Monthly Archives: February 2012

Learning to love New Creations: Familiarity breeds content

Posted by —

0

I mentioned in my post yesterday how the Toronto Symphony Orchestra’s eighth New Creations festival, which kicks off tomorrow night at Roy Thomson Hall, promises to be the most challenging yet.

Music director Peter Oundjian and composer-advisor Gary Kulesha have had a habit of selecting accessible new music for the annual festival, which made it easier for audiences to appreciate what is going on without prior listening and reading.

This year’s festival has some accessible fare, but a lot of the music, especially that of Peter Eötvös, the featured composer and conductor, benefits from a bit of prior exposure.

So, here’s a chance to get a foretaste some of tomorrow night’s music ahead of time. Continue reading →

Video: Happy 220th birthday to Gioachino Rossini, champion of Freedom 37

Posted by —

0

Of course he’s famous for his operas, but Gioachino Rossini retired from that hurlyburly after writing 29 of them, at age 37. he spent the rest of his 76 years having, among other things, fun with other musical forms.

So, to help wish him a happy 22o, here are three of my favourite bits of later Rossiniana. As you can hear, the man took himself out of opera, but no one could take opera out of the man: Continue reading →

DVD Review: Anna Nicole Smith opera a titillating morality tale of our time

Posted by —

0

Eva-Maria Westbroeck as Anna Nicole Smith

THE ROYAL OPERA
Anna Nicole (Royal Opera House/OpusArte)

It’s been a year since the Royal Opera House premiere of Anna Nicole, Mark Anthony Turnage and Richard Thomas’ two-act spin on the sordid life and death of Anna Nicole Smith.

Remember her? The mercenary tabloid personality who died at the ripe old age of 39, consumed by an unslakable thirst for — was it fame? Alcohol? Money? Security? Drugs?

The great thing about this opera is that we don’t have to remember her, or have cared about her either in life or death. She is an archetype we know all too well in the age of TMZ. As are her silicone breasts, her white-trash Texas family, her disposable husbands and her Svengali lawyer-confidant, Howard K. Stern. Continue reading →

Toronto Symphony Orchestra’s New Creations festival makes new music easy to avoid

Posted by —

0

Hungarian composer Peter Eötvös (Klaus Rudolph photo)

Toronto Symphony Orchestra music director Peter Oundjian has made it easy for symphony lovers to deal with new music, by segregating much of it into a three-concert New Creations festival. People with an aversion to the experimental can simply stay away, while those with a nose for something newer can bask in a fleeting rainbow of possibilities.

On the eve of the TSO’s eighth annual New Creations festival — one with the most challenging content so far — I think it’s fair to ask if this is a good thing. Continue reading →

DVD Review: Many reasons to be over the moon for Tafelmusik’s Galileo Project

Posted by —

0

Toronto’s Tafelmusik Baroque Orchestra has just departed for its first tour of Australia and New Zealand, presenting its 2009 multimedia creation, The Galileo Project, at 11 concerts. This also happens to be the first DVD release on its new music label, Tafelmusik Media. Continue reading →

Video: OK Go is poster band for the web-savvy, but it’s not as easy as it looks

Posted by —

2

If you’re not one of the 16 million to have seen this video over the past 22 days, you need to see how OK Go, a pop band that has gone multiply viral on You Tube over the past couple of years, makes music with a car and a junkyard’s worth of accessories:

These very clever boys are among the so very hip poster children of a new wave of fame-by-social media. But it doesn’t take much of a scratch below the surface to reveal that, without someone’s deep pockets, today’s video stars are no more likely than yesterday’s dude-with-a-guitar-in-the-subway to make a go of it. Continue reading →

Feb. 27: Toronto classical concert highlights for the next seven days

Posted by —

1

MONDAY

This is typically a quiet night, but, this week, there are two fine choices within six blocks of each other:

University of Toronto’s Faculty of Music presents one of its own, pianist Henri-Paul Sicsic, in an all-Beethoven programme: the 15 “Eroica” Variations and fugue in E-flat major, Op. 35, the Sonata No. 31 in A-flat major, Op. 110, and both the Op. 33 and Op. 126 Bagatelles. Continue reading →

Good listening: Royal Conservatory piano student Lucas Porter gives fine solo recital for CBC

Posted by —

0

The more I visit the CBC’s new online community for classical music, the more I see the threadbare efforts of a public broadcaster stretching itself thin in new media. But I’ve also found some fine listening in their Concerts on Demand — which is not a new service, just more difficult to sort through and find useful information.

Today’s treat was listening to a very fine solo recital by 20-year-old Royal Conservatory of Music Glenn Gould Professional School student Lucas Porter, who is originally from Port Williams, N.S. Continue reading →

CD Review: Bach and Schubert sing in pianist Simone Dinnerstein’s Something Being Said

Posted by —

0

SIMONE DINNERSTEIN
Something Almost Being Said (Sony Classical)

I have to confess I was seduced by New Yorker Simone Dinnerstein from the first time I heard her recording of J.S. Bach’s Goldberg Variations nearly five years ago. It hasn’t been unconditional love since, but a respect and appreciation for a musician who can bend everything she touches to suit her will. Continue reading →

Enterprising startup aims to ensure a bright, collaborative future for the Canadian art song

Posted by —

1

Tenor Lawrence Wiliford

Two fine Toronto musicians have taken it upon themselves to spur a new wave of collaboration and creativity to secure the future of art song in this country by founding the Canadian Art Song Project. Continue reading →