Old paper opens a window onto Toronto's rich performing arts life during the depths of the Great Depression

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.

 

Three concerts from this year's BBC Proms coming to a Cineplex theatre near you

The first of three concerts from this year's BBC Proms will air in high-definition as an encore at 2:30 p.m., at most of the Cineplex theatres that usually carry operas from the Met.

This is serious music, very nicely performed. Check out the details here. 

Remember, also, that BBC's Radio 3 is streaming many of the concerts live on the web, and archives them for a week, if you can't listen live. All the details are here.

Just because a musical instrument is compact doesn't mean that it is simple

Prejudice lurks everywhere.

I spent a couple of hours with Toronto clarinettist Kornel Wolak yesterday and, once we got the business part of our meeting out of the way, I peppered him with questions about his instrument. I quickly realised that the orchestral world is like a microcosm of the city: We acknowledge and respect our neighbours, but we don't necessarily spend time to understand where they come from and what their everyday challenges might be.

I played clarinet (B-flat and bass) in high school, but I barely got past figuring out fingering and making a semblance of an acceptable noise before I graduated and left the woodwind behind forever.

So, given that I play the piano and the pipe organ, which contain thousands of individual components, one of which will randomly act up on any given day, I have to admit that I unthinkingly classify most other instruments as simple.

As Wolak told me about the differences between different makes of clarinets, how difficult it can be to find a professional-grade instrument that is balanced from lowest to nightest notes, that easily plays legato and that has a pleasing tuning, it was clear that a clarinet may have fewer keys than a piano, but making the right match between player and instrument is no easier to achieve. It is an idiosyncratic bond as intense and, with any luck, as rewarding as a happy romantic pairing.

I also assumed that the simple adjustment of a lever here and a piece of new cork there would be enough to keep a clarinet going for decades. Also not true; the moist breath of the player, frequent swabbing and the cycles of seasons can take their toll on the wood. For Wolak, an intense performer, this means a life cycle as short as three years before the instrument needs some major attention.

Even that is not simple: Wolack books three days with a technician in Indianapolis whenever one of his clarinets needs a major going-over.

Like me and my neighbours, every musical instrument is as quirky as the next. As with people, the more time you spend with it, the more you expect from it.

That said, Linsey Pollack is here to make fun of everything I just wrote:

Michael Head's The Estuary 'The most perfect depiction of a river I've ever heard,' says Thomas Allen

Last night, Sir Thomas Allen described "The Estuary," one of six song setting of poems by Ruth Pitter (1897-1992) by Michael Head (1900-1976) as 'The most perfect depiction of a river I've ever heard."

I had never heard the song, published in 1945, before, and found the interpretation enchanting.

When I got home last night, I did a bit of research and discovered that there's only one recording of it in existence in current CD catalogues: a 2002 EMI CD (no. 208285) with Jonathan Lemalu and pianist Roger Vignoles.

There isn't a hint of it on YouTube or anywhere else where I'd be able to plunder a copy to share here.

There's little of anything available from this prolific composer, who wrote in a spare, tonal style stuck somewhere at the turn of the 20th century.

I thought I'd reproduce "The Estuary" poem anyway, just because it's so right for a beautiful summer's day. A bit earlier in the recital, Alen had suggested Frank Bridge's 1911 four-movement orchestral suite, The Sea as a must-listen. So, to accompany the verse, here is conductor Sir Richard Hickox and the BBC National Orchestra of Wales from a 2002 Chandos CD (no. 10012).

The Estuary, by Ruth Pitter:

Light, stillness and peace lie on the broad sands, 
On the salt-marshes the sleep of the afternoon. 
The sky's immaculate; the horizon stands 
Steadfast, level and clear over the dune.

There are voices of children, musical and thin 
Not far, nor near, there in the sandy hills; 
As the fight begins to wane, so the tide comes in, 
The shallow creek at our feet silently fills:

And silently, like sleep to the weary mind, 
Silently, like the evening after the day, 
The big ship bears inshore with the inshore wind, 
Changes her course, and comes on up through the bay,

Rolling along the fair deep channel she knows, 
Surging along, right on top of the tide. 
I can see the flowery wreath of foam at the bows, 
The long bright wash streaming away from her side:

I can see the flashing gulls that follow her in, 
Screaming and tumbling, like children wildly at play, 
The sea-born crescent arising, pallid and thin, 
The flat safe twilight shore shelving away.

Whether remembered or dreamed, read of or told, 
So it has dwelt with me, so it shall dwell with me ever: 
The brave ship coming home like a lamb to the fold, 
Home with the tide into the mighty river.

This final video clip includes a personal favourite that Allen put on his programme last night: "My Own Country," the last of "Three (Hilaire) Belloc Songs," from 1927, by Peter Warlock, as sung by Benjamin Luxon (it's the third of the first three songs on this clip).

Colin Firth's eloquent tribute to Maureen Forrester captures great Canadian's love of life

Everyone who attended the tribute concert to Maureen Forrester in Stratford yesterday received a lavish coffee table-worthy programme filled with background, anecdotes, written tributes and pictures commemorating a particularly generous life.

I didn't have a chance to look at it until I got home last night.

Among the many beautiful tributes inside is one from Colin Firth. I hope no one minds that I'm going to reproduce it here, in its entirety:

Maureen's son, Daniel, and I were roommates while studying acting at the Drama Centre in London in the early 1980s. When he first came to stay at my family home in Winchester, I decided to force a piece of music on him -- a piece by Frederick Delius that had enthralled me since I was a child. To my surprise, Danny recognized it immediately. Not the piece, but the voice. It turned out to be that of his own mother. He then checked the record sleeve and discovered that at the time of the recording his mother was pregnant -- with him. I'd spent years in love with the voice of the woman who was singing with my future friend inside her!

Daniel was subsequently adopted by my family and was in frequent demand as a holiday guest. This became a reciprocal arrangement and I came to experience Maureen's hospitality, her generosity, her formidable intelligence, her trust, her eccentricity, her candour, her experience and her wisdom. I stayed in her home on Lake Muskoka and to my delight the adoption exchange continued for some years. All that was missing in this wonderful new relationship was that I had never heard Maureen sing live.

That changed in 1986 when I was visiting some old friends in Missouri, and one of them excitedly mentioned that Maureen Forrester was singing Mahler's Das Lied von der Erde that evening in the university auditorium at the end of the street. That night, Maureen sang magnificently -- thrilling her audience, not only with her voice, but also with her wit, warmth and her mighty energy. Following the performance, I proudly took my friends backstage where she was surrounded by adoring fans. As I approached, I became somewhat concerned that -- out of context -- she might not recognize me immediately and there would be an awkward moment. I needn't have worried as the howl of delight and surprise, which she let out from across the room when she saw me, would have filled the Royal Albert Hall.

That may have been the last time we met. That cry of welcoming recognition is my abiding memory. From the same voice that had camptivated me onstage a few moments before and in my home as a child. All those things, as well as her words of advice and encouragement, are gifts I will always carry: her friendship, her acceptance, her voice, her family and my cherished lifelong friendhip with Daniel.

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What could possibly go better with this than "One Charming Night," from Henry Purcell's Fairy Queen, as recorded by Forrester with the Vienna Radio Orchestra and conductor Brian Priestman:

One charming night
Gives more delight
Than a hundred lucky days:
Night and I improve the taste,
Make the pleasure longer last
A thousand, thousand several ways.

 

A reminder to take tomorrow off so you can go to Stratford for Maureen Forrester's 81th birthday

(This was corrected to fix my birthday math)

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.

Two oboes, eight hands show off the fun side of National Youth Orchestra of Canada's summer activities

The four members of the oboe section made clever merry at the National Youth Orchestra's annual talent show, just before the start of their concert tour on Thursday. (You can read more about it in today's Star.)

The oboists are Véronique Guay (from Montreal's South Shore), Aidan Dugan (Ottawa), Ron Mann (North Vancouver) and Hugo Lee (Toronto):

We can build space shuttles, but we can't figure out the magic of wood as an acoustic material

For all of our astounding technilogical sophistication, the mysteries of wood still somehow seem beyond us.

Every few years, a news item flashes by announcing that a scientist has formulated a molecular explanation for the magic sound of Stradivarius violins. A deeper reading usually reveals that some part of the mystery has not been explained, usually because we're missing some secret ingredient in the varnish, or that there are no old-growth spruces left in that Val di Fiemme woods where the old masters sought their materials.

I bring this up because Le Figaro in France today published a short profile of La Roque d'Anthéron music festival master piano technician, Belgian Denijs de Winter, calling him "the piano whisperer." (The festival begins today, running to Aug. 21.)

In the article, de Winter says that one of his great accidental discoveries, many years ago, was that, contrary to all of the accepted wisdom in the piano world, exposing the wood of a piano to repeated changes in humidity levels is actually good for its sound, because it allows the soundboard to loosen-up, thereby improving its ability to transmit vibrations from the strings.

He went so far as to build a climate-controlled room in his Brussels piano-rebuilding workshop to observe this more closely.

If you can read French, you'll find the article here.

So, this is a long, roundabout way of suggesting that we poor little humans, instead of working against nature, as is our wont, might remind ourselves to accept her into our plans and calculations.

It's just really hard to quantify in scientific language.

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JAN LISIECKI ON A ROLL

Young Canadian sensation Jan Lisiecki is a guest of the La Roque d'Anthéron festival tomorrow -- same day as Yuja Wang.

Today, he has just finished giving a recital at the Verbier Festival in Switzerland -- a recital that should be available for free streaming at www.medici.tv by Sunday.

It's part of an amazing summer for him, which has put him in the big leagues. We're lucky that Stratford Summer Music has managed to snag him for three days of recitals: Aug. 4 to 6.

On summer's hottest day, musical sizzle is counterproductive, so put your headphones on the rocks

Star theatre critic Richard Ouzounian laid out a list of hot-summer songs in today's paper (try as I might, I can't find the story on our website). So I have my colleage to blame for having Ella Fitzgerald singing "It's Too Darn Hot" stuck in my brain all morning.

Using that song as a mantra when even a short dog walk drenches my t-shirt in sweat is, for me, counter-productive. I think we need to serve up the day, and our headphones, on the rocks.

So here are three art-music pieces to chill by. Your suggestions are welcome -- either here, or emailed to jterauds@thestar.ca.

1. "Soundstill VI" from the late Ann Southam's Pond Life suite for solo piano, as performed by Christina Petrowska Quilico. You have to approach this like a meditation exercise, and don't be put off by what sounds like a serialist tone row developing at the start of the piece.

2. The 1930 arrangement for small orchestra of "The Housatonic at Stockbridge" from Three Places in New England, by Charles Ives, inspried by a hike he and wife Harmony took as newlyweds in the Berkshires in the summer of 1908.

First, the lines of verse by Robert Underwood Johnson that inspired Ives as much as the views and atmosphere in Stockbridge, Mass.:

Contented river! In thy dreamy realm
The cloudy willow and the plumy elm:
Thou beautiful!
From ev'ry dreamy hill
what eye but wanders with thee at thy will,
Contented river!
And yet over-shy 
To mask thy beauty from the eager eye;
Hast thou a thought to hide from field and town?
In some deep current of the sunlit brown
Ah! there's a restive ripple,
And the swift red leaves
September's firstlings faster drift;
Wouldst thou away, dear stream?
Come, whisper near! 
I also of much resting have a fear:
Let me tomorrow thy companion be, 
By fall and shallow to the adventurous sea!

3. "Jeux d'eau" by Maurice Ravel, inspired by French symbolist poet Henri de Régnier's verse "Fête d'eau." Ravel included this line from the poem with the piece, which I'm translating as "The river god laughing at the water that tickles him." Jean-Yves Thibaudet gets just the right amount of splash going:

xxx

Last night's review of Toronto Summer Music opening concert has left me tormented

Ever since filing my review of Kirill Gerstein's Toronto début recital last night, which opened the 6th Toronto Summer Music festival, I've been tormented by my criticism.

Gerstein played beautifully, but I just couldn't agree with what he was doing. There was nothing musicologically wrong with his interpretations, so my criticism really came down to personal taste. Even though concert reviews are as much about the subjective as anything else, I often worry about taking the subjective too far.

So, to better second-guess myself, I decided to consult some dead 20th century masters on the oh-so-difficult second movement of Beethoven's Op. 111 Sonata. The technical issues are one thing, but the real test of the artist is in figuring out what to do with those piles of notes that seemingly go nowhere.

Among my perusings, I listened to three Mid-century Modern pianists because I get the impression that, at the time, every serious classical musician worried about fidelity to the composer's intentions and would consult new scholarly editions of the score to make sure they were doing the right thing.

One obvious reference is Chilean master Claudio Arrau (1903-1991). His main teacher was Martin Krause, who had been taught by Liszt, who had been taught by Czerny, who had been taught by Beethoven (and, now that we have MP3 players, we have all been taught by Beethoven).

One of my favourite personal references is Solomon (British pianist Solomon Cutner, 1902-1988, who had a massive stroke in 1956 that caught him just as he was recording his hugely respected interpretations of all 32 Beethoven Sonatas).

For contrast, I listened to Russian legend Tatiana Nikolayeva (1924-1993), who represents the bolder side of the spectrum.

After all that listening, I feel better about what I wrote last night. Solomon won, yet again -- mixing an elegant, quiet intimacy with a strong sense of narrative flow. As ever, I continue to shake my head in wonder and admiration at how the same black dots can produce such differing results.

In case, like me, you have too much free time, here are Arrau, Nikolayeva (from the Great Hall in Moscow's Conservatory, in 1984) and Solomon playing Beethoven's C-minor Sonata, Op. 111: