Thursday, March 25, Walter Hall, Toronto.

Glenn Buhr’s String Quartet No.4 (The Seasons), commissioned by The Women’s Musical Club of Toronto for its 112th season, was premièred this afternoon by the Penderecki String Quartet. This single-movement work, formed as an introduction followed by theme and variations, is inspired the shifting densities of bird populations during the flow of the seasons, and by the energies that notion suggests.

The opening sequences are slow, dissonant—the initial restlessness of stiff joints, “taut, tentative feet” shuffling towards rhythmic expression that is discovering how to flow like little rippling sonic waves where bits of melody swirl in a dance that hints at counterpoint. A pizzicato marks the shift to a rhythmic outpouring of wistful variations distinguished by Jacob Braun who makes his cello wail like a bowed saw or an ondes martenot. The variations continue to wax and wane more strongly, and darker in the cello part, until Jerzy Caplanek’s first violin and guest Annalee Patipatanakoon’s second violin’s dialogue leads to a crescendo that steals away into the blend of closing quiescent tones.

This profound work by Buhr, who is better-known to me as a dedicated jazz pianist, composer, and bandleader, was preceded by the Penderecki’s performance of Haydn’s juicy middle-period String Quartet No.75/5. There is nothing tentative about this work, bouyed by the elegant knees-up spirits of  Sicilian and European folkdance melodies. However, all four movements are joined by the slow, dark, weighty matter concentrated in the Largo second movement. Elements of it surface in the perturbed minor section initiated by the cello in the first movement, as interjections in the Menuetto, and teasingly at the opening of the Finale until Haydn lets the pace stretch its legs in a Presto of purely lighthearted good humour. The Penderecki’s choice, in the first movement, to slow the tempo of the more sober moments began to make more sense as the feeling of contrast with the more forceful parts developed.

After intermission, the PSQ’s former cellist, Simon Fryer, joined in the performance of Schubert’s monumental “reckoning with the remembrance of loss,” his C-Major String Quintet (D.956). And what a performance it was—the kind that makes you feel that you’ve never heard this piece before—an illusory feeling that means you are learning something new about the music. What came to me from this performance is a heightened sense of Schubert’s intelligence, his shrewdness to the point of cunning in arranging his narrative of death-within-life. Much of this effect is traceable back to the added cello.

After the unusually low pressure meanderings of the opening movement’s Introduction, the rich sonorities of the combined cellos emerge nakedly as a duet singing the first exquisitely shaped melody of the work. The self-assured comfort of the cellos with each other dominates the exposition, development and recapitulation this expansive, multi-themed movement. In the heartbreaking Adagio, and in the plaintive Trio section of the third movement, you can feel Simon Fryer’s fingers on the carotid-blood pulse during his pizzicato dialogue with the anguished cries of the first violin, supported by the harmonic drone of the other violin, cello, and Christine Vlajk’s viola. These passages show the steady intelligence of Schubert’s mind as he peers into the abyss that in a few weeks time would engulf him. One also can experience in the deliberate water-drop-drop of the extra cello’s notes, how the sadness in Schubert’s mind is encapsulated by the gleaming bubble of civilized playfulness.

The final Allegretto is all dance: rollicking Hungarian folk, Viennese cafe, flashes of Mozartean comic opera, brilliant reflections recollected in the tranquility of a clear mind.

March 20, 2010, Roy Thompson Hall, Toronto.

Hvorostovsky alone onstage in a form-fitting velvet suit compels the eye with the perfection of a Dresden china doll. His Aria, “Resta immobile” from the third act of Rossini’s William Tell is the hero commanding his son to stand still while he shoots the apple off his head. The music pours out of Hvorostovsky like the tones of a polished mahogany organ. He gallantly escorts Sondra Radvanovsky to centre-stage and leaves her to sing Verdi’s “Ernani, Ernani involami,” Elvira’s appeal as the sun sets for her lover to save her from a forced marriage. As the orchestra, conducted by Constantine Orbelian, introduces the aria, Radvanovsky visibly merges with her role. Her voice is kaleidoscopic, reflecting Elvira’s desperation, passion, vulnerability, and the power of her character’s integrity. There is a natural simplicity to her gift that brings to mind Callas at her best.

The program, focused on Verdi, showcases the dramatic and melodic beauty of Italian opera that brings one to feel glimpses of the sublime, of the larger-than-life. Hvorostovsky dramatizes Don Carlos (La Forza del Destino) discovering that the friend who saved his life seduced his sister; Radvanovsky’s “Song to the Moon” from Dvorak’s Rusalka is totally naked in it’s tender longing. In the duets from Verdi’s Simon Boccanegra and Un Ballo in Maschera, a father and long-lost daughter are reunited , and in the latter a disgraced woman begs her husband to spare her life. The beauty of the music invites us to allow the larger-than-life drama to serve as a perspective for the dramas in our own lives. The “Finale” duet from Tchaikovsky’s Eugene Onegin in which Tatyana walks away from Onegin, the unworthy man she secretly loves, is Horostovsky’s most ‘alive’ performance: his sensitive vocal shadings compensate for his statuesque stage manner.

In a way, the dramatic limitations of Horostovsky—the ‘recitalist’—highlight the thrilling fullness of Radvanovsky’s artistry. As their tour continues through North America, audiences will decide whether they belong in the company of the great recitalist couples: Netrebko and Villazon, Alagna and Gheorghiu, Callas and di Stefano. What most interests me is that Radvanovsky will make her Toronto operatic debut next season as the COC’s Aida.

February 25, 2010, Koerner Hall, Toronto.

In a Bayrakdarian concert there are many moments that melt the heart and take away the breath, but none are more compelling than moments when it appears her song is riding the currents of her husband, Serouj Kradjian’s, sensitive piano.

 

Their program had plenty of variety—28 songs from cycles by 7 composers including Obradors, Heggie, Ravel, Bellini, Poulenc, Berlioz, and Gomidas, the tragic founder of 20th Century Armenian classical music whose songs bring thoughts “Too deep for tears.” Mr. Kradjian orchestrated and recently recorded 19 modal songs by Gomidas with Ms. Bayrakdarian. The Gomidas Songs seem to issue from a place in their hearts vast and deep as the memory of a lost homeland.  Ms. Bayrakdarian herself has said, “In many ways, when I sing them … they come from a part of me that is very different from when I sing any other repertoire.”

Highlights of the ‘other repetoire’ this afternoon include stay-in-the-mind performances of Bellini’s “Vaga Luna”, sublime in its submissiveness to love, the more lively seductive postures of Bellini’s “Per Pietà”, and the thrilling “La Ricordanza.” You could imagine gossamer gown, tangled hair and garlands floating slowly on the etherial stream during their performance of “Mort d’Ophelie” by Berlioz. We enjoyed wit and carefree moments in the elegant passages of Poulenc’s “Banalités”; Ravel’s extraverted “Five Greek Folksongs”, which Ms. Bayrakdarian sang in Greek conveyed the unabashed self-delight of country folk. The passion and drama of a cycle of melismatic Spanish songs by Obrador ended the afternoon on a wakeful note.

Friday, February 4, 2010. Jane Mallett Theatre, Toronto. 

Actor Colin Fox scripted The Schumann Letters in the form of a Shakespearean comedy like The Tempest. 17 year old Robert Schumann’s plan to study law is wrecked when he attends a public piano recital by the 8 year old Clara Weick : Robert abandons his legal career and enters the Wieck home to study piano with Clara’s father.  Their long and difficult courtship culminates in a series of legal trials, which Frederich Weick initiates to prevent Schumann from taking Clara away from him.  In 1840, Clara turns 21, and Colin Fox ends his narration on a happy note for the couple and for the audience, accompanied by Michael Kim at the piano and soprano Susan Gilmour Bailey performing the music Robert wrote as a wedding gift for Clara.

 

The evening opens with Michael Kim spotlighted at the piano playing the exquisite“Traumerei” from Kinderszenen at a slower tempo than I’ve ever heard—Lang Lang’s version excepted.  About a minute into it, the spotlight moves across the stage to Colin Fox at the podium telling the story of Schumann’s failed suicide attempt, brought on by tertiary syphilitic psychosis in the 14^th year of his marriage to Clara. This episode creates a dark background for the glorious story of the springtime of their love, and is not mentioned again. Rather, what the audience remembers is Soprano Susan Gilmour Bailey’s vibrant “Er, der Herrlichste von allen  (‘He, the Noblest of All’)” from Frauenliebe und Leben, the eight poem cycle Schumann set in their marriage year, 1840, telling the woman’s story of first meeting her love, through their marriage, to his death.

 

The 40 minute script, drawn from the complete correspondence of Clara and Robert Schumann which runs to nearly 600 pages, proves that absence makes the heart grow fond. The Schumann Letters—a music-as-theatre  project that is shared creatively by the three presenters with their manager Andrew Kwan—will continue to tour Canada for the rest of this year and beyond. Likely it will continue creating a fondness in audiences for the wonderful music that came out the Schumann’s inspiring love story.