I chose "Music for a Sunday Afternoon," for obvious reasons, plus wanting to hear him play Mozart (Sonata No. 13 in B-flat) and Beethoven (Sonata No. 17 in D minor -- the Tempest).
I can't warm up to his interpretations, but I loved his 4-minute introduction, where he explains how he can't possibly say anything original about Beethoven in such a short space of time. He does, however, say something that comes from the core of the interpreter's art.
He speaks of how Beethoven straddled Classicism and Romanticism, paying homage to the past while nodding to the great effusion of personal expression that would mark the 19th century. He call this "the inventor at odds with the museum curator."
This is exactly what anyone interpreting music from the past faces -- as well as anyone trying to judge or appreciate a concert. There is a tradition to honour, and an act of creation to carry through. Both walk arm in arm.
Some performances are the acts of museum curators. We can walk away appreciating their form or the inherent beauty of the music. But the real spark comes when the performer stirs in an act of invention, bringing an immediacy and energy to the score.
Love or hate the interpretations, Gould brought that tension to every note he played, and that's what made him so special.
It was precisely this energy that animated the Toronto's Symphony's season-opening concert a few days ago. It was an energy that reminded me how much I already miss my old job as music critic, but also lifted my mood instantly -- as, I think, it felt like it did for most people sitting in Roy Thomson Hall.
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The CBC has launched a new Gould site full of interesting stuff to check out. You'll find it here.
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To do any job well, one needs to be totally present for it. In my new life as a business reporter, it has meant very limited time to listen, read or play music over the past four weeks.
I can't imagine being able to make a meaningful contribution to the appreciation of music under these circumstances but, I'm realising today, that if I feel sufficiently inspired, I might put a word or two down here once in a while, as long as the Star keeps this blog up on the website.
I came home from my trip to find a yellowed piece of newspaper on the balcony. Someone had torn out the movie and concert ads for late January.
The big movie is Mae West's She Done Him Wrong, which was released in 1933. Two performances in one venue on Jan. 27th means that it was 1934, when this would have been a Saturday. (Sunday was the city's big day off, when, I'm told, Eaton's department store would pull drapes across its window displays so that people walking home from church on Sunday would not be tempted to think of worldly goods.)
Among the options at the Eaton Auditorium, the city's recital hall of record in the day, are: -Onegin "world premiere contralto" on Jan. 25, tickets $1, $1.50 and $2 -English Boy Choristers under conductor Carlton Borrow, Jan. 27 (25 to 75 cents) -Myra Hess "penomenal English pianist" on Jan. 27 ($1 to $2) -Ted Shawn "and Ensemble of Male Dancers" Jan. 29 (50 cents to $1.50) -Dusseau "brilliant soprano" on Jan. 31 ($1-$2)
The world's finest came to Toronto even during the Great Depression. Today, a few days of performing arts programming would include a wide age range among the artists. I was struck how all the grown-up performers from January 1934 were in their mid-40s.
I was also struck by how ephemeral the work of performing artists is. Even though these people lived at a time of reasonably good recording technology, very few people watch or listen to what they left behind.
Even though we think we are recording and archiving today's performing arts for future generations, for the majority of the audience, it naturally is the living artist who holds the greatest appeal.
So, the concert listing turned into an opportunity to sample a ghost's gallery of past greats.
*Let's start with Swedish-born, German contralto Sigrid Onégin (1889-1943), who should have been billed as the world's premier contralto.
Here she is singing the famous aria from Gluck's Orfeo ed Euridice:
*The English Boy Choristers were the touring group of the 125-student London Choir School, which supplied the capital city's churches with choristers from 1915 to 1958. It was a brilliant idea, ensuring that every (Anglican) church could have a well-trained treble or two -- someone who would grow up to be an asset among adult singers. The Church of England subsidized the Choristers' world tours.
*Ted Shawn (1891-1972) was a key figure in the modern dance movement in the United States, and the founder of the Jacob's Pillow Dance Festival, which inaugurated its 78th season yesterday. Shawn founded the festival the summer before his troupe's performance at Eaton Auditorium.
Here's a clip of some tame choreography by Ted Shawn: "Choeur Danse," from 1926:
*The reference to the brilliant soprano is for Jeanne Dusseau, born in Scotland in 1893 as Ruth Cleveland. She studied voice, married Quebec baritone Lambert Dusseau in 1919, and spent much time singing in Canada. One of her early accomplishments was being cast as Princesse Ninette/Orange No. 3 in the premiere of Prokofiev's The Love of Three Oranges in Chicago, in Dec. 1921. After retiring from the stage, she taught in New York City and Washington, D.C. I couldn't find a death date.
Here is one of only two pieces of music she ever recorded commercially, the "Easter Hymn" from Pietro Mascagni's Cavalleria Rusticana, in 1939:
*The last performances goes to British pianist Myra Hess (1890-1965). There is a simplicity to her interpretations that makes her deep, deep artistry seem effortless.
The first piece is a clip with conductor Humphrey Jennings from a World War II film that includes one of her many morale-boosting performances at the National Gallery in London. I've followed it with a moving live performance of Brahms' Piano Concerto No. 2 with Bruno Walter and the New York Philharmonic in 1951 (note how noisy the audience is during the opening minute and in the final movement).
The closing clip is of her own transcriptions of Bach and Scarlatti, recorded in 1958.
Glossy German newsmagazine Der Spiegel has published an interview with Nike Wagner, one of Richard Wagner's great-granddaughters, and one of the many family members who, at one time or another, has vied to head the Bayreuth Festival.
Among the many things that get touched upon in the interview, which includes candour about the family's closeness with Hitler (they wouldn't go to be on New year's eve until the Fuehrer had called with his wishes), is an admission that Richard Wagner didn't think much of his father-in-law, disdaining his music as well as his showmanship.
For anyone curious about the personal side of the music world, the article is worth a read in translation here.
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Because this is the 200th anniversary year of Franz Liszt's birth, I've been hearing far more of his B Minor Piano Sonata than I would care to. It's a wonderful piece that is about far more than mere show, but Liszt left stacks and stacks of music that we are not hearing.
But there's a reason that the Sonata is on everyone's fingers. And I don't think that, among this year's recordings or concerts, I've heard as cleanly laid-out an interpretation as from Haiou Zhang, a young Chinese pianist of Lang Lang's vintage who left the Beijing Central Conservatory for northern Germany rather than the United States.
Zhang's career has been thriving in Europe. We've had three tastes of him in Toronto thanks for the enthusiastic support of conductor Kerry Stratton. And his new Liszt album is well worth checking out. There are four other pieces on it, besides the Sonata, providing an overview of Liszt's styles and proclivities.
Rather than some Liszt, here is Zhang in a live performance Venetian Boat Song from Felix Mendelssohn's Songs Without Words in Spandau last November (Mendelssohn was only two years older than Liszt -- and his music was the object of Richard Wagner's multiple anti-Semitic tirades):
Maureen Forrester would have turned 81 tomorrow, had she not died last June.
To make up for the long-overdue memorial tribute and to mark the big birthday, former CBC Radio 2 producer Neil Crory has literally pulled out all the stops, assembling a live and via-video collection of a who's who in the music works to pay homage to one of the great singers of the second half of the 20th century.
Stratford Summer Music and the Stratford Festival have organized a massive memorial at the Avon Theatre. It starts at 3 p.m. If you need more information, you'll find it here.
You can get in the mood with this excellent obituary the Telegraph ran last year.
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I fell in love with Brahms' Alto Rhapsody the first time I heard it, and I'm pretty sure the soloist was Maureen Forrester.
Here she is performing live with the Boston Symphony and conductor Seiji Ozawa (who had been music director of the Toronto Symphony previously) at the Tanglewood Festival in 1971:
Here's a translation of Goethe's poem:
But who is that, on one side? His track loses itself in the bushes; Behind him spring back The twigs together; The grass stands up again; The desert swallows him up.
Ah, who will heal the sorrows Of him for whom balsam turned to poison? Who drank hatred of men From the abundance of love! Once disdained, now a disdainer, He feeds secretly on His own worth, In unsatisfying selfishness.
If there is on your psaltery, O father of Love, one sound Acceptable to his ear, Refresh his heart with it. Open his overclouded gaze To the thousand springs Hard by him who thirsts In the desert.
It's Canada Day, and I'm about to put my feet up and hide the laptop for the next 10 days.
Before I go, I thought I'd celebrate this strange and wonderful country with a wish that, someday soon, our performing arts will become an even better reflection the mix of cultures and influences in our big cities -- which is where most Canadians and Canadians-in-waiting live.
There is a major disconnect between the faces I see on the subway or streetcar and the faces I see at Roy Thomson Hall, the Four Seasons Centre, Koerner Hall, the Jane Mallet Theatre and Walter Hall. Perhaps this is the way it's supposed to be, but, if you believe, like me, that a society's culture is a mirror of itself, then that reflected image tells me that there's a big disconnect going on culturally as well as economically.
Rather than harp on a problem, I've tried to find an example of an artist who I think reflects a positive vision of our cultural future: Haligonian Dinuk Wijeratne.
Born in Sri Lanka, raised in Dubai, educated in England and New York City and, now, transplanted to Halifax, this pianist, composer and conductor is the embodiment of the urban reality I see and feel and hear around me every day -- and his home base is a city nowhere near as diverse as Toronto.
I've chosen three examples to show off different aspects of what Wijeratne does.
The first features Canadian pianist David Jalbert in a recital from the Chapelle Historique du Bon Pasteur in Montreal.
The second is the first part of a performance by Wijeratne, frequent collaborator, clarinetist Kinan Azmeh and tabla player Mayookh Bhaumik at the 2008 Atlantic Jazz Festival:
The third is is of Wijeratne explaining and presenting his work as music director of the Nova Scotia Youth Symphony:
A 20-something pianist from Trenton, NJ set off for Paris in the early 1920s, got mixed up with many of the other bright young things and ended up writing some pretty weird music.
The most eduring of Geroge Antheil's creations, Ballet mécanique, had its premiere in Paris 85 years ago today.
Considered vile and unlistenable by people who hears its Canregie Hall premiere a year later, this ballet for pianos and a variety of percussion instruments (not human dancers) is mainstream now. It was meant to accompany a Dadaist film, but the film was shorter than its accompaniment, so Antheil introduced his work as a standalone piece.
Here is a solid performance from 2009 of one of Antheil's many later revisions of the score, from the Moscow Conservatory, followed by the first segment of the composer's arrangement for piano roll (you would need four real hands to play all those notes), which is much, much less interesting, because all of the colour of the percussion instruments is gone:
There's no obvious Australian connection historically, but St. James King Street, which calls itself the oldest remaining church in Sydney, is hosting a four-concert festival in honour of Tomás Luis de Victoria, the most famous composer from Renaissance Spain, and one of the great masters of polyphony. August marks the 400th anniversary of Victoria's death.
The Aussies even have a countdown clock on the website.
My not-so-recent Grove dictionary says that the known works by Victoria include about 20 settings of the Mass, a Funeral Mass, 18 Magnificats, a well-known series of anthems and motets for Holy Week published in 1585.
The image is from a section of the Gloria from Victoria's Missa Gaudeamus, published in 1576, just before the 28-year-old returned to Spain from a long stint in Rome, to go work as the chaplain to Philip II's sister, the Dowager Empress Maria.
One of the qualities that makes Victoria's music special is the skill with which he matches textual meaning and musical expression. He is also a master of creative dissonance.
As a substantial sample, here is the choir of St. James King Street with a gorgeous interpretations of the Kyrie, Gloria, Credo, Sanctus and Agnus Dei from Victoria's Mass for the Ascension of Christ (which would traditionally be performed on the Feast of the Ascension, which happened this past Thursday, this year) from an album they've recorded, titled No Ordinary Sunday.
The choir's music director is British-born Warren Trevelyan-Jones (there's an interesting interview about the church, the history of sacred choral music and the difficulty in finding good "consort" singers in a culture dominated by opera with Trevelyan-Jones from a half-hour May 1 radio broadcast available on the ABC website).
The one thing I really, really wish I could do today -- instead of doing what I have to do today -- is go to the 80th birthday celebration concert being held for Toronto composer Derek Holman at University of Toronto's Walter Hall tonight at 7:30 p.m.
The concert is free, followed by a reception at Massey College.
My first contact with him was as a chorister at St. Simon-the-Apostle Church in 1986-87 and again in 1988-89, two years I took off from being an organist and choirmaster. (Holman retired from the organist and choirmaster's job in 1998.)
Like so many musicians from the English tradition (he was born in Cornwall and graduated from the Royal Academy of Music), Holman wears his art lightly, the music coming out with a seemingly natural ease and grace. Surely, under that ease, further leavened by Holman's easy, wicked wit, probably lie all the demands and struggles and agonies and demons that just about every creative person wrestles with in the metaphorical dark hours.
The trick is to make it look easy.
My last contact with Holman was two years ago at the premiere of The Four Seasons, a song cycle he wrote in memory of late Canadian Opera Company general director Richard Bradshaw. It was beautiful and deeply touching, especially as sung by tenor Lawrence Wiliford.
Wiliford was so taken with Holman's music that he commissioned a new set of songs, Steam, Sweps and Semi-Circles, which get their premiere tonight.
Among the other treats on the programme are Choir 21, under David Fallis, who will sing a selection from Holman's choral output. The Talisker Players and Peter Stoll present A Serenade for Clarinet and Strings, a gorgeous work from 1989. And the Canadian Children's Opera Company will celebrate their onetime leader with a song he wrote for them.
Holman's music is largely tonal, rooted in the sort of modal sensibility of composers like Herbert Howells and Maurice Duruflé. It's an aesthetic that was not in fashion at the Univeristy of Toronto, where he taught for many years.
Hopefully, now that it is safe to perform tonal new music without fear of embarassment, a new generation of musicians and listeners will discover, as Lawrence Wiliford did, the magic of Derek Holman's art and keep him busy for a few more years.
The only clip available on YouTube is of a setting of the Magnificant and Ninc Dimittis for the Anglican Evensong service. There is plenty more to read and listen to at the Canadian Music Centre's website. Below is a biography of Holman provided by Elizabeth Andreson (via the concert organizers).
Derek Holman was born in Cornwall, England in 1931. He was educated at Truro School and at the Royal Academy of Music, studying with York Bowen, Eric Thiman and William McKie. He received no formal instruction in composition but was awarded three composition prizes whilst a student, and graduated with the degree of Bachelor of Music from the University of London, and the Fellowship Diploma from the Royal College of Organists.
Throughout his adult life, Holman has been active as a composer, teacher and church musician. His varied experience as a teacher began with two years as a sergeant-instructor in the British Army of the Rhine, followed by two years as Music Master at the Westminster Abbey Choir School. From 1956 to 1965, he was Tutor, later Warden, at the headquarters of the Royal School of Church Music. In 1965 he immigrated with his family to Canada, and from 1967 taught at the University of Toronto, in the Faculty of Music's Department of Theory and Composition, retiring as a Professor in 1996.
As an organist and choir-director, Dr. Holman held posts in Anglican churches in England and Canada, retiring from St. Simon's Bloor St. in Toronto in 1998. From 1975-85 he conducted the Canadian Children's Opera Chorus.
Derek Holman's considerable output as a composer consists almost entirely of choral works, ranging from hymn-tunes to full-scale oratorios, and songs for solo-voice and piano. Most of these works were commissioned by a wide range of performing artists or organizations, including the CBC, the Toronto Symphony Orchestra, the Toronto Mendelssohn Choir, the Toronto Children's Chorus, the International Choral Festival of 1993, the Aldeburgh Connection and many others.
Holman's collaborations with Robertson Davies include three Gaudy Night cantatas for Massey College, a children's opera, Dr. Cannon's Cure, and the oratorio Jezebel, premiered at Roy Thomson Hall in 1993. A second oratorio The Invisible Reality to words by P.K. Page was premiered there in 2000, as part of Toronto's Millennial Celebrations.
Of Holman's sixty-plus songs, most are found in twelve song-cycles. These include Ash Roses, written for Karina Gauvin, The Centred Passion, written for Mark Pedrotti in 1986, and recorded by Gerald Finley and Stephen Ralls in1998 for CBC Records, and in 2008, The Four Seasons, commissioned by the Canadian Opera Company in memory of their director, Richard Bradshaw.
Dr. Holman holds the degree of Doctor of Music from the University of London and is a Fellow of the Royal Academy of Music. He was made a member of the Order of Canada in 2003.
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":
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):
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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