Injury means Jordi Savall forced to cancel tour, delay his Toronto début to March 2012

This just in:

jordi savall cancels

his north american tour

 

SAVALL’s performance this sunday, may 8, 2011 at koerner hall

has already been re-scheduled for thursday, march 1, 2012

 

Following an injury he sustained while on a European tour, and on the advice of doctors, one of the most celebrated viol (viola da gamba) players, Jordi Savall, has cancelled his North American concerts. Mr. Savall and his ensembleHespèrion XXI, 2011 Grammy Award winners for Best Small Ensemble Performance, were slated to make theirKoerner Hall debut this Sunday, May 8, 2011, at 8:00pm.  

 

Mervon Mehta, Executive Director, Performing Arts, has been able to re-book Mr. Savall for the recently announced 2011-12 concert season, for Thursday, March 1, 2012, at 8:00pm. 

 

The Royal Conservatory regrets the inconvenience and ticket buyers have the option of keeping their existing tickets, which will be valid for the new date, exchanging into a concert during our 2011-12 season, or obtaining a refund.

 

Ticket exchanges and refunds are available by calling 416.408.0208

or in person at the Weston Family Box Office

at the TELUS Centre for Performance and Learning

 

It's high time classical musicians realised that they have some explaining to do

It's time to banish the 20th century tradition of not speaking from the stage at classical music concerts. The printed programme provided background information and the stage time was to be devoted entirely to music. Even encores were not announced.

Presenters and musicians who have done their research know that a 21st century audience enjoys a little bit of a verbal introduction to what's going on. For one thing, no one should take for granted that we've arrived at the concert knowing everything about the composers and why particular pieces were chosen for the programme.

Yesterday's Handelfest 2011 concert was a perfect example of what I'm talking about. It was an evening of excellent Baroque-era musicmaking, but communication regarding the programme was a different story.

 The printed programme provided no background whatsoever about the music (and, in what must have been a slip of a finger, got Handel's death year wrong).

I suspected that artistic director and harpsichord player Ashiq Aziz didn't say a word about the first two pieces or their composers, François Duval and Handel. Even though I'm supposed to come to a concert prepared, I would have liked to know more about Duval and why Aziz chose this piece instead of one by, say, Corelli, whose style Duval was imitating, within the traditional French-suite strucutre.

On the other hand, I could feel the audience warm up to lutenist Lucas Harris and violinist Geneviève Gilardeau, as they explained the fascinating Bach-Weiss connection in the evening's title work, and how they personally worked through their interpretation of the piece.

It was informative and, very importantly, humanizing.

They didn't speak long; just enough to make clear that what we were about to hear was something we would not have been able to hear anywhere else in the world yesterday. That is special in and of itself -- and we would not have known if they had merely tuned up and played, bowed and gone home.

+++

Gilardeau and Harris run a free summer concert series called Beaches Baroque in Toronto -- an excellent excuse to grab an ice cream, take a walk on the boardwalk and catch their warm musicality before or after.

They haven't posted their 2011 season yet, so here's a teaser from 2009: On period instruments, Gilardeau and Harris perform a sonata by Bernhard Joachim Hagen (1720-1787):

Sonata for Lute and Violin by Hagen from Daniel Shoskes on Vimeo.

 

While others commute home later today, Toronto baritone Brett Polegato puts his artistry on the line

As I wrote in my review in the Star, the energy level in the Canadian Opera Company's presentation of Rossini's La Cenerentola rose markedly every time Dandini -- as sung by Toronto baritone Brett Poegato -- appeared on stage.

Polegato (pictured above as Vancouver Opera's Eugene Onegin from a three seasons ago) is one of several great singers from this part of the world who are in their vocal prime right now. He is also an excellent actor.

Nothing tests a singer's ability to communicate than a solo recital -- and Polegato is treating us to one at 5:30 p.m. today, for free at the Richard Bradshaw Amphitheatre. It's a fantastic, spring-themed program of art song, many of which we don't hear often, accompanied by the COC's Liz Upchurch:

This is a perfect excuse for me to share yet another interpretation of one of my favourite English songs, Ralph Vaughan Williams' magical setting of Dante Gabriel Rosetti's "Silent Noon." Here, Thomas Allen is accompanied by Malcolm Martineau, in my personal prayer for heat and sun:

DVD Review: The magic of late conductor Carlos Kleiber eludes two different made-for-TV documentaries

This blog is back -- temporarily and not in a new format. Hopefully, that's better than a blank window.

***

One of the recurring points of lively debate is what makes a conductor great. As Lorin Maazel said to me a couple of months ago, it's hard to put one's finger on specific characteristics, "but you know one when you see one."

Last month, German conductor Carlos Kleiber (1930-2004) was voted the top conductor of all time in a public poll published in BBC Magazine. He conducted a much less than most of the great conductors and his repertoire was especially narrow, rarely venturing out of the 19th century core of European repertoire.

Whatever you and I might think of polls, this must mean he was pretty special.

Coincidentally, two TV documentaries made about Kleiber since his death have recently been issued on DVD: Carlos Kleiber: Traces to Nowhere by Eric Schultz (ArtHaus Musik), which is the strongest of the two; and Carlos Kleiber: I Am Lost to the World, by Georg Wübbolt (C Major).

After watching both, I could only think of one thing: History only matters -- in the real sense of being deeply, viscerally important -- to those who have lived it. It's why each new generation needs its own heroes and villains and why we can't jsut write or say that so-and-so was great, we have to keep proving it over and over.

That's a roundabout way of saying that neither bio-doc really got to the heart of what made Kleiber so special -- more special that Leonard Bernstein or Riccardo Muti or Herbert von Karajan, or the hundred other greats listed in the BBC's poll.

Kleiber is said to have refused to give in-depth interviews, so both documentaries rely on friends and collaborators and colleagues. The most personal is Schultz's film, which includes Kleiber's older sister, Veronica.

Both documentaries use the same film clips of Kleiber in rehearsal and in performance, showing off a highly expressive, engaged conducting style of the type we see with someone like Canadian Yannick Nézet-Séguin. Both make the point that this is at the heart of what made orchestras respond to his instructions.

As has been the case so many times throughout history, the person behind the artist is a lot less impressive: Kleiber would frequently walk out of rehearsals and cancel performances. He wanted to be well-paid for what he did. Despite clear devotion to his wife, he was a compulsive womanizer. It appears he might have been borderline manic-depressive.

We don't need to know more about Kleiber's drinking habits. But we do need to see and hear more of his work. What both films lack, for me, is a complete performance of any one work, because that is, ultimately, what bound both listeners and musicians to him.

I love Kleiber's recording of Brahms' Symphony No. 4 with the Vienna Philharmonic from 1981 -- and there is a fine, if slightly less endearing one, available on video from a 1996 concert given by the Bavarian State Orchestra. This would have made an excellent companion to either documentary.

There is an excellent website that has nicely gathered up everything we need to know and hear about Kleiber here.

Here's a rare opportunity to see a bit of Kleiber at work in opera, while also being able to see what is happening on stage, in a Vienna State Opera production Richard Strauss's Der Rosenkavalier. it really is special.

Singing are Felicity Lott, Barbara Bonney and Anne Sofie von Otter in the Act III Trio:

 

If you'd like to watch the final duet (without a Kleiber inset), click here.