Ever noticed how everyone gets so serious and determined about carving out relaxation time on Labour Day weekend? It’s almost as if one has failed both summer and oneself if one lets the opportunity slip by.
- 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
Let’s say the same thing for some wonderful concerts available for streaming online, thanks to the BBC Proms, which have one more week to go, and CBC Radio’s Concerts on Demand:
Opera: A semi-staged concert performance of Mozart’s Marriage of Figaro at Royal Albert Hall, courtesy of Glyndebourne Festival Opera’s great cast and wonderful young conductor Robin Ticciati, available until Tuesday here.
Vocal/Symphonic: Soprano Sondra Radvanovsky found an ideal conducting partner in Gianandrea Noseda in a beautiful concert they presented together with the Toronto Symphony Orchestra last season. Radvanovsky’s “Letter Scene” from Tchaikovsky’s Eugene Onegin was breathtaking. I didn’t think I wanted to hear Tchaikovsky’s Symphony No. 6 again — until I fell under the spell of Noseda’s interpretation. Check it out here.
Choral: Hymnus Paradisii by Herbert Howells. The English composer’s response to the death of his son Michael is a musical funeral service that takes listeners on a journey from grief to consolation, beautifully done by the BBC Symphony and Chorus, augmented by the London Philharmonic Choir, soprano Miah Persson and tenor Andrew Kennedy at Royal Albert Hall three days ago. Listen here.
Organ: The remarkable (in every sense of the word) and often controversial American organist Cameron Carpenter gets two dates at Royal Albert Hall this weekend devoted to the music of J.S. Bach. “The organ is such an outsider, and such a misunderstood thing in general, with its big façade. But the truth of the organ is that it’s not merely wholly inglorious and boring, but in fact violent and sensual and banal and ecstatic and dynamic, and that’s what I like to be like,” Carpenter told England’s Radio Times this week. Both concerts start at 4 p.m. GMT (11 a.m. Eastern), and will be available for streaming for seven days afterward. Details here.
Symphonic: Picking up the pieces after Cameron Carpenter’s afternoon performances Saturday and Sunday at Royal Albert Hall is my gold standard of Mahler conductors, Riccardo Chailly, who has brought along the great Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra for two big programmes. Saturday’s is all Mendelssohn. Sunday’s centres around Mahler’s Symphony No. 6. Both concerts start at 7:30 p.m. GMT (2:30 p.m. Eastern). Details here.
Chamber: Canada’s Cecilia Quartet and pianist Georgy Tchaidze, who were wonderful at this year’s Toronto Summer Music Festival, did an excellent job in Winnipeg last March, a concert available on CBC Radio’s Concerts on Demand here. Because the site was designed for pop music, not classical, you won’t be able to see the names of the composers. The piano sonata is Sergei Prokofiev’s No. 4. The string quartet is by Leos Janácek and the piano quintet by Claude Debussy.
New music: It doesn’t seem fair to call Harry Somers‘ Piano Concerto No. 3 new music, since the Canadian composer has been dead since 1999. But the concerto, his last, finished in 1996, is a fine piece, opening with a solo-piano mediation that introduces a slow, gradual buildup into drama. It was elegantly played by Jamie Parker and the Esprit Orchestra under founding artistic director Alex Pauk at their season-closing concert at Koerner Hall this past spring. Check it out 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
