Part II of Robert Lepage's epic-scaled new staging of Wagner's Ring Cycle for the Metropolitan Opera airs on CBC Radio 2's Saturday Afternoon at the Opera as well as at Cineplex theatres at noon today. It's a substantial way for the company to close its 2010-11 broadcast season. (Cineplex is offering encore performances on June 18 and July 11.)
James Levine, whose deteriorating health means that his appearances on the podium are getting increasingly rare, is slated to conduct a dream cast that includes Deborah Voight as Brünhilde, Eva-Maria Westbroeck as Sieglinde, Jonas Kaufman as Siegmund and Bryn Terfel as Wotan.
Click on the Cineplex programme image, left, for all the details.
It's great to live in a city where the classical music and opera worlds are alive, well and overflowing with possibilities. It's end-of-season concert time, and tonight's harvest is particularly succulent.
Once upon a time, Toronto was known as a choral city, and still has numerous excellent choirs. One of them, the Exultate Chamber Singers, marks a major milestone with the retirement of founding director, John Tuttle, after 30 years, tonight at the acoustically excellent and aesthetically pleasing Grace Church-on-the-Hill. (The picture I chose is from 2003.)
Tuttle is going out in deep sonic style, in a programme anchored in Rachmaninov's All-Night Vigil -- one of the masterpieces of the a cappella repertoire. The choir is also offering up the premiere of a new work by Toronto composer Derek Holman (who gets to celebrate his own musical anniversary with a concert celebrating his 80th birthday on June 1 -- details to come).
The tickets ($25-$40) for tonight's concert include admission to the choir's 30th anniversary/Tuttle retirement reception afterward. You can pick them up at the door, or call 416-971-9229
Here, to give a taste of the Rachmaninov, is Edmonton's fabulous Pro Coro Canada choir, under director Richard Sparks, performing at Edmonton's Winspear Centre. This is the "Great Doxology":
From opera to Tin Pan Alley to the French-Canadian folksong "Savez vous planter des choux?", thousands of recordings going back to 1901 are now available for free online streaming from the Library of Congress. The vehicle is the National Jukebox, and its first wave of audio-visual files, compiled with the help of Sony Entertainment, are an invaluable resource.
According to the Library of Congress, the opening set of 10,000, or so, tracks were all originally issued between 1901 and 1925 by Victor, a label owned by Sony. The institution received a blanket license from the Japanese firm, so it is promising access to the incredible Columbia library, among others, in the future.
Go visit, and get lost.
In the meantime, I'm going to digress:
Although this is an amazing sea of history to swim around in, broad reach sometimes does mean compromises.
I spent some time leafing through the 1919 5th edition of the Victrola Book of the Opera -- a combination record-buyer's catalogue and source of background information on all the main operas in the repertoire at the time. It was published by the Victor Talking Machine Company of Camden, N.J.
The first entry is L'Africana -- "Text by Scribe; music by Meyerbeer" -- with a full-page engraving of Enrico Caruso as Vasco di Gama on the facing page. There's a production and plot summary, lists of the main arias, accompanied by Victor catalogue numbers and prices.
The musical selections are indicated with little arrows. One click at Prelude to Act III introduces us to the La Scala Orchestra, circa 1906, as well as to all the hisses and pops of ancient 78 rpm discs.
Unfortunately, none of the four tenors, including Caruso, listed as options for recorded versions of the aria "O Paradiso!" are available. I decided I wanted to hear Canadian tenor Edward Johnson (who became general manager of the Metropolitan Opera in 1935), but couldn't find a search function. You have to manually flip through all 436 pages.
I found the same edition of the book online in the University of Toronto's collection, which supports most of the different e-reading platforms -- and makes it easier to search quickly. But, because this is a text-only archive service, there are no sound files.
A search of the U of T archive revealed, in mere seconds, that Edward Johnson is not mentioned in this book. I keyed in Nellie Melba, whose entries appeared as a series of quick-click bookmarks.
So, the determined power-searcher can open both the Library of Congress version, for access to instant streaming audio, as well as the University of Toronto's book, for instant searchability. And, voilà! the opera world of a century ago is your oyster.
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Since I wanted some Edward Johnson, I found him on YouTube, singing Rodolfo's Aria in Puccini's La Bohème:
The International Resource Centre for Performing Artists, a Toronto-based help centre for young musicians trying to build their careers, organized four days of operatic voice master classes, ending with an evening of opera arias tonight at George Weston Recital Hall.
The worshop leaders were two respected names in the business: Joan Dornemann, a coach at the Metropolitan Opera, and accompanist Vincenzo Scalera, who has spent the last few years working with the young singers at LaScala's young Academy in Milan.
I sat in on four master classes. I was curious to see what the non-conservatory, non-university, non-Canadian Opera Company contingent of Toronto opera wannabes looked and sounded like. I also wanted to see what Scalera was like as a coach.
The singers where pretty much what I expected. One, still a teenager, should have been told that singing, not even to mention opera, was not going to be part of her future. Another was an exceptional, mature artist who, for whatever reason, does not have the stage career she appeared to deserve. The other two fell somewhere in between, in that grey wash of mediocrity that Peter Schaffer's Antonio Salieri so feared and loathed.
Scalera was bright orange, fuscia and flashing scarlet in this sea of grey. With only 30 minutes per singer, per day, he could only focus on finessing an aria rather than trying to solve technical problems -- as he explained to me afterward.
Time after time, Scalera emphaiszed the meaning of the words, of matching that meaning with what the music is doing, and conveying the appropriate emotion. He would sing along. He repeatedly pushed the supplied accompanist off the piano bench to do it himself, magically turning the instrument from background beat-keeper to a full pit orchestra.
Every moment I witnessed reminded me of how much work goes into a singer's every utterance. I was also reminded how you can work interpretation all you want but, if there is no fundamental musicality in the singer and if they don't have the basic technique to produce their sound, it doesn't amount to much -- be it at the end of 30 minutes or 30 hours.
"Communication is only part of it," said Scalera in conversation afterward, when I asked him what he thought makes up the attribute we call musicality. The other part is something ineffable that is icing on the cake of hard work.
I had barely 20 minutes left to chat with Scalera on the day of my visit, hardly enough time to even dip my toes into his deep well of experience and anecdote. His long and glorious career as accompanist had him working with the legends of the 1970s and '80s, right through to today's top singers. He told me it was the late bel canto soprano legend Leyla Gencer who brought him into LaScala's young-artist program.
Like so many people devoted to powerful expression, Scalera noted that it is not the beauty of a voice that matters, but what the artist can do with it.
Among the names he mentioned was soprano Renata Scotto. She may not have had the most beautiful-sounding instrument, but she was a convincing operatic actor, as far as he is concerned. "She IS Suor Angelica. She IS Georgette in Il Tabarro," in Puccini's Il Trittico, he said of a favourite performance, with conductor James Levine.
Tonight's recital will show off the state of the art, as he saw and heard it on a rare Toronto visit. The organizers picked 11 singers, including the one person I would have sat down for a let's-try-to-think-of-another-career-option chat.
In other words, this will sound and feel like any other student recital. There are two pianists slated for accompanist duty at George Weston Recital Hall.
The performances start at 8 p.m. You'll find more information here.
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Here are two French-flavoured tastes of Vincenzo Scalera the accompanist. The first is from a 1988 performance of Raynaldo Hahn's "L'Heure exquise" with José Carrerras. The second is Juan Diego Florez singing a bit of Edouard Lalo at London's Southbank Centre in January:
The Helios label has reissued an excellent 1997 British recording of music for violin and piano by Antonin Dvorák, interpreted by violinist Anthony Marwood and pianist Susan Tomes.
The disc's programme showcases the composer's wide range of styles. You'll find all the details as well as audio samples here.
A salon piece like the Op. 100 Sonatina in G Major, one of the gorgeous pieces Dvorák wrote while vacationing in Iowa, gets the gossamer treatment from both Marwood and Tomes.
The duo changes approach and really dig into their instruments in the brooding (and misleadingly titled) Op. 15 Ballad.
The most notable thing about this recording is balance and clarity. The violin and piano are equal partners in all of these elegant performances.
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There isn't anything on YouTube from this album, so, instead, here are Marwood and Tomes joined by cellist Richard Lester in Dvorák's "Dumky" Piano Trio No. 3, in E Minor, Op. 90 (If you only have time to listen to one clip, I recommend the second, which begins with the third of the piece's six dumkas):
If you really love this trio, there is a gorgeous recording of it by Toronto's Gryphon Trio on the Analekta label. Details here.
This has nothing to do with music, but it has everything to do with how we interact with information. Beware the algorithmic curators of the world we see and the world we don't see:
This week's Tafelmusik concerts, which begin Wednesday at Trinity-St. Paul's Centre, should close the season with a high-voltage, violin-focused programme led by Italian violinist Stefano Montanari. Unfortunately, the visitor has injured himself, so he will be conducting, not leading on his instrument, but it should still make for a great concert experience. Montanari has been increasing the number of concerts he conducts, and will lead the orchestra in Opera Atelier's new production of Mozart's Don Giovanni next fall.
Because we won't see him play, I thought I'd share some music of Henry Purcell he performed last year with Montanari's regular ensemble, Accademia Bizantina, and countertenor Andreas Scholl. Here are a Sonata (No. 8, in G Major) and Chaconne, followed by Scholl singing "Here the Deities Approve" with continuo.
(This concert was a prelude to the making of Scholl's recent all-Purcell album, O Solitude, just as this week's Tafelmusik's concerts are a prelude to the recording of a new album here.)
The first piece on Songs Without Words, a new solo-piano abum by noted accompanist Julius Drake on the Canadian label ATMA, has held me spellbound. It's out of the middle of Robert Schumann's Pieces for Children, Op. 68, from which comes "The Happy Farmer," which I played as a 5- or 6-year-old.
It never would have occurred to me to look there for adult music. I sat down to play "Mignon" myself and realised that it would be very difficult for a beginner pianist to actually do this piece justice, because it relies as much on the piano as the pianist's fingers to move the piece forward.
I'm putting the wonderful simplicity of this music out there as my Mother's Day offering. It's the simple things that are the easiest to take for granted -- and are the most difficult to live without.
(Click on the image of the score, if you want to see it larger.)
Here is Brazilian pianist Rosiane Lemos, just having fun at a piano (she wrote her Master's dissertation on Schumann's Pieces for Children, so she has been living with this music for a while):
Drake didn't forget to choose a couple of Felix Mendelssohn's Songs Without Words for his album, which sounds and feels like an anti-encore album.
There is nothing on video by Drake that illustrates the album. Instead, for a wonderful clip of Emil Gilels playing Mendelssohn's "Duetto" from the Op. 38 Songs Wihout Words in a 1983 Moscow recital, click here.
The fountain of youth is not a place or a product. It is commitment and depth -- whether you are a musician, pastry chef, painter or poet.
A big, fond Happy Birthday to Janina Fialkowska, who turns 60 today. The Montreal-born pianist, now based in Connecticut, is busier than ever, especially in Europe. And her sensitive, elegant playing is a continuing inspiration.
Fialkowska is best known for her interpretations of the music by Chopin and Liszt. Here's something a bit less commonplace, an earnestly, sparklingly rendered first movement of the effusively late-Romantic E-Major Piano Concerto by Moritz Moszkowski. She is performing with the Kitchener-Waterloo Symphony conducted by Raffi Armenian on this older CBC SM5000 disc (Souvenirs of Poland, SMCD 5140):
Organist and choir director John Tuttle is retiring after 30 years as the founding music director of the Exultate Chamber Singers. They give their final concert together at Grace Church-on-the-Hill a week from today, on May 13.
Tomorrow, Tuttle is the guest on This is My Music on CBC Radio 2, from 10 a.m. to noon. I'll be listening to find out how Tuttle's wit and broad musical horizons translate into his favourite pieces of music.
There's another musical moment to pay attention to tomorrow, across the river from Windsor. The Detroit Symphony Orchestra, which has somehow managed to scrape out a few spring concerts at the end of a strike-demolished season, is streaming its evening concert, starting at 8 p.m. It features Leila Josefowicz performing Prokofiev's Violin Concerto No. 1. Also on the programme is Sibelius' Symphony No. 2 and Shostakovich's perky Festive Overture. The conductor is Norwegian Arild Remmereit, who takes over as music director of the Rochester Philharmonic on Sepetember.
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Here, just because it's there, and because it is Franz Liszt's 200th, here is ever-elegant Cuban pianist Jorge Luis Prats performing Liszt's transcription of J.S. Bach's Prelude and Fugue for organ, in A minor:
John Terauds started at the Toronto Star as a freelance writer in 1988, and has been on staff since 1997. He began writing on classical music in 2001, and has been the full-time classical music critic since 2005.
He is also the organist and choir director at St. Peter's Anglican Church, a parish founded in 1863 in downtown Toronto.
If he's not listening to, writing about or playing music, it means he's either asleep, unconscious, walking his dog -- or all of the above.
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