The opening performance at George Weston Hall of Tafelmusik Chamber Choir’s 30th anniversary “choral spectacular” on Tuesday night was mystifying, if not downright disappointing.
This really is a head-scratcher, coming from a group that has, for the 24 years that I’ve been attending their concerts, delivered scintillating choral performances season after season under its founder and director, Ivars Taurins.
- 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
Although there were little rough edges throughout Tuesday night’s performance, the quality of the singing from this group isn’t the issue. The problem was the programme itself.
The first half is a journey of the soul. The second half a more earthly voyage. In each, music from the 17th and 18th centuries is interwoven with 20th and 21st century fare.
The Baroque music was accompanied by members of the Tafelmusik Baroque Orchestra. The other works were sung a cappella.
Taurins’ express wish, printed in the programme, was that there be no applause until the end of each half, meaning that the audience had to sit on its hands for eight or nine pieces, waiting in a sort of silent limbo as the musicians on stage shifted gears.
This was so that the audience could focus on “a sequence of texts that complement and reflect each other.”
Despite Taurins obvious care in selecting texts and keys, too many of the pieces in both halves of the concert were of similar tempo, mood and style, somehow making all that fine singing — and some fine compositions, including the premiere of a new piece by Toronto composer James Rolfe — dissolve into a grey mass of melancholy.
The constant shifts between Modern dissonance and Baroque harmonies and counterpoints was also unsettling, highlighting how similar were Taurins choices of pieces, rather than celebrating the subtle differences that make each era special.
Three decades of first-rate singing in the service of some of the finest works of the past four centuries is cause for much rejoicing. But this programme felt more like a solemn commemoration.
Far more effective would have been the presentation of a big, festive, rarely heard Baroque-era work that could have handed over musical stoytelling duty to a master composer and librettist.
Taurins had chosen excerpts from one work that would have fit the bill beautifully, employing the full talents of both choir and orchestra: Les Indes galantes, a 1735 opera-ballet by French composer Jean-Philippe Rameau.
Performances resume on March 29 at Trinity-St. Paul’s Centre, continuing to April 1. For programme rdetails and ticket information, click here.
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
