MONDAY
- Simón Bolívar String Quartet at Walter Hall, 7:30 p.m.
The Simón Bolívar String Quartet hails from the same place and time as the symphony orchestra with the same name, as wellas superstar conductor Gustavo Dudamel. Violinists Alejandro Carreño and Boris Suaréz, violist Ismel Campos and cellist Aimon Mata are products of Venezuela’s El sistema, which provides state-sponsored music education to any schoolchildren willing and able to pick up an instrument or sing a song.
The members of the quartet — all of whom perform with the country’s flagship youth orchestra — are intimate-scale examples of the passion and energy that permeate every aspect of musicmaking in the South American country.
- Classical Music 101: What Does A Conductor Do? - June 17, 2019
- Classical Music 101 | What Does Period Instrument Mean? - May 6, 2019
- CLASSICAL MUSIC 101 | What Does It Mean To Be In Tune? - April 23, 2019
They are also living, breathing proof that all children, not just those in financially flush school districts, can thrive when given opportunities to make music together.
The programme features string quartet staples from Joseph Haydn (Op. 74, No. 1) and Franz Schubert (No. 14 — “Death and the Maiden”) as well as Alberto Ginastera’s electrifying String Quartet No. 1.
For more info and tickets, click here.
The Venezuelans follow up their recital with a free master class at Walter Hall, starting at 10 a.m. on Tuesday.
Here is the quartet at work, first with the second movement of the Ginastera piece (I apologise for the poor quality), then they show off their intensity very nicely in the fourth movement of Dmitri Shostakovich’s String Quartet No. 8, Op. 110:
TUESDAY
- Pianist Marc-André Hamelin at the Jane Mallett Theatre, 8 p.m.
If there’s one piano recital to attend this season, this is it, as Marc-André Hamelin makes one of his regular stops with Music Toronto bearing a fascinating concert programme that is as serious as it is entertaining.
He offers up two landmark Sonatas: Franz Liszt’s warhorse in B minor, as well as Alban Berg’s fascinating journey into the beginnings of atonality. Hamelin leavens the big works with Préludes 15, 16, 23 and 24 from Claude Debussy’s second book, as well as five selections from his own compositions: Etudes 8, 2, 7, 11, and 12 from his own set of 12 in minor keys.
Hamelin, whose most recent album for Hyperion, featuring the Liszt Sonata, has a chance of winning a Juno Award this coming weekend, has fully embraced the ethos of the Golden Age of the piano, where the performer was also composer. He is not a showy artist on stage, but his seemingly insatiable need to push himself results in some pretty amazing feats of technique as well as musicianship.
For more info and tickets, click here.
Here are “Homage to Scarlatti,” No.6 of Hamelin’s 12 Etudes in All the Minor Keys, which is not on Tuesday’s programme, followed by No.7, “Lullaby, After Tchaikovsky,” for left-hand only:
WEDNESDAY
- Juilliard String Quartet at Markham Theatre, 8 p.m.
The Juilliard Quartet, which has a long and glorious history dating back to the aftermath of World War II, hasn’t been in these parts for a while. Since last season, they have had a new first violin, Joseph Lin, who was born years after violist Samuel Rhodes and cellist Joel Krosnick joined the quartet (the other violinist, Ronald Copes, joined in 1997).
I’ll have an interview with Lin posted on this site in a day or two.
The programme for the Markham Theatre recital starts with Joseph Haydn (the G Major quartet, Op. 54, No. 1) and ends with Ludwig van Beethoven’s monumental Op. 130 quartet in B-flat, complete with its original Grosse Fuge ending. Sandwiched between the two is late Bostonian modernist Donald Martino’s Quartet No. 5.
For concert details and tickets, click here.
Here’s a bit more on Lin and the Beethoven:
THURSDAY
- Cecilia String Quartet at Walter Hall, Edward Johnson Building, 1:30 p.m.
The Women’s Musical Club of Toronto hosts the Cecilia String Quartet, which is really coming into its own as a strong, respected young group.
Violinists Min-Jeong Koh and Sarah Nematallah, violist Caitlin Boyle and cellist Rachel Desoer offer a substantial and varied programme: Mozart’s String Quartet No. 16 in E Flat major, K. 428; String Quartet Op. 108 No. 7, by Dmitri Shostakovich; Ludwig van Beethoven’s F Major String Quartet No. 16, Op. 135; Giacomo Puccini’s Crisantemi; and Commedia dell’arte, by Montreal-based composer Ana Sokolovic.
For all the concert details, and for tickets, click here.
Here is a bit of background on the Cecilias, followed by a performance of the ever-haunting Crisantemi:
- Esprit Orchestra at Koerner Hall, 8 p.m.
The final concert of the season for the city’s only full orchestra devoted to new music features pianist Jamie Parker performing Piano Concerto No. 3 by Canadian composer Harry Somers (Parker and Esprit produced a gorgeously expansive, sparkling recording of the classically structured three-movement work in 2000 for now-defunct CBC Records).
There’s plenty of other great, newer music on the programme, including the premiere of a new commission from young Quebec composer Jimmie LeBlanc.
For all the details, and tickets, click here.
FRIDAY
- Tenor Michael Schade introduces baritone Luca Pisaroni to Roy Thomson Hall, 8 p.m.
One of Toronto’s great international stars is back in town for an evening of art song. The concert was supposed to feature tenor Michael Schade’s friend, the great German baritone Thomas Quasthoff, who decided after this recital was booked that the time had come to stop singing in public.
Rather than cancel the concert, Schade convinced young Italian baritone Luca Pisaroni to join him on stage for a programme of Lieder by Mozart, Franz Schubert, Felix Mendelssohn, Johannes Brahms and, for accessible Canadian content, John Greer.
The duo warmed up for Toronto with a recital at Alice Tully Hall in New York City on Sunday.
I’ll have more on this later in the week.
For more details and tickets, click here.
SATURDAY
- Intercultural Journeys Ensemble at Koerner Hall, 8 p.m.
This is one of those barrier-breaking concerts that promises to stimulate the head, the heart as well as the gut. It also defies a quick description.
Here is how the programmers describe it:
Creating lightening-rod moments of connection through music, Vivaldi Gone Wild, improvisations on Prayer for Peace, Simon Shaheen’s Dance Mediterranea, and other works are performed by the Philadelphia Orchestra’s Israeli-born cellist Udi Bar-David, Palestinian violinist Hanna Khoury, Syrian-Venezuelan percussionist Hafez El Ali Kotain, Syrian singer Youssef Kassab, Egyptian-Canadian qanun master George Sawa, and Cantor Beny Maissner of Toronto’s Holy Blossom [congregation].
For more information and tickets, click here.
Here are Bar-David, Khoury and Morales-Matos at work during one of their Intercultural Journeys concerts, with I virtuosi italiani:
SUNDAY
- Opera in Concert presents Franz Schubert’s Die Freunde von Salamaka at the Jane Mallett Theatre, 2:30 p.m.
We associate Franz Schubert (1797-1828) with art song, piano and symphony, but not opera. This wasn’t for lack of ambition on his part. Schubert really wanted to be an opera composer, but never managed to have much success with it during his short lifetime (he left a sketch for a pretty good final opera, The Count of Gleichen, which was deciphered, orchestrated and premiered by Austrian composer Richard Dünser in 2003).
Opera in Concert presents what it believes is the Canadian premiere of Die Freunde von Salamanka (The Friends from Salamaka), one of Schubert’s five Singspiels (light operas with spoken text, like Mozart’s Magic Flute), with a fresh English translation.
The solo cast features the wonderful soprano Shannon Mercer, as well as talented young tenor Michael Ciufo.
Conductor Kevin Mallon leads the Toronto Chamber Orchestra.
For more information, and tickets, click here.
Here is the late, great Hermann Prey singing “Man ist so glücklich und so frei,” from Act I of Die Freunde von Salamanka:
John Terauds
- Classical Music 101: What Does A Conductor Do? - June 17, 2019
- Classical Music 101 | What Does Period Instrument Mean? - May 6, 2019
- CLASSICAL MUSIC 101 | What Does It Mean To Be In Tune? - April 23, 2019
