American soprano Anna Christy (seen here as Cunegonde in an English National Opera production of Candide), steps off the Four Seasons Centre stage to perform a solo recital in the Richard Bradshaw Amphitheatre on Tuesday (ENO photo).

If we had a concert presenter-of-the-week prize, it would go to the Canadian Opera Company. It’s a wonderful week for fans of vocal music in Toronto — some of which is free for the listening:

TUESDAY

• Soprano Anna Christy at the Richard Bradshaw Amphitheatre, noon. Free admission.

The Canadian Opera Company’s wonderful Lucia sings bel canto arias as well as Italian and American art songs with accompanist Liz Upchurch. This should be a huge treat. Details here.

WEDNESDAY

• Cellos of the COC with Johannes Debus at the piano at the Richard Bradshaw Amphitheatre, noon. Free admission.

In a programme that ostensibly celebrates the 200th anniversary of Richard Wagner’s birth, seven cellists from the COC Orchestra, with music director at the piano for some of it, present a programme of works new and old written or arranged for this rich sonic combination. The Wagner content is the Feierliches Stück from Lohengrin and a snippet of Parsifal in four-cello form. Details here.

WEDNESDAY, THURSDAY & SATURDAY

Gerald Finley sings with the Toronto Symphony this week.

• The Toronto Symphony Orchestra presents Brahms’ German Requiem, 8 p.m. (7:30 p.m. Sat.).

Music director Peter Oundjian has chosen American composer Peter Lieberson’s substantial Songs of Love and Sorrow (in its Canadian premiere) to go with Johannes Brahms’ masterpiece A German Requiem — with baritone Gerald Finley as soloist in both works. The soprano soloist in the Brahms is Klara Ek. The Toronto Mendelssohn Choir flanks the stage. Details here.

Here is a 2010 clip from the premiere of the Lieberson song cycle — based on poems by Pablo Neruda and written for Finley. The Boston Symphony Orchestra is conducted by Jayce Ogren:

THURSDAY

• Canadian Opera Company Ensemble Studio graduates sing goodbye at the Richard Bradshaw Amphitheatre, noon. Free admission.

Sopranos Mireille Asselin and Ambur Braid, mezzo Rihab Chaieb and bass-baritone Neil Craighead sing a rich programme that includes song cycles by Benjamin Britten, Ralph Vaughan Williams and Arthur Honegger. The concert closes with Asselin singing Samuel Barber’s magical Knoxville: Summer of 1915. Details here.

FRIDAY

• The boys of St Michael’s Choir School at St Paul’s Basilica, 7:30 p.m. Free admission.

Music director Jerzy Cichocki and teachers Teri Dunn and Charissa Bagan conduct the excellent boy choristers of the venerable choir school as it celebrates its 75th anniversary with an all-Canadian sacred programme. More on the school here.

• Organist Karen Christianson at Metropolitan United Church, 7:30 p.m.

This excellent teenage organist from Philadelphia celebrates her imminent high school graduation with a substantial concert for the Organix 13 festival. You can read my interview with her here. Concert details here.

FRIDAY, SATURDAY & SUNDAY

• Toronto Consort at Trinity-St Paul’s Centre, 8 p.m.

These Early Music specialists conclude their season with a new programme centred around the music and lives of women composers of the Middle Ages, Renaissance and early Baroque. The concert includes spoken word performances by actors Maggie Hukulak and Karen Woolridge. I’ll have more on this later in the week. Concert details here.

SATURDAY & SUNDAY

It’s Doors Open weekend, with some venues offering a bit of musical enticement to come and darken the entranceway. For example, the Beach Hebrew Institute (109 Kenilworth Ave.) is offering a lecture-concert by cantor Katie Oringel on Sunday at 11 a.m. At my Church of the Holy Trinity, right behind the Eaton Centre, the Toronto representatives of Casavant Frères, the country’s great organ builder, will be giving demonstrations on the instrument on Saturday and Sunday. And I’ll play this and that in between on Saturday.

You can find all of the Doors Open details here.

SATURDAY

• Exultate Chamber Singers at St Thomas’s Anglican Church, 383 Huron St., 7:30 p.m.

Composer Stephanie Martin, former Church of St Mary Magdalene music director, guest conducts the season-closing concert by the Exultate Chamber Singers, with ensemble founder John Tuttle at the organ. This is a spiritually-oriented programme that starts with Hildegard of Bingen and ends with much loved Canadian choral composer Imant Raminsh and the premiere of a new piece by Martin. Concert details here.

SUNDAY

Today’s first choice would have been the third installment of Aldeburgh Connection’s Britten Festival of Song — and the concert presenters’ final concert. But the Walter Hall adieu is sold out, and it’s rare to find scalpers outside the Edward Johnson Building.

John Terauds

Your family and friends not give you enough reasons to cry on Victoria Day weekend? Try Jonas Kaufmann’s Winterreise.

Besides the few brave musicians who have programmed concerts on a weekend when our collective attention is pastoral rather than aesthetic, there is some fine watching and listening available online — meaning this music is totally mobile.

For anyone who needs high-def audio with their music, the Concertgebouw’s 125th anniversary concert on medici.tv is a treat. It can be streamed on demand for free.

I finally had a chance to sample the substantial programme of Serious Classical Music 101 led by conductor Mariss Jansons.

Thomas Hampson, who has reached that golden intersection between experience and ability, does beautiful things with Mahler. Lang Lang plays Prokofiev’s technically challenging Piano Concerto No. 3 with the ease of someone typing his shoelaces — and with fine musicality, too. Janine Jansen is a sweet treat in Saint-Saëns Introduction and Rondo Capriccioso.

To mix a pâtissier’s metaphors, the icing on this very rich layer cake is brilliant work by Jansons and the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra on the suite from Richard Strauss’s Der Rosenkavalier, which needs to breathe and rise like a fine soufflé.

You’ll find it here.

Independent critic and blogger Jessica Duchen yesterday shared with the world a handheld pirate recording of tenor Jonas Kaufmann singing Schubert’s Winterreise in recital last month in Vienna with pianist Helmut Deutsch.

Kauffmann was getting over a cold, he said, but you’d never know it. There’s a lot of audience noise, but it didn’t bother me. Both singer and pianist get everything right. Listen and weep:

John Terauds

Karen Christianson in the organ loft at Westminster Abbey this past February (David Christianson photo).

Karen Christianson may be one of the most talented teenage organists in the United States, but that doesn’t mean she is going to become a professional musician. Depending on how things go during her first year at Harvard University this fall, the 17-year-old’s upcoming concert visit to Toronto could be her last.

Christianson is bringing a textbook virtuoso recital programme to Metropolitan United Church next Friday, featuring the great French masters César Franck, Charles-Marie Widor, Louis Vierne and Jean Langlais alongside J.S. Bach and contemporary American composers Ad Wammes and Carson Cooman.

This isn’t her first Toronto visit; she played at Metropolitan United four years ago.

But she has had other significant firsts this year: In February, she was the first woman to play the organ at Eton, the fabled boys’ school down the hill from Windsor Castle, and she was the youngest person to perform an organ recital at Westminster Abbey.

Christianson played Widor’s great Organ Symphony No. 6 at both places — and will be doing so again in Toronto.

The young organist was understandably elated to be not just visiting but playing at Westminster Abbey. “I was excited and honoured, but not nervous,” she says. Her favourite memory of that visit is from when the building closed to the public, the lights were turned off, and she was left alone in the cavernous, shadowy interior.

“It was just me and my dad in the Abbey. I thought of all the kings and queens who had been crowned here. I thought of Will and Kate walking down the aisle. And here I was, surrounded by all this history and I had the place to myself,” she recalls.

The Eton visit was less awe-inducing — and Christianson admits finding enough practice time was challenging. “They have something like 43 organ students there, so someone is always using the organ for lessons,” she says.

There are no two pipe organs — or spaces in which they sit — that are the same, so an organist needs to tailor their interpretations to both what the instrument and the acoustics can accomplish.

The Philadelphian says she likes to get about four hours of preparation time per half-hour of recital. It gives her time to listen to each stop, decide which combinations of stops she’ll be using (which is called registration), and then run through the music a couple of times.

Christianson’s Dad is her official page-turner as well as extra pair of ears. “He’ll walk around the building listening to me and then let me know how it sounds,” she says.

The most difficult acoustic she has ever encountered was at Ely cathedral, just north of Cambridge, in England. The organist sits on one side of the organ, which is up in an arched loft that divides the interior into two spaces (the nave and the quire). The pipes speak out on the other side of the instrument, so, for the organist, it sounds as if it’s someone else playing in another room — one with a lot of reverberation.

“It was really hard for me to hear what was going on,” Christianson recalls. “Fortunately, they had this system where you could put on headphones so you could hear what [the organ] sounds like in the nave.” For the actual performance, she had to rely on what she remembered hearing during her practice time.

Christianson has  a handful of concert dates left this summer, which she is taking off to enjoy the last of her freedom before leaving her parents’ side for the first time and heading off to university in September.

She also has to finish composing a set of organ variations on her school song, which she is supposed to premiere at the graduation.

Although she has had a fine organ teacher in Alan Morrison at Philadelphia’s Curtis Institute since she was 8, and he encouraged her to remain at the school for full-time music studies, Christianson is off to Harvard so she can study sciences.

I ask if it’s because she looking for a more materially stable future. She replies that’s not the case at all; that she simply wants to pursue her other interests before making a career commitment.

“As long as you’re passionate about what you’re doing you’ll make ends meet,” she declares with the same certainty she brings to her organ playing.

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You can find all the details of her Toronto concert programme here.

Here is Christianson playing the Finale movement from Widor’s Sixth at Gloucester Cathedral last summer, followed by some MarcelDupré at the Wanamaker (now Macy’s) department store organ in Philadelphia:

John Terauds

Three of Xiao Grabke’s 20 students at George Webster Elementary School in Toronto show off their stuff on Thursday morning (John Terauds phone photo).

It takes determination, grit and single-mindedness to succeed in music — just as it does to effect social change. So imagine what a particularly determined musician — in this case violinist Moshe Hammer — can accomplish when he wants to change the course of a child’s life.

Hammer is one of a growing army of people making music lessons available to Toronto-area schoolchildren — especially in socioeconomically challenged neighbourhoods.

We have Sistema Toronto, which started in Parkdale, and is looking to expand its model of five-day-a-week after-school instruction.

There are schools that provide individual and group lessons at hugely subsidized rates — places like the venerable University Settlement school serving Grange Park and environs, and, further east, the Dixon Hall Music School and Regent Park School of Music (with which I’m involved), which has expanded to Parkdale as well as the Jane-Finch neighbourhoods.

Many music ensembles and concert presenters provide musical outreach to the city’s schools. This is meant to complement what once was one of the better North American cities for school music.

But the Toronto District School Board is considering cuts to its music programmes for next year. And, a couple of weeks ago, the Toronto Symphony Orchestra quietly announced in an internal memo that it is eliminating in-school outreach in order to cut expenses.

Enter Moshe Hammer and his Hammer Band concept. It is a hybrid of the Sistema (every day after school), one-day-a-week-music-school and regular outside professional visit-to-schools models.

Hammer’s project began with a group of kids once a week after school at Elia Middle School on Sentinel Rd — a short walk down the street from CW Jefferys Collegiate, which has seen more than its fair share of gun violence — in 2007.

I followed Hammer into the school’s cafeteria-cum-gym-cum-auditorium to see how he helped instill a sense of ownership over the donated instruments, a sense of responsibility to practice, a sense of cooperation with the other students and, ultimately, a sense of accomplishment with the musical results at the end of the school year.

There were less than 20 kids present the afternoon I came as an observer to a school that had to lock its doors in the daytime to make sure its young charges were kept safe.

The violinist’s goal was to add a group every year, then follow the kids to junior high as they progressed.

Six years later, Hammer has a teaching team of six for his once-a-week programme — including Tafelmusik regular and Classical Revolution Toronto activist Edwin Huizinga — that goes to 19 schools and reaches about 375 students. There is even a cello contingent now — one that Hammer hopes will grow.

Thirteen of those schools, including Elia Middle School, are in the northwestern sector of Toronto. The Hammer Band is also present in three Regent Park-area schools and three in the Crescent Town district in the east end.

The organization’s work includes two week-long summer camps and, for the first time this year, a summer school based out of Sprucecourt Public School, which sits on the border between Regent Park and Cabbagetown.

I visited George Webster Elementary School in the east end on Thursday morning to see how violin teacher Xiao Grabke was getting along with the 20 kids in her care. Hammer, an inexhaustible combination of coach and cheerleader, was there, too.

The George Webster students were in high spirits — fuelled by sunny weather and needing to be prepared for their school’s upcoming talent show as well as a mass concert by the Hammer Band to open this year’s edition of Idea City at Koerner Hall, in June.

Each child gets a violin, bow, block of rosin (the sticky stuff that helps the horsehair connect with the strings) and a case. These are inexpensive starter instruments meant to get fingers and arms used to the particular contortions of violin-playing. Many of the kids had added little kitchen scouring pads to the back of their instruments as makeshift rests.

This was the second year of group lessons for some of these children, and the results were impressive. This plucky duo played a simplified duet of Spring from Vivaldi’s Four Seasons to show that they were ready for their talent show:

At no point during this particular class did I get the impression that any of these kids was playing their instrument under duress. They were clearly having a good time, encouraging each others’ performances and providing little critiques as well as positive reinforcement.

During a quieter moment, one of the students told Hammer how he and two friends will be continuing their French immersion studies at Cosburn Middle School next year, and how they would like him to set up lessons there, as well.

“Is it close by?” Hammer asked Grabke.

“Yes, it’s just a few blocks away,” she replied.

“Okay, then let’s do it. I’ll get in touch with the principal,” Hammer declared.

And the music resumed.

Hammer turned to me and quietly said, “You see, if I get them at this age for three or four years, when the gang recruiters come to them in high school, they won’t be interested. I’m not interested in the next Heifetz or Dudamel. I just want these children to be better people.”

We could build a condo tower with the studies that have shown all the good things that group-focused creative and athletic activities do for kids, and how music lessons make for better math students, etc. The Royal Conservatory of Music has developed entire curricula of teaching regular school subjects using music and movement and plastic arts, but it’s hard to change an entrenched educational system.

It’s also hard to argue with dollars — which, by the Toronto Star‘s accounts, the Toronto District School Board may not be managing in the most efficient way possible. Fixing maintenance contracts is tough. Cutting music instruction is easy.

So, with money raised from concerned individuals, and the occasional donated violin and cello, and the help of performers and teachers who can see the results of their hard work take shape right here and right now, people like Hammer are building a parallel music-teaching universe in the GTA.

School music cutbacks are everywhere. “It’s a tragedy; it’s not even a scandal anymore,” says Hammer.

And he’s doing something about it.

He says he has received interest from schools in Brampton, and that people have been making enquiries about his violin-band concept from Kitchener-Waterloo and as far away as Chicago. Sistema-type organizations are thriving around the world and, in Canada, here, in Ottawa and New Brunswick.

I have a big personal beef with private money having to do what public money is supposed to. But our kids are better off for it.

The Hammer Band and every other not-for-profit I’ve mentioned has to work hard every day of the year to make ends meet. So support them. Go out to their concerts — many of which are happening in coming weeks as the school year draws to a close. Talk to the children and their teachers. Donate an instrument, a bow, a piano tuning, your old sheet music.

This is the sort of person-by-person, person-to-person social change that nets immediate, positive results. How can you argue with that?

You can find out more about the Hammer Band here.

John Terauds

Super-talented young Illinois native Conrad Tao has made a little recorded detour through some piano works of American composer-philanthropist Gordon Getty, with wonderful results — hopefully contributing to the liberation of art music world from some enduring prejudices in the process.

First of all, let’s deal with the music itself. The Pentatone Classics album contains 23 sketches and miniatures, most of them collected into two suites: the Homework Suite of five pieces, which dates from 1962, while Getty was studying at the San Francisco Conservatory, and the later Ancestor Suite, which contains 11 pieces.

Although this isn’t complex or serious music, having a true virtuoso interpret it puts each piece into the best possible light. Tao (who turns 19 in a few weeks) brings an easy, beguiling lightness to Getty’s creations, many of which do make serious technical demands.

There are many young pianists throwing themselves into the performance of miniatures these days. They present a fine challenge in conveying mood, structure and narrative in a very short space of time.

So that’s prejudice No. 1 dispelled. There is value and enjoyment to be had from short works.

Prejudice No. 2 is also in the process of being demolished: that tonal writing has no place in the new music universe. Getty, who is in his late-70s, has spent his whole life battling an atonal aesthetic.

As he relates in the album notes: “My teacher at the Conservatory, Sol Joseph, once asked me if I expected to move on to atonalism. I told him I kind of doubted it.”

And so Getty would have been dismissed there and then.

Which brings us to Prejudice No. 3, concerning the wealthy dilettante.

Getty inherited billions in oil money, so anything he has done has been for the sheer pleasure of doing it rather than to make a living. As is the case with a 17th or 18th century prince taking an interest in music, we condescendingly smile, nod, then return our attentions to the serious composers, the ones who had to struggle for their art.

But Getty has a clear sense of what he’s trying to do. The results are not just coherent but compelling. And we should applaud that.

For more details on this album, click here.

Here is a little snapshot of Getty’s aesthetic, through the song “The Going from a World We Know,” from White Election. Composer Jake Heggie is at the piano. Matt Haimovitz is the cellist. The soprano is Lisa Delan:

John Terauds

The Spring 2013 Over-the-Top Piano Album Award goes to National Public Radio host, pianist and inveterate arranger Christopher O’Riley and his riotous pile of transcriptions released by Oxingale Records as O’Riley’s Liszt.

O’Riley is probably best known south of the border for his transcriptions of Radiohead songs, which he propagated by playing them on his radio show, From the Top. He’s been crossing over to and from pop to classical for most of his life, but, in case this sets up any doubts, he is a very serious pianist.

He pours every ounce of his prodigious technique into five transcriptions and fantasies by Franz Liszt, the crown jewel being five movements of Symphonie Fantastique by Hector Berlioz. And O’Riley can’t resist adding coloured sprinkles on top, in the form of his own adjustments and embellishments.

The effect is sometimes overwhelming, always awe-inspiring. Is all this work really being done by 10 fingers?

A lot of his piano sound is big and percussive, but O’Riley is also capable of an elegant sweetness. But this is still for the listener who wants their ear-hairs to be provoked, not just teased.

The other Liszt reimaginings on the album are the Don Juan Fantasy, Schumann”s Frülingsnacht, the Prelude and Liebestod from Tristan und Isolde and Schubert’s Frülingsglaube.

There is a Blu-Ray complement of music videos.

Check it all out here. This is the fourth movement of the Symphonie Fantastique:

John Terauds

Marc Bouchkov (Bruno Vessié photo)

The jury has announced the three top winners of this year’s Montreal International Musical Competition, which was dedicated to the violin.

The first prize of $30,000 and a new Sartori bow goes to 22-year-old Belgian competitor Marc Bouchkov.

The competition’s two youngest finalists, both 16, took two remaining top spots: American Stephen Waarts in second place, earning a prize of $15,000, and Chinese entrant Zeyu Victor Li in third place, receiving a cheque for $10,000.

All three will perform at a gala concert with the Montreal Symphony Orchestra under Maxim Vengerov on Friday evening. You can find more details here.

CBC Radio 2 will offer competition highlights on In Concert, on Sunday starting at 11 a.m.

John Terauds

Kirill Gerstein performs with the Toronto Symphony and conductor Giancarlo Guerrero on Wednesday at Roy Thomson Hall (Josh Clavir photo).

Familiar favourites sell concert tickets. But as I sat listening to an uncommonly fine performance on Wednesday by Kirill Gerstein, conductor Giancarlo Guerrero and the Toronto Symphopny of the most familiar of piano concertos — Peter Ilytch Tchaikovsky’s First — I wondered: Were people appreciating the unfamiliar in this interpretation?

The Roy Thomson Hall audience was warmly appreciative of Gerstein’s easy virtuosity and lyrical playing. He made this old warhorse sound fresh and full of life.

Most special to my ears was the exact compatibility between orchestra and soloist, something not even the finest and most seasoned performers can take for granted. Guerrero and Gerstein were on the same page, and it added an extra bit of chemistry to the already fine musicmaking.

Tchaikovsky’s Concerto dates from 1875, and is both a vehicle for the virtuoso pianist and an emblem of Romantic-era expression in music. We go home humming the melodies, but it’s really in the details under the melodies where the music comes to life. This is where it can soar, or sink.

Gerstein held up his end of the bargain with an overall sparkle that, once lit by the crashing chords that open the piece, crackled away until the finale. Guerrero goosed and coaxed the Toronto Symphony players into following suit, and I heard things I’d never heard before, including some gentle dancing in the second movement.

It is the search for this sort of interpretation that keeps me coming back to the concert hall week after week.

Wednesday’s programme was a short Toronto Symphony Afterworks affair, beginning at 6:30 p.m. and ending less than 90 minutes later. The orchestra players arrived on stage in their more casual attire — plain black shirts, trousers and dresses. Patrons could bring a drink along to their seat, and CBC Radio’s Tom Allen was our breezy, witty host.

It was all so very howyadoin? casual, but the artistry on display was as serious as could be.

Wednesday’s companion piece was the Russian Easter Festival Overture by Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov. It’s a bit of a sprawl that tries to pick up momentum, but keeps bogging down. It’s not the world’s finest composition, but it is a fabulous showcase of an orchestra’s — and a conductor’s — abilities.

It was a treat to see and hear Guerrero in charge of such a tight, beautifully balanced ensemble.

These two Russian pieces repeat on Thursday and Saturday nights alongside the 1943 Concerto for Orchestra by Béla Bartók — truly a symphonic showpiece. Given what we heard on Wednesday night, this should be one of the highlights of the season.

You can find all the concert details here.

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Note that Kirill Gerstein, one of the great young pianists of the day, returns to Toronto on Dec. 8 for a solo recital at Koerner Hall that showcases both his jazz as well as classical backgrounds. Details here.

John Terauds

A traditional Marriage of Figaro (like this one from Pittsburgh Opera earlier this month) is definitely not what Against the Grain Theatre is about to present.

Against the Grain Theatre launched itself two summers ago by presenting one of the world’s favourite operas, La Bohème, in a worn-down pub. It wasn’t just a clever marketing ploy; it was a fully realised concept that resonated immediately. — so much so that the company’s infrequent shows have already become one of Toronto’s hot arts tickets.

I was trying to think of a quick way of describing what Against the Grain does, and could only think of one word: Gesamtkunstwerk.

It may seem bizarre to apply Richard Wagner’s ever-so-grandiose dream of a fusion of all the arts into one spectacle to the work of a company of money-starved upstarts. But it does describe the spirit of what Against the Grain does: take nothing for granted, and make sure that each aspect of what your audience experiences complements the others.

When Wagner’s Gesamtkunstwerk is realised, the whole is larger than the sum of the parts. And so it has been, so far, with Against the Grain.

Their next project is a wholesale re-imagining of The Marriage of Figaro. It is scheduled for four performances on the top floor of The Burrowes, a re-purposed Victorian-era commercial building at Queen and Bathurst Sts, running May 29 to June 2.

The vibe has shifted from cheap’n'grungy to oh so hip it hurts to sit down in your skinny jeans. But it’s still not opera as mainstream audiences know it.

The gang offers a sneak peek of what they are trying to accomplish on Thursday at noon, at the Richard Bradshaw Amphitheatre. It’s a free concert that is bound to be a great event in and of itself — so get there early, if you can.

The first thing to note is that even the arias have been translated into English — well, actually, totally re-cast into the modern world. Hence the change of title to Figaro’s Wedding.

I had a chance to chat with director Joel Ivany, who took me through the concept.

The Burrowes event space, complete with exposed pipework, ducts, brick walls and views of Queen West rooftops, is being turned into a wedding hall. The action takes place in and around the wedding rehearsal for Figaro and Susanna, a young Toronto couple circa 2013.

Marcellina, housekeeper in Mozart and Da Ponte’s 1786 original, becomes the Burrowes event manager. Antonio the gardener is now the florist. Bartolo, the doctor-lawyer becomes a priest. Curzio, the judge, is transformed into wedding planner.

I remind Ivany that Mozart’s opera is all about subverting class structures in 18th century Vienna, to which he almost gives me a don’t-be-so-dense look, before patiently explaining how making Alberto Almaviva into a slimy boss and Figaro into a beleaguered employee will resonate with anyone who has set foot in a modern workplace.

Ivany smilingly describes Figaro’s boss as “more of a Blackberry user,” and the young man desperate to keep his job as “more of an iPhone user.”

Add in careless relationship arrangements between Almaviva and his wife Rosina, and the stage is set for something straight out of, say, Damages. “It’s still all about power and money in a way we understand it,” says Ivany.

The final opera has been trimmed down to 2 hours, which will unfold in the event space without intermission. The acres of Mozart’s recitative (sung dialogue) have been replaced with shortened, spoken dialogue. The only other noticeable cut to the original is the loss of Barbarina, the gardener’s daughter. “She was a sacrifice,” Ivany frowns.

The director says it took three drafts of his update to get the mood and the flow right. He worked intensely with Against the Grain music director Christopher Mokrzewski to make sure words and music meshed seamlessly.

Since the company’s birth in 2011, Mokrzewski has provided all musical accompaniment. This time, to go with the expanded space and heightened production values, the pianist is joined by four string players.

The gang uncovered a string quartet reduction of the opera’s score from 1805. While Ivany recast the libretto, Mokrzewski meticulously re-arranged the 1805 score for piano quintet, bringing in more of the original orchestration into the musical textures.

This represents hundreds of hours of preparation — not counting the conceptual work behind the staging itself.

It’s pretty daring to do this to an iconic work.

“I feel you can take liberties with a masterpiece,” declares Ivany. “We’re not messing with it in a bad way; we’re just doing something different.”

In fact, Ivany says that he and his team feel that they have no choice but to take these risks in order to produce something that will stand on its own.

“When you’re the boss, no one is going to say no,” he smiles.

But he admits that physical realities do sometimes intervene. “Cherubino will not be jumping out the window,” he laughs as we look down six stories onto the busy Queen St sidewalk.

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Thursday’s preview concert will introduce us to the new libretto, the music, the singers — Stephen Hegedus (Figaro), Miriam Khalil (Susanna), Lisa DiMaria (Rosina), Teiya Kasahara (Cherubino), and Alexander Dobson (Alberto) — and the instrumentalists — pianist Mrozewski, violinists Edwin Huizinga and Andréa Tyniec, violist Carol Gimbel and cellist Soohyun Nam. You’ll find all the details here.

For details of what Against the Grain Theatre is up to, click here.

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Against the Grain is as savvy about its marketing as its artistic work, so we’ve been seeing teasers on social media for the last couple of weeks, including this marriage proposal, and production trailer:

John Terauds

Conductor Leslie Dala rehearses Soundstreams’ Music for China concert on Monday (Soundstreams photo).

One of the most rewarding aspects of experiencing newly composed music is gleaning new insight into our contemporary realities. It doesn’t always happen, but when it does as at Tuesday’s Soundstreams Music for China concert, it makes for a memorable night. It was an auspicious start to the largest-ever tour of Canadian music to be presented in China and Taiwan.

The program featured five world premieres of music written by composers of Asian descent for both Western and Chinese ensembles.

The variety of instrumentations and superb planning made for a visual feast. The ears, meanwhile, were treated to a smorgasbord of musical ideas, thoughtfully programmed by artistic director Lawrence Cherney and ably conducted by Leslie Dala for an engaging and balanced experience.

Opening the program was Chinese-born composer Fuhong Shi’s Distance, for mixed Western and Eastern ensemble. There was a jarring contrast between the (at times) furiously moving fingers and the lightness of sounds and textures built on very simple motifs.

Visiting Taiwanese ensemble Chai Found Music Workshop — Chen-Ming Huang on erhu, Hui-Huan Lin on pipa, Chung-Hsien Wu on di (flute), Jiuan-Reng Yeh on zheng — specialize in contemporary works for traditional Chinese instruments. Their committed performances fully matched those of their Canadian counterparts.

After a reflective, almost philosophical, start to the program, we were gripped by flutist Leslie Newman’s virtuosic performance of Terrestre by Finnish composer Kaija Saariaho.

The first half of the piece is based on a story of a bird teaching a whole village how to dance with a driving, nail-biting intensity. I found myself equally mesmerized in the suspenseful second half. The demanding but thrilling score pulsed with the intense playing of harpist Sanya Eng, percussionist Ryan Scott, violinist Stephen Sitarski and cellist David Hetherington.

Taiwanese-American composer Ching-Yu Hsiau’s Intermezzo was premiered by its commissioners, the Chai ensemble. The traditional ways of playing zheng and zi, in particular, were stretched in this highly textured work. The juxtaposition of music in a familiar musical language but performed with a different musical voice was striking, and I wished the ending had had the same build-up and transition as the opening, perhaps returning to some of the percussive themes performed on the zheng.

Murray Schafer’s Theseus, a work commissioned by Sanya Eng, included members of the Accordes String Quartet. For me, this work nailed the ephemeral narrative without having to rely on words.

Schafer plays with intensity through rhythmic and dynamic changes. The melodic theme was easily recognizable even as the tone transformed from pensive to ominous, lighthearted to dramatic. Violinist Sitarski, Carol Lynn Fujino, violist Douglas Perry and Hetherington on cello played with finesse, a deep connection with the music and each other.

A surprise appearance by soprano Xin Wang at the end of the piece left a few audience members short of breath as her voice rose behind them.

The second half of the concert opened with the world premiere of Layers of Waves by Taiwanese-American composer Chi-Chun Lee.

The Chai ensemble once again showed off their ability to perform contemporary music on traditional instruments, but the piece itself was weak in communicating a clear idea, compared to the other works in the program. The programme notes made reference to our futile efforts to control or predefine forces of nature — for which Lin left her pipa in order to conduct the ensemble.

The premiere of Alexina Louie’s Cadenzas II for Harp and Percussion was a virtuosic showcase for an unlikely instrumental duo. Eng dazzled with her delicate command of the harp. Scott covered half the stage with his plethora of instruments, and broke out from his usual calm demeanor with a few high-energy drum solos.

The finale in Soundstreams’ final concert of the season was a newly commissioned work by American composer Dorothy Chang: Small & Curious Places, a suite of five short movements. Each movement captured a space, whether physical, mental, actual or imaginary. The most striking for me were I. Anticipation, II. Where lost memories gather and V. of ever lingering light.

This work needs to be heard over and over again, like a fine poem, before we can exhaust it of meaning.

We actually can listen to the music again, as Soundstreams has posted Tuesday night’s live stream from Koerner Hall online. It’s a fine way to send our ambassadors of Canadian music much goodwill — and to start following their tour vicariously online.

The video stream of Tuesday’s concert is available below. The concert details are posted here. And you can check out Soundstreams’ 2013-14 season details here.

Margaret Lam
You can find out more about Margaret at margism.com