MONDAY
The quietest day of the week serves up three stellar chamber choices:
- Pianist Adam Sherkin at the Canadian Music Centre, Chalmers House, 20 St Joseph St, 5:30 p.m. On the 13th of every month, 13th Street Winery supports an early concert of music for solo piano that includes a complementary tasting. Adam Sherkin is today’s artist, “reflecting the unusually large amount of Canadian works inspired by the cosmos” — including his own. Details here.
- Associates of the Toronto Symphony Orchestra at Trinity-St Paul’s Centre, 7:30 p.m. Four of the orchestra’s string players, including assistant concertmaster Etsuko Kimura play Mozart’s “Hunt” Quartet, then are joined by great Toronto clarinettist Kornel Wolak for the ineffable Brahms Clarinet Quintet. Details here.
- Cellist Winona Zelenka and pianist Mauro Bartoli at Gallery 345, 8 p.m.: masterful cello sonatas by Beethoven (No. 3, in A Major) and Rachmaninoff have both cellist and pianist as equal partners. Two great musicians. There’s no more to be said. Details here.
TUESDAY
- Music for China presented by Soundstreams at Koerner Hall, 8 p.m.
This season-closing seven-piece programme and more than a dozen musicians mix East and West in a celebration of what we have in common with new music in China. The concert includes three premieres as well as pieces by R. Murray Schafer and Kaija Saariaho. This closes a bold Soundstreams season before the gang takes this show on the road to Beijing. Details here.
TUESDAY & WEDNESDAY
- Premiere of the opera The Wings of the Dove at Heliconian Hall, 7:30 p.m.
University of Toronto opera prof Darryl Edwards runs a summer study programme in Sulmona, a small Italian town in the Abruzzo region. Toronto’s Aradia Ensemble has been in residence the last two years and, last summer, Edwards invited along organist-composer Andrew Ager, who sat under his Panama hat, writing a new opera for the group, using a libretto by Jeffrey Lewis. This is its official premiere. U of T’s Michael Patrick Albano directs. Details here.
WEDNESDAY
- Toronto Mendelssohn Choir at Koerner Hall, 7:30 p.m.
The Toronto Mendelssohn Choir closes its own season with Beethoven’s great Missa Solemnis. Artistic director Noel Edison has chosen an excellent quartet of soloists: sorpano Shannon Mercer, mezzo Krisztina Szabó, tenor Michael Colvin and baritone Michael Adair. The performance is with full orchestra. Details here.
WEDNESDAY, THURSDAY & SATURDAY
- Pianist Kirill Gerstein with conductor Giancarlo Guerrero and the Toronto Symphony Orchestra at Roy Thomson Hall. 6:30 on Wed., 8 p.m. on Thu. & Sat.
Gerstein should be able to put an individual stamp on his Toronto Symphony début with the warhorse Piano Concerto No. 1 by Peter Ilytch Tchaikovsky. The short, early Wednesday programme starts with Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov’s Russian Easter Festival Overture. The two longer programmes also include Béla Bartók’s exciting Concerto for Orchestra. Wednesday details here. Other details here.
THURSDAY
- Against the Grain Theatre previews Figaro’s Wedding at the Richard Bradshaw Amphitheatre, noon. Free admission.
Artistic director Joel Ivany and music director Christopher Mokrzewski have adapted Mozart’s Marriage of Figaro to 21st urban life, complete with a new libretto in English. This is a great opportunity for a free sneak peek. For more on the company and this project, click here.
FRIDAY
- Organist Wayne Carroll and friends at Lawrence Park Church (2180 Bayview Ave.), 7:30 p.m.
One OF southwestern Ontario’s great organists and choir leaders teams up with violinist Alexa Wilks, cellist Samuel Bisson and flutist Laura Bolt for a rich and eclectic programme for the Organix festival that includes a substantial Victorian rarity, the Suite for Violin, Cello and Organ by Joseph Rheinberger. You’ll find all the details here.
The Rheinberger Suite, published in 1887, is a stunner. Here it is in an 1891 arrangement that substitutes piano and strings for the organ (the credits appear in the video clips):
SATURDAY
- Violinist Edwin Huizinga and keyboardist Philip Fournier at The Oratory of St Philip Neri, 1372 King St W., 8 p.m. Free Admission
This dynamic duo did pop-up concerts in Toronto coffee houses last week. This week, it’s a full, all-Bach programme in one swoop. You’ll find the details on the Facebook page for Classical Revolution Toronto, here.
OPERA
- There are plenty of tickets still available for the Canadian Opera Company’s spectacularly fine production of Dialogues des carmélites on Tuesday and Friday. There’s a third performance, with more limited ticket availability, on Sunday. Details 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
