I'm off for the next 10 days, and don't expect to be posting, unless I'm so bowled over by something that I have to share it. But I can't leave without putting in a plug for some unduly neglected works.
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Photo: Mark Thompson
The unaccompanied cello suites by J.S. Bach have not only inspired performers and listeners, they have also inspired composers.
German composer Max Reger (1873-1916) is a case in point. He wrote three suites for unaccompanied cello (at the same time as a three-suite set for solo viola) just before World War I.
I've tried living with Reger's works for piano and organ, but find that I usually end up getting motion sickness from his endless chromaticism. But the cello suites are different. They are neo-Baroque, tightly structured and tonally anchored. It also looks like they are also ferociously difficult.
It's different to study and work with a piece of music versus just listening to it, but my impression is that these pieces by Reger deserve to be recognized as something special.
I've pieced together a recital for you, with the help of German cellist Guido Schiefen (pictured). I would prefer hearing more lyrical interpretations, but he does an amazing job in laying out the gorgeous structure of these pieces:
Organizers have worked hard over the past couple of years to change rules and balance juries for the quadrennial event so that no one can argue with the results (something competition watchers tend to do compulsively anyway).
They are also promising live web streaming of all competition rounds, which are being held on seven different halls in St. Petersburg and Moscow (including a first look inside the Moscow Conservatory's newly renovated concert spaces). The producer for the webcasts is Molly McBride, who did a brilliant job in getting the 2009 Cliburn competition online.
It promises to be a great window on one of the world's biggest and most prestigious competitions in piano, violin, cello and voice. Instrumental competitors are aged 16 to 30, vocal competitors are 18 to 32.
Piano and cello rounds began today at 1 p.m. local time in Moscow. Vocal and violin begin tomorrow in St. Petersburg.
There are two Canadians competing this time: Canadian Opera Company Ensemble Studio alumna, soprano Yannick Muriel Noah, and remarkable 18-year-old Montrealer, cellist Stéphane Tetrault, a student of Yuli Turovsky's and the youngest member selected for the first YouTube Symphony Orchestra.
As is so often the case on the first day of a webcast from a new setup, there are teething problems. My first check of today's piano webcast wasn't promising: the stream repeatedly stalled, and I couldn't figure out how to switch away from the piano competitors to check in to the cello rounds.
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
If you can spare a downtown lunch hour today and Thursday, the Canadian Opera Company's free concert series in the Richard Bradshaw Amphitheatre at the Four Seasons Centre is particularly compelling this week:
TODAY
Three Toronto musicians widely recognized as masters of their instruments -- Lucas Harris (lute), Wendy Zhao (pipa) and Bassam Bishara (oud) -- are getting together at noon for a fun compare-and contrast.
Click on the image at left for full programme details.
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THURSDAY
Toronto Symphony Orchestra cellist Winona Zelenka offers an hour's worth of unaccompanied cello by Bach. Britten and Cassadó.
Click on the image at right for full programme details
Reading the list of nominees in the small-ensemble/solo classical catgory in the 2011 Junos is like reading a who's who of Toronto's music scene: Anton Kuerti, Amici Ensemble, Gryphon Trio and Winona Zelenka.
I wanted to add three more commentaries to the compositions I bolded in Larry Beckwith's Necessary 100 submissions posted yesterday. I'll keep going down the list in coming days.
We're firmly in the Baroque world now. These three picks from Beckwith's list are absolute naturals for this list, due to their enduring popularity, even among people who don't consider themselves classical music listeners.
Henry Purcell: Dido and Aeneas It wasn't until after George Frideric Handel disembarked on the blighty side of the English Channel that audiences got a taste of serious Italian opera. In the meantime, the English had been enjoying masques -- grand entertainments that mixed words, music and dance. Dido and Aeneas, which had its premiere at a girls' school in 1688, was one of the first English operas, meaning that it was meant to be sung all the way through. The piece packs a great story of love and loss into less than an hour. The music is gorgeous -- instrumentally, chorally and in the solo arias. The most famous and haunting aria is Dido's Lament, which has been enjoyed by three centuries' worth of appreciative ears.
Here is Canadian mezzo Laura Pudwell -- a frequent and welcome performer in Toronto -- at her very best in Dido's Lament, from a recording made with Le Concert Spirituel:
Vivaldi: 'Winter' from The Four Seasons The violin concertos that we know as The Four Seasons are but the tip of Vivaldi creative iceberg. We hear these pieces far too often, but there's also a reason for that: this is instrumental at its most inventive and evocative. These concertos come from a book of 12, known as Op. 8, published in 1725. Vivaldi added the title "Il cimento dell'armonia e dell'inventione" -- the melding of harmony and creativity -- something that turned out not to be just marketing hype.
There were little descriptive sonnets included for each concerto. The breaks correspond to the different movements. Here is a rough English translation for Winter:
Shivering, frozen mid the frosty snow in biting, stinging winds; running to and fro to stamp one's icy feet, teeth chattering in the bitter chill.
To rest contentedly beside the hearth, while those outside are drenched by pouring rain.
We tread the icy path slowly and cautiously, for fear of tripping and falling. Then turn abruptly, slip, crash on the ground and, rising, hasten on across the ice lest it cracks up. We feel the chill north winds course through the home despite the locked and bolted doors... this is winter, which nonetheless brings its own delights.
This is Renaldo Alessandrini leading soloist Francesca Vicari and the Concerto italiano period-instrument orchestra in what we should call the X-treme Baroque interpretation of all three movements of Winter, a.k.a. the Violin Concerto in F-minor, RV 297:
J.S. Bach: Suites for Unaccompanied Cello Here is another set of pieces -- six suites -- that hardly needs an introduction. We don't actually know when Bach wrote them. The earliest surviving score dates from 1726. The seductive music means it hardly matters (and for a fascinating story of one man's growing obsession and fascination with these pieces, get your hands on Montrealer Eric Siblin's 2009 book, The Cello Suites).
Here is Toronto Symphony Orchestra cellist Winona Zelenka performing the Sarabande from Suite No. 2:
Today's installment in the Canadian Opera Company's excellent series of free lunchtime concerts pairs chamber music by Beethoven and Shostakovich -- both meticulous architects and masters of drama.
The the performers regularly work with the COC or the COC Orchestra: pianist Jean Desmarais, violinist Pam Hinman and cellist Garrett Knecht. (The two string players are, among other things, members of violinist Moshe Hammer's "Hammer Band" musical outreach missionary troupe who go out to provide free string-instrument lessons to children in schools in the Jane-Finch area.)
Today's performance begins at 12:15 p.m., in the Richard Bradshaw Amphitheatre at the Four Seasons Centre. the programme is:
Sonata for Violin and Piano in G Major, Op. 30, No. 3 ..................................Ludwig van Beethoven
12 Variations on “Ein Mädchen oder Weibchen”, Op. 66 ............................................. Beethoven
Piano Trio No. 2 in E Minor, Op. 67 ..........................................................Dmitri Shostakovich
Here is Shostakovich at the piano in a 1945 performance of the final movement of his Trio No. 2, with violinist Dmitri Tziganov and cellist Sergei Shirinsky:
Edmonton-born, Toronto-based cellist Rachel Mercer is going to drag her priceless, 314-year-old "Bonjour" Stradivarius cello across this snowy town this evening to intimate Gallery 345 in Parkdale, where she presents an eclectic, energetic recital program of Faure, de Falla, Piazzolla and Kapustin with pianist Vanessa Lee. Admission is $20. You'll find more details here.
Mercer recently posted a video clip where she speaks about her musical background, before playing the Prelude, Sarabande and Gigue from J.S. Bach's First Suite for Unaccompanied Cello. She talks about her personal development, and how she connected herself as a person with the day-to-day work of playing her instrument, thanks to a teacher's encouragement.
The cellist says she plays because she loves connecting with an audience, something she describes as "tapping into an energy that's already there." It made me think of the jumble of emotions we each bring to a concert, from unalloyed anticipation to a desire for escape from part of our mundane lives.
I can't spend more than 30 seconds at the Royal Conservatory or University of Toronto's Faculty of Music without wondering how all these talented kids are going to earn their daily bread when they graduate.
A recent article in the San Francisco Chronicle suggests that thinking beyond the traditional models is essential these days, when you need to line up behind 200 other equally accomplished people for each orchestral audition.
The article begins with the story of cellist Zoe Keating, who plays for us, below.
The article is well worth reading, I think, whether you are a listener or performer. You can find it here.
Life imitates art, in the case of two coincident events:
The cellist of a string quartet was put back on a plane to Chicago after Border Agency personnel at London's Heathrow Airport decided that her free performance at a conference at Leeds University qualified as work, and hence required a work permit. Her three colleagues made it through without harassment, though.
It turns out that the Border Agency people didn't like her cello. Writes the Guardian's Tom Service on his blog (read the full story here):
Derek Scott, head of the School of Music at the University of Leeds, spoke to the gatekeepers of Terminal 3 to find out more, and was told that the problem wasn't the conference, but Ostling's cello. Apparently, for immigration officials at Heathrow, to have an instrument automatically means you are working – whether or not you are paid. And, in a bureaucratic conclusion straight out of Kafka, Scott was also informed that what he should have done before inviting the quartet from Ohio was find out if any British or EU-based quartet would also have been prepared to play the music by Sergey Taneyev the Carpe Diems were scheduled to perform – for free.
Meanwhile, in Wales, Philip Glass has begun work on a chamber opera for the Music Theatre of Wales based on Franz Kafka's short story, The Trial, in which a man gets persecuted for no apparent reason by faceless authorities. Glass and the company have been collaborating for a couple of decades. The new work is due for a premiere during the company's 25th anniversary season, in 2013. (You can read the full story from whalesonline,co.uk here.)
It's obvious that the company should tour the opera to arrivals lounges at the world's finest international airports.
Just so we have a musical moment to go with this, here is a fragment of Dmitri Shostakovich -- someone who knew a thing or two about trampled freedoms -- performing his Piano Concerto No. 1 at the Moscow Conservatory:
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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