buying off-the-rack. But there are ways of improving the likelihood of a positive outcome. The most important, I would think, is the need for a strong artistic voice from the commissioner, who provides detailed instructions to the composer and is prepared to declare that the new work is not ready for public performance if the result isn't to their liking.

How many artistic directors of new music organizations have the guts to say to a composer, sorry, this is not good? Does too much of our new music scene embrace the view that all creation is good? It it a No Composer Left Behind policy?

I want to illustrate my point with someone we can all relate to: Chopin -- an unassailable great, lauded and magnified during this, his 200th anniversary year. But, someone snuck a real clunker into his posthumous catalogue, a fugue that was probably a personal musical exercise. It has an excellent subject, but Chopin runs out of ideas after introducing the third voice. It's no surprise that most pianist steer clear.

Here is Vladimir Ashkenazy, making it sound as uninteresting as possible:

 

Canadian icon Gordon Pinsent reads Canadian icon Justin Bieber

I don't get to watch This Hour Has 22 Minutes much any more, so I missed this little gem, which I have to share, courtesy of CBC Television:

Italian pianist Alessandro Marangoni dazzles Toronto audience with poise and polish

My review of last night's recital by Alessandro Marangoni appears to have made it neither into print nor online at the Star, so here it is:

Sitting upright in front of a gleaming black concert grand piano in white tie and tails, 31-year-old Italian pianist Alessandro Marangoni cut a dashing, old-school figure for his North American début at Jane Mallett Theatre on Tuesday night.

All that was missing to cap an enchanted program of 19th century and early 20th century party pieces was a video projection of an over-decorated salon,  to make up for the drab, Modernist hall.

At first, the Music Toronto audience was not sure what to make of this guest. Weaned on a diet of Great Pieces from the classical canon, many people must have been taken aback by the lighthearted fare.

Marangoni opened with a fantasy on a theme from Mozart’s opera Don Giovanni, whipped up by Muzio Clementi (1752-1832), then continued with four of Gioachino Rossini’s “sins of old age,” written in his post-operatic retirement in the 1850s and ‘60s.

At intermission, I heard one audience member saying how much she enjoyed Maragnoni’s playing, but wished he had been more ambitious with his program. In reality, any pianist needs to conquer huge technical hurdles before being able to make these musical soufflés rise.

The Italian not only played well, but also added graceful contours and elegant colouring. There wasn’t a single note or phrase that Marangoni hadn’t honed to the point where it could sound as if it were being born in the moment.

The second half of the concert included more fun – three pieces by conductor Victor De Sabata (1892-1967), a bit of an Art Deco detour in the otherwise gilded evening – as well as substantial fare by Ferrucio Busoni (1866-1924) and Frédéric Chopin (1810-1849).

The Chopin Andante spianato and Grande Polonaise was a marvel of polish and eloquence – very much in the composer’s own style of playing, as history would have it.

The audience, finally realising what a prodigious talent they had in the room, kept calling Marangoni back for more.

Hopefully, this marked the start of a long and satisfying career for Marangoni on this side of the Atlantic.

+++

Here is one of the Péchés de vieillesse Marangoni played last night at the Music Toronto recital (this clip from a summer-festival recital in Italy a few months ago):

 

CD Reviews: Two opera singers bring their dramatic gifts to the world of song

Toronto tenor Lawrence Wiliford and Austrian mezzo-soprano Angelika Kirschlager are a treat to watch and hear on an opera stage. Both have powerful yet lyric instruments. Both are excellent actors that burn with notable intensity. Both also love art song. They show how drama and intimacy of can complement each other on new albums. Neither artist is about pretty singing as a goal; instead they find the emotional kernel of each song and try to express it as clearly as possible.

Both artists have also found 20th century repertoire that we don't hear every day, yet rewards the careful listener. Both CDs deserve 4 stars out of 4:

LAWRENCE WILIFORD & JENNIFER SWARTZ
Divine Musick (ATMA Classique)
Anyone touched deeply by the power of the Canadian Opera Company's current production of Benjamin Britten's Death in Venice owes it to themselves to give this disc a try.
Britten, whose heart was failing during the period that he wrote the opera, had a stroke following his heart surgery, which left him partially paralized from 1973 to his death in 1976. Before that, whenever he could, Britten would accompany his partner, tenor Peter Pears, on piano. After the stroke, Britten had to give up the piano. Instead of torturing himself even more by turning over the keyboard to someone else, the composer began writing for voice and harp. And because Britten was frail, his writing became even more spare.
Toronto tenor Lawrence Wiliford (who is next on stage in Opera Atelier's upcoming production of Handel's Acis and Galatea) has teamed up with Montreal Symphony Orchestra principal harp Jennifer Swartz in this gorgeously layered selection of late instrumental -- the Suite for Harp, commissioned in 1969) and vocal pieces -- six Folk Songs, A Birthday Hansel (commissioned by the Queen for her mother's 75th birthday), Five Songs from Harmonia Sacra and, the most powerful of all, the last of Britten's Canticle series, The Death of Saint Narcissus, a particularly sharp piece of poetry by T.S. Eliot.
Whether its a stroll through the old Ash Grove or something a bit weightier, Wiliford unfailingly strikes the right mood. Swartz's nimble fingers and heavenly touch are a bonus. The booklet includes all the lyrics. (For more information, as well as audio samples, visit the ATMA website, by clicking on the artists' names at the top.)

ANGELIKA KIRSCHLAGER
Sings Joseph Marx (CPO)
Because he came at the end of the great line of Austro-German composers of Lieder, Joseph Marx (1882-1964) is often treated as last and least. But his tonally adventurous, post-Romantic writing is fascinating. Often, the piano sounds like it has lost its bearings, as the accompaniment drifts away in unrelated key signatures, like an autumn leaf being carried on eddies of wind. But the wind is the vocal line, which knows exactly where it's going.
Most of the Lieder on this enchanting album -- 11 settings from the Italian Song Book not chosen by Hugo Wolf, eight sundry Lieder -- are from Marx's youth. The sublime Verlkärtes Jahr (Illuminated Year) cycle is from the early 1930s (Marx, a busy educator, wrote little in his later years).
Once the ear adjusts to Marx's snaky tonalities, these songs begin to reveal the economy of means by which each poem is brought to musical life. Kirschlager glides over the material with the lightness of a butterfly -- but always finds a way to convey a deeper emotional message, as well. Anthony Spiri is a sensitive and evocative accompanist on the piano. The booklet includes all the texts, in translation. (For more information, you can link to Atelier Grigorian's website by clicking on Kirschlager's name, above.)

A rare chance tonight to hear veteran violinist and teacher Miriam Fried in a live Toronto recital

As part of her teaching residency this term at University of Toronto's Faculty of Music, Romanian-born violinist Miriam Fried (member of the Mendelssohn String Quartet) is giving a recital this evening at Walter Hall. She is one of those rare musicians who is just as inspirational as a no-bull teacher as she is on stage as a performer. Fried has a magnetic personality, both as a person and as a musician, which should make for a great musical outing. 

The 7:30 p.m. programme is juicy, including Beethoven's "Kreutzer" Sonata and Bartok's Sonata No. 1. Her accompanist is Dina Vainshtein (tickets are $25 & $35 at 416-978-3744).

In case you need an introduction, here are three clips. The first two are of Fried with her husband, Paul Bliss (on viola) and violinist Hye-Ji Kim, performing Dvorak's Terzetto (once you get past the slightly wonky sound, it's a wonderful performance) at the Festival de Música de Santa Caterina in Brazil last January, followed by some thoughts on teaching:

Less vs More in Opera: How can composer Benjamin Britten do so much with so little?

How is it that, with the right training, a 50kg person is capable of overpowering someone twice her weight?

That was the analogy I was looking for in trying to describe how Benjamin Britten's spare operatic orchestrations pack as much of a wallop as Richard Strauss's.

I realise this isn't a fair juxtaposition, because Strauss was a generation older and came of age with a different aesthetic. But his name did come up when I was chatting with Steuart Bedford, conductor of the unreservedly amazing Canadian Opera Company production of Britten's Death in Venice, which opened last night in Toronto.

Because of his long working relationship with Britten and his music, Bedford is authoritative. He also has a long freelance career where he has conducted a lot of Mozart operas. I mentioned to him that you can't take a single note out of Mozart opera without upsetting something, and the same is true of Britten's scores. He thought for a second and agreed -- then chuckled and said, "You can't say the same for Richard Strauss, though."

Bedford's reading of the Death in Venice score was mesmerizing last night -- especially in the context of how well the staging was coordinated with the music.

So I thought it might be fun to compare some Britten with Strauss, tossing aside notions of fairness just so we can have an excuse to listen to some engaging operatics.

Here's English baritone Andrew Ashwin singing "In Peace I Have Found my Image" from Britten's chamber opera, Owen Wingrave. Accompanying him is the Vienna Chamber Orchestra led by Daniel Hoyem-Cavazza:

It's not a dramatic piece, but from the sheer richness of the score, I love Strauss' Capriccio. Here's the scene where the characters sing about how ridiculous opera is, brought to us by conductor Ulf Schirmer and the orchestra of the Paris Opera and a fabulous cast that includes Renée Fleming, Anne Sofie von Otter and Gerald Finley: