CLASSICAL AND BEYOND
CLASSICAL AND BEYOND FAMILIAR MUSIC RECONTEXTUALIZED WENDALYN BARTLEY FACEBOOK John Holland with his new book, The Lost Tradition of Dvorák’s Operas if you are worried that the mainstage show excerpts might take some digesting, you can offer them a bunch of Broadway for dessert. Correction: Following the publication of this article, we learned that the COC’s community concerts planned for Picton, North York, and Harbourfront had been cancelled. However, the company’s annual Centre Stage: Ensemble Studio Competition will proceed as expected on October 30, with finalists from a nation-wide audition showcasing their voices at the Four Seasons Centre for the Performing Arts, accompanied by the full COC Orchestra. Ten years between Jakobins? Worth the wait. John Holland, bass-baritone, is a professional opera singer and musicologist in Toronto. He also has a particular driving passion: founding the Canadian Institute for Czech Music in 2013; and arranging and performing in the Canadian premiere of Antonín Dvořák’s little-known opera, Jakobin, in 2014. Since then (among many other things),he has written and published a book on Dvořák’s operas, The Lost Tradition of Dvorák’s Operas: Myth, Music, and Nationalism. Concurrently he produced a Year of Czech Music Opera Festival in Toronto, consisting of three operas running over the course of 2024. The remount of Jakobin, ten years after its Canadian premiere, is the last of the three. Presented by the Canadian Institute of Czech Music in partnership with William Shookhoff’s Opera By Request, it will be performed, in concert with a chamber orchestra, on September 13, in Jeanne Lamon Hall, Trinity St. Paul’s Centre. The Jacobins: The date of the first performance of Jakobin, in Prague on February 9 1889, perhaps offers a few clues to the nationalistic and political underpinnings of what is, at face value a sweetly melodious pastoral comedy, with tangled love interests, a suitably villainous villain and a happy ending. The Prague premiere was, after all, 100 years after the immediate course of events leading to the storming of the Bastille on July 14 1789, the start of the French Revolution. And the Jacobins, depending on what side one takes, were the ferocious defenders of the revolution or the bloodthirsty fanatics who undermined it, so much so that the rise of Napoleon was an inevitable backlash. The Dvořák opera’s Jakobins are strangers who arrive on the pastoral scene, fresh from France where the revolution has been taking place, and xenophobia-fuelled word has spread that the strangers are Jacobins coming to upset the pastoral applecart. In fact Bohuš and his wife Julie, to give them their names, are no strangers, … as will be revealed after many twists and turns. The cast has nine named characters, a chorus and a children’s choir, so expect to hear the rafters ring in one of our finer mid-size concert halls, in this rare opportunity to hear an almost unknown work by the composer of some of the best-known works of the late 19th century. David Perlman can be reached at publisher@thewholenote.com Such is the nature of usually writing about shows ahead of time that I don’t often enough get to go to the shows I write about. On August 3, however, I travelled to Stratford Summer Music to take in Gregory Oh’s performance of Lessons in Failure. I had interviewed him back in May for the summer issue of The WholeNote and was quite taken by his stories of making mistakes during key moments of his performance career. Over dinner in one of Stratford’s fine dining restaurants before the concert, I found myself telling my companion my own stories of performance disasters, not always an easy thing to admit. And at the end of Oh’s concert/play/performance I found myself blurting out, again to my companion, “That was one of the best concerts I’ve ever been to.” While rating performances against each other may very well be part of the perfectionistic standards that Oh is trying to Gregory Oh disengage from, on further reflection I realized that what had moved me so much was his inclusion of life stories, right in the midst of listening to music generally intended to be heard as isolated, uninterruptible objects in a concert repertoire. Somehow the music seemed more alive, more vital, more personal and connected when set in the context of life’s struggles. As for example when, to my great delight he included a performance of Johannes Brahms’ Intermezzo Op.118, No.2, a piece I had learned in my late teens. Every note had meaning as I listened, recalling my own body memories. A few other particularly memorable moments in the performance included Battle of Manassas by Thomas Wiggins and Franz Liszt’s Piano Sonata in B Minor. The Wiggins work was like a very early piece in soundscape composition for piano, written in 1861 before such ideas were thought about, and well before any recording technologies existed. It conjured the sounds and environs of the Civil War era battle, with piano clusters to replicate the marching feet of soldiers, interjections of spoken text to announce the action, and the sound of a train whistle, all of which Oh delivered seemingly with ease. The Liszt performance was framed by his story of how he felt he had failed miserably with the piece during his graduation recital. Despite that difficult experience, he persevered with hours upon hours of practising, all of which is clearly evident in the depth of emotion he brought to every high and low in Liszt’s tumultuous work. I’m eager for the day Oh brings the full performance to a theatre run in Toronto, as he hinted in our previous interview he was intending to do. Wendalyn Bartley is a Toronto-based composer and electro-vocal sound artist. sounddreaming@gmail.com 24 | September 2024 thewholenote.com
ROUNDUP: CLASSICAL AND BEYOND Not every effort to recontextualize familiar works or reimagine the classical concert form is as adventurous as the approach Wendalyn Bartley describes in her report on Gregory Oh’s Lessons in Failure. But putting a concert together is always an opportunity to turn juxtaposition into an art, creating fresh perspectives, by congruity or incongruity, for the listener – taking that listener beyond their known expectations (the music they know they like and don’t like; the kinds of venues they like to listen in). In turn, over a period of time, each listener creates their own crafty juxtapositions every time they decide what concert to go to. Most of you know what you have already decided to go hear next. So here from the wide range of performances coming up in September and early October are some clusters of suggestions for what you might want to go hear after that. Fortune favours the brave. Details, as always, are in the daily listings. SIMON FRYER, ARTISTIC DIRECTOR OCTOBER 3, 2024 | 1.30 PM CAMPBELL FAGAN PARK TRIO James Campbell, clarinet Leslie Fagan, soprano; Angela Park, piano NOVEMBER 14, 2024 | 1.30 PM JULIAN RACHLIN & FRIENDS Julian Rachlin, violin; Sarah McElravy, viola Karen Ouzounian, cello; Sheng Cai, piano 2024 2025 Hear the carillon at Yorkminster Park Baptist Church, September 22 in Toronto CARILLON Almost by definition, carillon music comes to find you whether you like it or not. Why not make your listening intentional? The U of T carillon in Soldiers Tower next to Hart House has been a fixture since 1927. Its 51 bells range in weight from 4 tons (low Bb, an octave below middle C) to 23 pounds (high D, three octaves above middle C). Yorkminster Park Baptist Church’s 37-bell carillon – the 12th in Canada – is the new kid on the block, installed in the summer of 2023. Sep 02 2:00: University of Toronto. Labour Day Carillon Recital. Lachrimae Pavan, Haru no Umi, Day-O, and The Old Brigade. Naoko Tsujita, carillonneur. Sep 22 12:20: Yorkminster Park Baptist Church. First Anniversary of the Carillon: Carillon Recital. Dr. Andrea McCrady, Dominion Carillonneur from the Peace Tower in Ottawa. MUSIC TO STUMBLE ACROSS Speaking of music that finds you, the Bloor/Borden Farmer’s Market – every Wednesday – has long been a fixture in the Green P parking lot south of Bloor and east of Bathurst. This year they’ve hit on the idea of adding live music to the mix. You might just find yourself standing listening to someone you never heard of but would go hear again. And it beats the musical dreck piped into the supermarket produce aisles. Sep through Oct 2-7pm: Bloor/Borden Farmers’ Market. Music in the Market. Rain or shine. THE MORE IT STAYS THE SAME, THE MORE IT CHANGES? Sep 5 8:30: Lula Lounge. The Patsy Cline Birthday Show. The fact that this is the 18th year that singer Heather Morgan has put this show together speaks volumes – to Morgan’s deep-seated conviction that Virginia-born Patsy Cline’s music transcended the “country music icon” pigeonhole that Cline herself managed to bust out of but that many listeners still consign her to. Proof is in the eclectic range of performers and styles Morgan always manages MARCH 13, 2025 | 1.30 PM MARMEN QUARTET Johannes Marmen, violin Laia Valentin Braun, violin Bryony Gibson-Cornish, viola Sinéad O’Halloran, cello APRIL 3, 2025 | 1.30 PM MIDORI MARSH Midori Marsh, soprano WITH Frances Armstrong, piano Laura Chambers, flute Alex Hetherington, mezzo soprano 2024 WMCT CAREER DEVELOPMENT AWARD WINNER MAY 8, 2025 | 1.30 PM ASITHA TENNEKOON Asitha Tennekoon, tenor Steven Philcox, piano WITH Aysel Taghi-Zada, violin; Terri Croft, violin Laurence Schaufele, viola Amahl Arulanandam, cello Ticket Orders By phone: 416-923-7052 Online: www.wmct.on.ca Subscriptions: 0 | Single tickets: Students Free with ID Walter Hall, University of Toronto, Faculty of Music 80 Queen's Park (Museum Subway) Joyce wmct@wmct.on.ca www.wmct.on.ca 416-923-7052 thewholenote.com September 2024 | 25
