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!
Create successful ePaper yourself
Turn your PDF publications into a flip-book with our unique Google optimized e-Paper software.
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