Volume 21 Issue 8 - May 2016

Juliet Beckwith:
The Fairy Queen
family, however, also lives beyond
its means and Paul’s Uncle Oscar
and the gardener Bassett seek to
increase the family income by betting
on horses. Paul is literally haunted
by mysterious voices in the house
that tell him “There must be more
money.” To solve the problem he
rides his rocking horse until the
name of the winning horse magically
comes to him.
Chatterton says that she and
Williams changed certain details of
the story: “We set the story in the
present and made the pivotal character
Paul – originally a young boy
in Lawrence’s short story – into a
young man who is on the autistic
spectrum.” Bassett is changed from a gardener to Paul’s healthcare
worker. Nevertheless, Lawrence’s original themes are still there
and still relevant. As Chatterton says, “The story is very much about
entitlement and greed, and also about a mother who can’t feel love
for her son and all the complexities that come with that disconnect.
We feel these themes still speak to today’s society.”
The cast features soprano Carla Huhtanen as Ava, Paul’s mother;
tenor Keith Klassen as Paul’s Uncle Oscar; baritone Peter McGillivray
as Bassett; and in his professional debut with Tapestry Opera,
tenor Asitha Tennekoon as Paul. Tapestry’s artistic director Michael
Hidetoshi Mori will direct and Jordan de Souza will conduct.
Performances take place May 27 to June 4.
Christopher Hoile is a Toronto-based writer on opera and
theatre. He can be contacted at opera@thewholenote.com.
July
8 and 9
2016
Shakespeare and Music
with Christopher Plummer
Presented by
TD Canada Trust
7:30 p.m. | Dominion-Chalmers United Church
www.musicandbeyond.ca
Bach To The
Future!
DAVID PODGORSKI
Funny how new initiatives
that should be big news have
a way of sneaking up on you.
Case in point, apparently there’s
a Bach festival (three concerts)
happening in town next month
and nobody told me! Titled
“Four Centuries of Bach. First
Annual Toronto Bach Festival”
it appears to be the brainchild
of John Abberger, who besides
being a principal oboist for
Tafelmusik and the American
Bach Soloists, recorded an
album of Bach organ concertos
for Analekta in 2006 as well as
an album of Bach’s Orchestral
Suites 2 and 4 in 2011. His principal accomplice appears to be Phillip
Fournier, organist at the Oratory of St. Philip Neri, on King St. W.
Fournier will doubtless dazzle the audience May 28, in the middle
concert of the three, performing Bach’s Toccata and Fugue in d BWV
565 and other works on the Oratory’s historically inspired Gober and
Kney instrument.
The other two concerts,
bookending this one,
May 27 and May 29 take place at
St. Barnabas Anglican Church,
361 Danforth Ave and are, I
suspect, Abberger’s “babies.”
The first is a concert that
includes two of Bach’s Weimar
cantatas (Weinen, Klagen,
Sorgen, Zagen and Herz und
Mund und Tat und Leben), with
a vocal lineup featuring Ellen
McAteer, soprano, Daniel Taylor,
alto, and Lawrence Wiliford!
Beat by Beat | Early Music
Phillip Fournier
John Abberger
Info for the Sunday closing concert is somewhat vaguer – sonatas and
trios by J.S. Bach, played by “Musicians of Four Centuries of Bach.”
But if the calibre of the players in the first two concerts is anything
to go by, we’re in for a three-part treat!
Given that the scope of the project is fairly ambitious, the people
responsible really should devote more time to publicity. To wit, their
website lists only concert titles, venues and dates, and a chance to
order tickets. And that’s pretty much it. You may see some concert
programs if they update the website by the time you read this, but it
doesn’t look like they will. So being somewhat diligent about these
things, and wishing always to provide a service to my readership, I did
a little sleuthing and managed to uncover a few details, with which
I can make some conclusions about this little-known upstart of a
music festival.
Which leads me directly to my second reason for exhorting you
to catch this Bach festival while you can, which is that the organizers
seem to be burying their light so deep beneath a bushel -
lack of publicity, last-minute organization - that “Four Centuries
of Bach” might end up being how long it takes Abberger et al to get
through Bach’s catalogue of compositions for at least (wait for it) four
centuries.
Grumbles aside, Abberger has enough experience with Bach’s
cantatas and other works to be able to craft a better-than-average
24 | May 1, 2016 - June 7, 2016 thewholenote.com