Ahead of Opera Atelier’s upcoming production of Handel’s The Resurrection (La resurrezione) at Koerner Hall next week (6th to 9th April) there was a lunchtime preview in the RBA on Tuesday.  Later that day I sat down with director Marshall Pynkoski to find out more about the work, OA’s relationship to it and its rather tortuous journey to the Koerner Hall stage. The work itself has an interesting history.  It was written by the 22 year old Händel (as he then most certainly was) in Rome during Lent in 1708 and performed in rather sumptuous style at the Ruspoli palazzo on Easter Sunda ..read more

Here’s what’s coming up at Toronto Mendelssohn Choir/Singers next season. There are a couple of shows for the TM Singers; the professional core of the TMC: September 22nd/23rd 2023 at trinity St. Paul’s there’s a multidisciplinary show featuring dance by Compagnie de la Citadelle.  The works on offer are Handel’s Dixit Dominus and Bach’s Christ Lag in Todesbanden. March 16th 2024, also at Trinity St. Paul’s, it’s Schubert’s Winterreise in an arrangement for choir, baritone and piano featuring Brett Polegato and Philip Chiu.  The programme also includes works by Fanny Hersel and CCla ..read more

My review of Ian Cusson and Kanika Ambrose’s new opera Of the Sea is now up at Opera Canada ..read more

Decca have just released a 3CD set of previously unreleased recordings made by the late Jessye Norman between 1989 and 1998 with various orchestras and conductors. The first is a series of extracts from Wagner’s Tristan und Isolde recorded in Leipzig in 1998 with Kurt Masur conducting the Gewandhaus Orchestra.  Besides the Prelude there’s most of the Isolde/Brangäne scenes from Act 1 (Hannah Schwarz is Brangäne).  Then comes the huge Act 2, Scene 2 duet; “Isolde! Geliebte! – Tristan! Geliebte!” etc, with Thomas Moser as Tristan, and finally, and inevitably, the “Liebestod”.  It ..read more

I’ve listened to and liked a lot of Missy Mazzoli’s operatic and vocal music but hadn’t had much exposure to her purely instrumental writing so  was interested to get hold of a copy of her new SACD release Dark with Excessive Bright. The title track was originally composed as a concerto for double bass and string orchestra but here it’s given in two reworkings for solo violin; one with string orchestra and the other with string quintet.  The soloist is Peter Herresthal and in the orchestral version he’s accompanied by Bergen Philharmonic conducted by James Gaffigan.  I think all ..read more

Here’s what I know about so far for April. On April 6th at 1.30pm in Walter Hall, Music in the Afternoon is presenting a concert featuring Marion Newman, Melody Courage, Evan Korbut and Gordon Gerrard in a mix of classical song and contemporary works on Indigenous themes including music by Ian Cusson, Bramwell Tovey and Tomson Highway. Later that day, at 7.30pm at Koerner Hall, Opera Atelier have the first of three performances of Handel’s The Resurrection.  This is the fully staged version of the production that streamed during lockdown.  There are further performances on the 8th at ..read more

Tuesday’s lunch time concert in the RBA featured some of the people involved in Against the Grain Theatre’s new, updated version of Bartók’s Duke Bluebeard’s Castle which opens next week at the Fleck Dance Theatre.  There was an excellent descripttion of what the project was all about from Gerald Finley (Bluebeard) and Stephen Higgins (conductor and arranger – the orchestration is reduced to a seven person chamber ensemble). There was also some music from Gerald plus Charlotte Hellekant (Judith) and her cover, Jaclyn Grossman. Stephen and Holly Kroeker provided the piano accompaniment.&n ..read more

From the good people of Silicon Valley, who brought us the iPod and the iPad and the iDontknowwhatelse, we now have iSing Silicon Valley; a choir of young women.  Their new album is titled love and light and features the choir with, on some tracks, harpist Cheryl Fulton and soprano Estelelí Gomez in settings of Latin texts ranging from Hildegard of Bingen to contemporary composers.  It’s all sort of in the range of plainchant to polyphony with young bright vibrato-less voices with maybe a New Agey touch (though that may be guilt by association), It’s pleasant enough listening though ..read more

On Saturday evening the Toronto Mendelssohn Singers gave a very beautiful, carefully constructed and thought provoking concert. To start with it was at the Church of the Holy Trinity which, as most Torontonians will know, is a sort of social hub servicing the spiritual and material needs of Toronto’s homeless as best they can. All the more ironic as it sits in the shadow of that iconic temple of consumer capitalism the Eaton Centre. The programme, though played without an interval, was really in three parts.  The first bookended David Lang’s Little Match Girl Passion with two excerpts fr ..read more

field studies is a CD of chamber music by Canadian composer Emilie Cecilie Lebel.  There are five tracks on the record; each around twelve minutes long, scored for various small forces and recorded in different locations. The pieces are all different but they have one thing in common.  They make a few notes go a long way!  evaporation blue, which opens the album is typical.  It’s scored for piano and harmonica; both played by Cheryl Duvall, and it’s very sparse with the notes typically given long time values.  It’s quite evocative in a slightly tense kind of way.  ..read more