Volume 21 Issue 2 - October 2015

to the last piece on the album, the lengthy and
rich Fancies and Interludes VI by Raymond
Luedeke, a prolific composer and former TSO
clarinetist who wrote this composition especially
for Jacques Israelievitch. Five Fancies
are framed by Six Interludes, starting as a
somewhat fragmented conversation between
two vastly different voices and resolving in a
harmonious ending.
On the other hand, the album opens with
the strong momentum of Oskar Morawetz’s
Duo for violin and piano. This piece grabs
the listener right away, taking them on the
journey from the rhythmical flow of the
beginning to the deep lament in a Phrygian
D-minor in the last section. Nestled in
between are Drop by James Rolfe, my
personal favourite on this recording, a fascinating
musical travel from earth to heaven
and back, and ...and dark time flowed by
her like a river, by another composer with
a TSO connection, composer-adviser Gary
Kulesha. The work is a play between tonal and
atonal, reflecting a search for the meaning of
a moment in time.
The programming on this CD is exquisite
– the compositions flow one after another as
if they were meant to be. Israelievitch and
Petrowska Quilico allow the impulse, the
urge to soar and expand in their playing while
granting the listener a breathing space – the
true embodiment of Fancies and Interludes.
Ivana Popovic
Editor’s Note: Jacques Israelievitch, who
enjoyed an international career as a soloist,
conductor and teacher, died September 5.
He was 67 years old. He was diagnosed with
aggressive, metastatic lung cancer in late
February this year. Israelievitch had the
distinction of being the longest-serving
concertmaster of the Toronto Symphony
Orchestra. Retiring in 2008 after 20 years,
he joined the faculty of York University’s
School of the Arts, Media, Performance &
Design, as professor of violin and viola. On
August 14, in a special ceremony at his home,
Israelievitch was presented with the Order of
Canada, one of this country’s highest civilian
orders, recognizing outstanding achievement,
dedication to the community and
service to the nation for nearly three decades.
Although Fancies and Interludes was the last
CD released during his lifetime, Isrealievitch
and Christina Petrowska Quilico completed
recording Mozart’s 28 violin sonatas last May.
The CDs will be released in 2016.
Andrew Staniland – Talking Down the Tiger
Various Artists
Naxos Canadian Classics 8.573428
!!
Talking Down
the Tiger is the
latest release in the
important CD series
under the Naxos
Canadian Classics
masthead. Five world
premiere recordings of as many works by
Andrew Staniland, who has emerged as one
of Canada’s foremost concert composers, are
featured here. The subtitle and other works
for solo instruments and electronics aptly
describes the format these compositions,
dating from 2007 to 2013, are cast in.
Opening the disc is the title work, scored
for percussion and electroacoustic looping.
The composer evocatively notes that for
him, “percussion is a metaphorical tiger:
possessing all at once ferociousness, beauty
and mystery.” In Talking Down the Tiger
(2010) he aimed to “explore a journey from
a wild and ferocious sound world that gradually
recedes into a mystical and beautiful
sound world lying beneath.” Virtuoso Toronto
percussionist Ryan Scott brings both the
ferocity and lyrical sensitivity suggested
by Staniland’s score alive in his musically
sensitive performance. As for the electronics,
they effectively extend the percussion
sounds, bouncing them around the listening
space, sometimes resulting in mysterious
sonifications.
All five works receive terrifically musical
and convincing performances. Each one – for
guitar, flute, cello, and soprano saxophone,
in addition to the percussion of the first track
– has special musical felicities I would enjoy
commenting on, if only space permitted.
Unfortunately there’s only room left to
mention the impressive Still Turning (2011),
thematically inspired by T.S. Eliot’s poem
Four Quartets. Staniland’s expansive near-
18-minute score is brought to vivid dramatic
life by the celebrated cellist Frances-Marie
Uitti, eliciting for this listener a wide range of
emotional states. It’s a very satisfying musical
experience, as is the rest of the album.
Andrew Timar
Concert note: TorQ Percussion Quartet
includes a world premiere by Andrew Staniland
in its program at the Tranzac Club on
October 28.
Poetic Sketches
Elaine Keillor
Centrediscs CMCCD 21615
!!
Pianist Elaine
Keillor appears on
an extensive discography
of 28 solo and
chamber albums. Her
newest solo release
Poetic Sketches takes
its title from Oskar
Morawetz’s 1991
composition that includes the rhythmically
energetic Prelude to a Drama, Raindrops,
Storm, a haunting Prayer in Distress and the
lively perpetual motion Olympic Sprinter.
Through a Narrow Window is an intense
and convincing work by Estonian-Canadian
composer Elma Miller that imparts the
composer’s concern for the devastation of
the environment and our “narrow window”
of understanding regarding the ecological
destruction of the planet.
John Weinzweig’s Netscapes is constructed
from repeating motivic fragments that,
according to the composer’s program notes,
require “no further elaboration.” Having
recorded the work on my own CD released
last year, I am still intrigued, now as a listener,
by the innovative structure of the piece and
the integration of jazz-inflected interludes.
Although entirely different in compositional
technique and style, Alexina Louie’s In a
Flash also incorporates jazz-like influences
as Keillor’s interpretation brings verve to the
composer’s performance direction of “energetically
sassy.”
From John Milton’s pastoral poem
L’Allegro, Patrick Cardy’s humorous Quips
and Cranks: Five Bagatelles for piano (2004)
was the composer’s last piece written before
his untimely death at age 52. Keillor’s clarity
of articulation creates vitality as she conveys
the charm of these delightful works.
Kelly-Marie Murphy’s virtuoso Let Hands
Speak (2003) was written for the Honens
International Piano Competition and Keillor
meets the technical challenges head-on in a
spirited driving interpretation as the CD ends
with an exciting climax.
Réa Beaumont
Chamber Music of John Burge
Ensemble Made in Canada
Centrediscs CMCCD 21715
!!
John Burge (b.1961)
has produced a large
body of instrumental
and vocal works,
while teaching at
Queen’s University
since 1987 and serving
as president of the
Canadian League
of Composers (1998 to 2006). His Flanders
Fields Reflections for string orchestra won the
2009 JUNO for best Canadian composition.
The three works on this disc display Burge’s
characteristic neo-romantic coupling of melodiousness
with strong rhythmic drive.
Ensemble Made in Canada, formed in
2006 and winner of the CBC Galaxie Rising
Stars award, is currently ensemble-in-residence
at Western University. The ensemble
commissioned this CD’s major work, the
34-minute Piano Quartet (2012), in which
two highly propulsive movements, the first
employing minimalist elements, bracket
an elegiac Adagietto containing a scherzo
(Presto misterioso). All three movements are
dramatic attention-holders.
The disc opens with Pas de Deux (2010),
performed by the Ensemble’s violinist Elissa
Lee and cellist Rachel Mercer. Its structure
mirrors that of the balletic duo and the
music’s warm lyricism and rocking rhythm
could easily be choreographed for a real,
danced love-duet.
The ensemble’s other pair, violist Sharon
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