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Volume 23 Issue 3 - November 2017

In this issue: conversations (of one kind or another) galore! Daniela Nardi on taking the reins at "best-kept secret" venue, 918 Bathurst; composer Jeff Ryan on his "Afghanistan" Requiem for a Generation" partnership with war poet, Susan Steele; lutenist Ben Stein on seventeenth century jazz; collaborative pianist Philip Chiu on going solo; Barbara Hannigan on her upcoming Viennese "Second School" recital at Koerner; Tina Pearson on Pauline Oliveros; and as always a whole lot more!

In this issue: conversations (of one kind or another) galore! Daniela Nardi on taking the reins at "best-kept secret" venue, 918 Bathurst; composer Jeff Ryan on his "Afghanistan" Requiem for a Generation" partnership with war poet, Susan Steele; lutenist Ben Stein on seventeenth century jazz; collaborative pianist Philip Chiu on going solo; Barbara Hannigan on her upcoming Viennese "Second School" recital at Koerner; Tina Pearson on Pauline Oliveros; and as always a whole lot more!

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Thousands of Miles<br />

Kate Lindsey; Baptiste Trotignon<br />

Alpha Classics ALPHA 272<br />

(alpha-classics.com)<br />

!!<br />

Kurt Weill<br />

may be correctly<br />

described as a<br />

misunderstood<br />

genius. He was very<br />

serious about his<br />

music, yet was (and<br />

still is by many)<br />

dismissed as a<br />

“cabaret composer.” Despite the success of<br />

his collaborations with Bertolt Brecht, these<br />

works were banned in Nazi Germany and<br />

took the better part of the 1970s to reclaim<br />

their place in the repertoire. Similarly, his<br />

American works (One Touch of Venus, Street<br />

Scene, Lost in the Stars) were judged to be<br />

“not American enough” and not sufficiently<br />

“jazzy.” Here is a pairing of two artists to put<br />

both of these myths to well-deserved rest.<br />

Kate Lindsey, a classically trained mezzo,<br />

takes on Weill as if his works were more traditional<br />

German and Austrian lieder. In fact,<br />

when intermingled with songs by Alma<br />

Mahler, Erich Korngold and Alexander von<br />

Zemlinsky, the interpretative point is beautifully<br />

made. On the other hand, jazz pianist<br />

Baptiste Trotignon eschews often sketchy and<br />

reliably non-Weill arrangements and reductions<br />

and instead interprets the melodies in<br />

the best jazz tradition. The result is as fresh<br />

and surprising as you would expect: Weill the<br />

classical composer, and Weill the Gershwin<br />

rival! Although for many of us it may be hard<br />

to get the voice of Lotte Lenya out of our<br />

heads, the genius of Weill demands no less<br />

than that.<br />

Robert Tomas<br />

Musique Sacrée en Nouvelle-France<br />

Studio de musique ancienne de Montréal;<br />

Christopher Jackson; Réjean Poirier<br />

ATMA ACD2 2764 (atmaclassique.com)<br />

L/R<br />

!!<br />

This recording<br />

is a re-issue of a<br />

1995 album originally<br />

titled Le Chant<br />

de la Jerusalem<br />

des terres froides<br />

on the French label<br />

K617. At the time,<br />

founding member<br />

Christopher Jackson (1948-2015) directed<br />

Studio de musique ancienne de Montréal.<br />

The program represents sacred music from<br />

the daily life of 17th-century French settlements<br />

in the New World. Books of plainchant<br />

brought to New France were utilized<br />

in church services, but also formed the<br />

basis of a new style, adopted in both new<br />

and old worlds, which added ornamentation<br />

borrowed from secular repertoire. Mass<br />

excerpts by Henry du Mont, based in Paris,<br />

serve as excellent examples of this practice.<br />

In addition to Gregorian chant, books of<br />

petit motets were also brought to New France.<br />

Composed for soloists (or for no more than<br />

three voices) with chamber instrumentation,<br />

this proved much easier to realize in<br />

the colonies than the grand motet, which<br />

required large forces. Composers of the form<br />

such as Nicolas Lebègue and André Campra<br />

are represented on this recording, highlighting<br />

the divinely sweet persuasion of the<br />

small ensemble. Two of the pieces, Inviolata<br />

and Ego sum panis vivus, are examples of<br />

the petit motet translated into the Algonquin<br />

Abenaki dialect to abet religious conversion<br />

of the Native population. The choir and soloists’<br />

exquisite renderings throughout the CD<br />

bring the history to life, enhanced by organist<br />

Réjean Poirier’s performances of pieces from<br />

Livre d’orgue de Montréal.<br />

Dianne Wells<br />

O Gladsome Light<br />

Lawrence Wiliford; Marie Bérard; Keith<br />

Hamm; Steven Philcox<br />

Stone Records 506019278065<br />

(stonerecords.co.uk)<br />

!!<br />

That tenor<br />

Lawrence Wiliford’s<br />

voice is perfectly<br />

suited to English<br />

repertoire is clearly<br />

illustrated on<br />

this recording. In<br />

songs and hymns<br />

by Gustav Holst,<br />

his lesser-known student Edmund Rubbra<br />

and contemporary Ralph Vaughan Williams,<br />

Wiliford displays his gift for expressiveness,<br />

sensitivity to text and challengingly high<br />

tessitura. These qualities were assimilated<br />

through his experiences singing in the church<br />

since boyhood, roles in Canadian Opera<br />

Company productions and as co-founder of<br />

the Canadian Art Song Project along with<br />

pianist Steven Philcox (who also accompanies<br />

beautifully on this recording).<br />

Because Rubbra is relatively unknown, we<br />

are grateful for the singer’s inclusion of transcendent<br />

modal songs such as The Mystery<br />

and Rosa Mundi as well as Meditations on<br />

a Byzantine Hymn for solo viola played<br />

sublimely by Keith Hamm and Variations on<br />

a Phrygian Theme for solo violin on which<br />

Marie Bérard displays her signature sweetness<br />

of tone. (Both Hamm and Bérard are<br />

members of the COC orchestra.) Also of<br />

note from Rubbra is Hymn to the Virgin and<br />

Jesukin. Upon first hearing, I spent several<br />

minutes searching through liner notes for the<br />

name of the harpist. In fact, Rubbra had cleverly<br />

composed his accompaniment by the use<br />

of spread piano chords, resulting in a “harplike<br />

rendition” played so rockingly gentle<br />

by Philcox that one is easily lulled and thus<br />

bewildered, but happily so.<br />

Dianne Wells<br />

Donizetti – La Favorite<br />

Elīna Garanča; Bayerische Staatsoper;<br />

Karel Mark Chichon<br />

Deutsche Grammophon 073 5358<br />

! ! This is indeed<br />

a superlative<br />

performance from<br />

Munich, to be<br />

remembered for a<br />

long time to come.<br />

It brings out all<br />

the glory that lay<br />

partly dormant in<br />

past performances,<br />

although the opera<br />

did well for the<br />

last 177 years since<br />

first performed in Paris with great success.<br />

This new production perhaps wouldn’t have<br />

happened without Elīna Garanča’s keen<br />

interest in the project; the role seems written<br />

for her and she even brought along her<br />

husband Karel Mark Chichon to conduct as if<br />

the score was written for him. A happy situation,<br />

as there is a symbiotic relationship here;<br />

the two inspire each other and it sparkles like<br />

electricity in the air.<br />

The great mezzo towers over everything,<br />

vocally, artistically and even physically<br />

with tremendous vocal and emotional<br />

range and an incredible commitment to<br />

the character she plays. Léonor de Guzman<br />

is a beautiful woman literally enslaved by<br />

the King of Castile in 14th-century Spain,<br />

trying to break out by finding true love with<br />

a young man, only to be outwitted by the<br />

King, losing everything including her life.<br />

No less memorable are the men: American<br />

lyric tenor Matthew Polenzani, as Fernand<br />

the hapless lover, is glorious in his passionate<br />

love for Léonor and displays magnificent<br />

emotional and vocal fireworks in his<br />

grand scene at the third act finale when he<br />

finds out he’s been cheated by marrying<br />

the King’s mistress. Internationally famous<br />

Polish baritone Mariusz Kwiecien is perfectly<br />

cast as the charming, but utterly ruthless,<br />

powerful monarch who, also infatuated with<br />

Léonor but having to give her up, is thirsty<br />

for revenge.<br />

Talented director Amélie Niermeyer has a<br />

well-thought-out konzept definitely centring<br />

on the woman. Sets are minimal but powerful<br />

and create intimacy as well as religious<br />

fervour, not to mention space and grandeur<br />

that works so well that it even invokes the<br />

Grand Opera in Paris.<br />

Janos Gardonyi<br />

thewholenote.com <strong>November</strong> <strong>2017</strong> | 73

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