Symphony on the Bay

I chose to spend 2 hours of this beautiful afternoon listening to Symphony on the Bay, previously Symphony Hamilton play an impressive and diverse program in their new home at the Burlington Performing Arts Centre.

It's a block from the waterfront and a block west of downtown. The centre has a large lobby and the capacity is between 700 and 735 seats, depending on the set-up (i.e. whether there's a pit.)
It is a beautiful theatre and, with its light wood walls, is  reminiscent of the Four Seasons Centre in Toronto on a smaller scale.

The sound is excellent. One of the ushers told me that he'd stood pretty well everywhere he could and the the sound was uniformly good. I sat on the opposite side of the house from the flute soloist and at times I had some difficulty hearing her, but she was nearly as far to the audience's left as I was to the right. The harp, only a metre closer to me was perfectly audible.

They opened with the Dances sacrée et profane, by Debussy for harp and strings. The soloist was Erica Goodman. It's not a work with which I was familiar but contains many of the attributes of other mid-period Debussy pieces like whole tone scales and adventurous non-functional harmonies. Erica Goodman must have played it many times and communicated the music very effectively. The strings played accurately, convincingly supporting the soloist.

She was joined by Suzanne Shulman (in a matching outfit!) for the Mozart Concerto for Flute and Harp. It never ceases to amaze me that a community orchestra is able to present high profile soloists who one might otherwise hear with performing with a professional orchestra. These soloists obviously have established a fine rapport and played the piece beautifully, especially the glorious slow movement. There were some tuning problems in the violins in the faster passages of the finale but, otherwise, the orchestra played well. 


The second half was the Tchaikovsky Symphony #4. I must admit to having outgrown my fascination with this composer in my 'teens and, even then, this isn't one of my favourite Tchaik' works. However, the orchestra has played it before and it showed. The opening brass fanfares were impressive. The strings achieved fine unisons in the running passages in the finale. The only tuning problems occurred, not in the violins where they might be expected, but rather in exposed 'cello melodies. Special kudos to principal bassoon Sandy Wilson and principal clarinet Zoltan Kalman, both of whom played wonderfully in their solo passages. It was, altogether, a impressive performance for this community orchestra.

Much of the credit must go to Maestro James McKay. His years of experience working with student and community orchestras have clearly taught him what repertoire is appropriate for the ensembles with which he works. It's very well to program overly difficult music simply because the musicians want the challenge and wish to have played more varied repertoire but when a conductor does that, he is taking a risk. McKay chooses the music carefully for this group ensuring that the orchestra is within its realm of expertise, neither annoying the audience with near misses nor potentially embarrassing the musicians.

Certainly, the new venue helped the orchestra to be better heard, and I'll go back to hear Valerie Tryon play the Lizst Concerto #1 and the Rachmaninoff Symphony #2 on May 6. 

Setting Prose to Music

I've written several vocal pieces with prose texts. This requires a different approach from the composer than that which works when setting poetry.
Poetry, with regular metre and rhyme is, in many ways, easier to set to music. Phrase length and rhythmic stress in the poem, for example, suggest the same elements in the song even if the composer intentionally contradicts the poet's intentions.
Prose texts don't have those imbedded characteristics which poetry and song share. The composer has to deal with irregular metre and stresses, phrases of different and irregular lengths, and the simple fact that prose must always "make sense" grammatically and that too, must be evident in the vocal part.
The composer should see that the melodic material holds up beyond simply rendering the words in an understandable fashion. Otherwise, one is simply writing recitative or chant. These are absolutely fine, of course, as a part of a longer piece, but not very interesting on their own (unless they're in a devotional piece). All of this has to be considered before and during the composition of whatever other music supports the voice or voices.
I first set prose in my piece for soprano and strings, Song of the Beloved. The text is drawn from the Song of Solomon in the King James Version. Yes, it is poetic but it's not poetry in spite of the beautiful Jacobean language. It was in writing this piece that I devised a process that I have applied again in other works.
More recently, I reworked some English translations of old Chinese and Japanese Zen poems and set them to music (6 Zen Lyrics). The texts, whatever their Asian language source poetry might be like, are blank verse, and present many of the same challenges to the composer as does prose.
Finally, here's the recording of my setting of a passage from the Gospel of Luke, again in the King James version. The children heard learned it without much difficulty because the text at once reflects the rhythm and contour of the words, and also provides a singable melody.

Fauré: The Requiem and much more

  I expect to attend two performances of this work over this concert season, both here in Hamilton.  Fauré is my special favourite composer whose music I first encountered in the Requiem when I sang it in a performance by my high school choir. I subsequently learned and performed some of the songs. I've since become familiar with many more of the songs and cycles, much of his piano and chamber music, and the opera Penélope, on CDs.
Many musically knowledgeable people, aside from pianists and singers, believe that the Requiem is all of Fauré's music with which they are familiar. This is usually not the case. For example, the song Après un rêve has been arranged for instrumentalists numerous times. Incidental music like the Pavane from Masques et Bergamasques and the Sicilienne from Pelléas et Mélisande have turned up as radio program themes and continue to do so accompanying other media.
There's a quality of restraint and sophistication that permeates the music. Nothing is jarring or incongruous. He has complete control of his materials. He seems not to "push the envelope" as did many of his contemporaries but some time spent listening to the late cycle, L'horizon chimérique, will demonstrate that he continued experimenting within his musical universe until the very end.
He was trained at the École Niedermeyer as a church musician (he studied composition with Saint-Saens) from the age of 9 but eventually became a composition teacher and the the head of the prestigious Conservatoire. This early training offered him familiarity with church modes and chant and led him to a wonderful sense of melody, and the peculiar and individual harmonic vocabulary which is very evident in the Requiem.
Having said that, the piano music is very much in the tradition of mainstream 19th C. salon and concert works by composers like Field and Chopin. I'm not much of a pianist and can't begin to play any of it. He is partial to "three handed" textures in which the thumb and first fingers of both hands play a melody in the middle register while the other fingers play independent lines above and below it. I suspect pianists don't learn and program Fauré's piano music because it is so difficult but must not seem so. It's uniformly beautiful, but not very flashy. A pianist can make more of an impression playing Lizst or Rachmaninoff.
Some of the songs sound vaguely "churchy" (Au Cimetière), some are almost classical (Clair de Lune) and others unabashedly romantic (Automne). The difficulty of their piano accompaniments is often scaled back, making them accessible to less virtuosic players.
He claimed to have written the Requiem for no particular reason and, being himself an agnostic at best, it can't have had the kind of religious significance for him that one might expect. He was, however, for years the organist at l'église de la Madeleine and professionally familiar with a great deal of Catholic liturgical music. He altered some of the Latin texts that he chose and omitted others that are typically included. The entire work takes just over half an hour. There are two soloists, a treble (Pie Jesus) and a baritone (Hostias, Libera me), although the treble solo is now usually performed by a woman. The Offertoire and Libera me (with baritone solo) were composed after the other movements had been premièred.
The original is for chamber orchestra with organ but no violins (except a solo violin in the last movement). There are two later versions, the final one, with a much larger orchestra, probably not the work of the composer at all. His publisher was anxious to have the piece performed as a concert, rather than liturgical work. Today, it is often done with only organ accompaniment playing an orchestral reduction.
As it is currently performed, the Requiem has seven movements:

       Introit and Kyrie
       Offertoire
       Sanctus
       Pie Jesus
       Agnus Dei et Lux Aeterna
       Libera me
       In Paradisum



  It is calm and peaceful throughout, only rising to a forte in the Hosanna. Let's leave it to the composer to explain his intention: "It has been said that my Requiem does not express the fear of death and someone has called it a lullaby of death. But it is thus that I see death: as a happy deliverance, an aspiration towards happiness above, rather than as a painful experience... perhaps I have also instinctively sought to escape from what is thought right and proper, after all the years of accompanying burial services on the organ! I know it all by heart. I wanted to write something different.

Thurs. Nov. 10, 2011, Central Presbyterian Church, Hamilton
Sun. April 29, 2012, St. Paul's United Church, Dundas: Mohawk College Community Singers

Il Barbiere di Hamilton

      Live performers, especially in concert music, are at a terrible disadvantage these days because of the perfection of recordings. Some audience members come to shows with unrealistic expectations. Live performances can never be perfect because the musicians get but one chance, and nobody is perfect all the time. Digital recordings can be re-recorded and treated to the aural version of Photoshop-ing until they are without flaw.
     One means by which the reality of imperfect performances is ameliorated somewhat is a venue with appropriate acoustics. The hall should have some ring (how much, of course, depends on the genre of the music, the size of the ensemble etc.) and, again depending on the genre, place even the closest audience members at a comfortable distance from the performers. An intimate venue is appropriate for a string quartet but you don't want to be that close to a brass quintet.
   On Tuesday evening, I attended a performance of Rossini's Barber at the Dofasco Centre for the Arts (a.k.a. Theatre Aquarius). Opera Hamilton moved this season to this 750 seat auditorium after many years in the 2100 seat Great Hall of Hamilton Place. You'd think this would be an ideal situation for a small scale production of this opera, but there's more to this than meets the eye or ear.
    I'd never thought it was possible to be too close to the stage but my seat in the second row may have been. This small theatre was designed for spoken plays. Even the floor under the seats is carpeted. And I was very close to the performers. It was like sitting at the director's table at a piano dress. At once you can see every subtle expression and gesture but you can also hear all the little glitches, scoops and imperfections in the sound the singers produce. I can't say whether someone further out in the hall could hear as I did.
   I enjoyed the show enormously. All of the singers were at home with the music. The staging was very busy, making much of the jokes in the libretto and including gestures, facial expressions and physical humour such that there was almost always something more than Rossini's music happening to engage the audience.
   Hugh Russell was an enthusiastic Figaro with a big voice. His clownish costume and make-up, and frenzied business in Largo al Factorum made it clear he was not the romantic lead. I'd like to see him as Danilo or Guglielmo to see how he fares as one. Alexandre Sylvestre was an appropriately pompous Don Bartolo. From my seat, both of these singers sometimes seemed to sing far more loudly and dramatically than this small theatre, indeed this opera, required.
   Lauren Segal sang and acted Rosina convincingly, at one moment a sweet young girl, all smiles and fluttering eyelashes and at the next a purposeful young woman, contemptuous of her ward and determined to get her own way. I prefer a lighter voiced mezzo in this role to match her romantic partner who must be a leggiero tenor. I was close enough to see how hard she was working. I didn't hear her sing Carmen this past summer in the Brott Festival but I suspect she was more comfortable in that role. One day she may sing Massenet's Charlotte.
   Edgar Ernesto Ramirez was an outstanding Lindoro/Almaviva. He possesses the right voice and his has sufficient colour and is even to the very top. He can also act. He is a singer who may achieve the big, international career.
   Giles Tomkins sang the duplicitous Don Basilio and Wendy Hatala Foley the frustrated maid Berta.
   None of this is to say that the singing wasn't good. It was uniformly good. But vocal and physical fatigue, allergies, colds; almost anything can mess with an opera singer's voice no matter how well worked out is his technique. In a house with some ring and at some distance from the stage the tiny faults are evened out. Last night I saw and heard everything and I don't think the intimacy of the drama was worth the closeness to the vocal performances.
   I  am, however, looking forward to Il Trovatore in the spring. A Rossini farce is one thing. A small cast and chorus, one set. A Verdi warhorse is quite another. It requires a bigger orchestra, four dramatic singers and many more choristers. Think "The Anvil Chorus" and "Di quella pira" I can't wait to see, maybe from Row B, how they bring it off.

Opera Hamilton

Il Trovatore

Luc Robert         Manrico
Joni Henderson  Leonora
Emilia Boteva    Azucena
James Westman  Conte di Luna

Symphony Hamilton on May 29

Symphony Hamilton have played their last concert at the auditorium of the Royal Botanical Gardens. I am a member of the RBG and it is a treasured institution. I've even performed in their auditorium with my school choir but the space is awkward for a group as big as Symphony Hamilton and the acoustics are difficult. The orchestra will be better served in their new home.
The orchestra will perform next year in the brand new Burlington Centre for the Performing Arts. They open with Beethoven's Ninth Symphony and follow with an ambitious season the details of which are available at their web site.
On this occasion they began with the Imperial March from Star Wars by John Williams. I'm a big fan of John Williams and am generally interested in film music. As a curtain raiser this piece did its job and the orchestra gave an adequate reading. It doesn't work very well as a stand alone concert piece and I'd rather have heard the Star Wars theme, as familiar as it is.
They followed with performances by their Young Artists' Competition Winners. Adam Despinic played beautifully the first movement of Marian Mozetich's Affairs of the Heart for Violin and Orchestra. The piece is a successful blend of musical romanticism and minimalism. I'd be interested to hear more of this composer's music.
Next, Bogdan Chetraru played the first movement of the Mozart Bassoon Concerto. He's in Grade 10 at Westdale Collegiate which makes him 15 or 16. He plays with great spirit and determination and it was a joy to watch a young virtuoso in the making.
The first half closed with Three Piece's from Schindler's List played with appropriate sensitivity by the orchestra's Concert Master, Corey Gemmell. I supposed there are those who object to the kind of emotional manipulation that is integral to this music, tied to the film for which it was written. Even so, I find the main theme touching and sincere, surely a remarkable achievement by John Williams, especially since it is so different from his other scores.
The concert closed with a spirited reading of the Dvorak Eighth Symphony. I came away with the main theme of the last movement stuck in my head. Particular kudos to First Flute Laurel Trainor who was very busy indeed and played so well, and to Graham Young who played the exposed opening of the last movement flawlessly.

Orfeo ed Euridice at the COC

     I attended the Dress Rehearsal of Orfeo ed Euridice as a guest of the COC. I've since read two glowing reviews of performances (in The Star and The Spec) and would like to take this opportunity to respond to their opinions of Robert Carsen's concept and production.
     I will not say anything about the solo singing as I attended a rehearsal. Singers are free to "mark" during rehearsals. They may choose not to sing out, to spontaneously transpose passages or even omit singing bits, all in order to save their voice.
     All three acts were played on the same barren moonscape. There is a grave which opened and closed. A ramp leads from in front of the plain scrim to the raked stage. Otherwise, there is no scenery. Singers are dressed in "modern" garb, all in black (white shirts for the men). The dead in Hades are in white shrouds. All visual variety was a result of the movement of the singers on the stage and lighting effects. Singers were often back-lit making it difficult to see their facial expressions.
     The idea is that Gluck, the composer, had simplified the style of the opera in reaction to the excesses of opera at the time. Carlsen has simplified the visual presentation in response to Gluck's music. The problem is that it's all contextual. Modern opera goers have not been immersed in the extremes of Rococo stage presentations so the raison d'etre for all of this must be explained to them in notes for it to have any meaning. It's like some serial music which, its advocates might explain, doesn't sound like much but is really interesting when you analyze the score.
     Orpheus sings to the dead in Hades and they are persuaded to transport him to Elysium. Elysium is supposed to be a delightful place, and Orpheus describes it as such. In this production, Hades and Elysium look exactly the same. Without an understanding of the concept this is counter-intuitive, and even then, I think it shortchanges the audience.
     The result is, from a visual point of view, a rather dull night at the opera.
     Next season the COC presents Iphegenia in Tauris, also by Gluck, with Susan Graham in the title role. Carlsen directs again. I wonder whether this production will be more visually interesting than was Orfeo.

Ariadne auf COC

I encourage any of my readers who have the opportunity to attend a performance in the current run of Ariadne auf Naxos at the Four Seasons Centre. It really is a wonderful opera, if not Strauss's best (he did write 16, about 10 of which, by my reckoning, are still performed).
I had expected to hear two of the reigning Canadian opera divas and was crestfallen when I learned that Adrianne Pieczonda was indisposed. American soprano Amber Wagner filled in admirably. She has a beautiful full spinto voice and also understudied Aida at the COC this season.
It was announced that Jane Archibald had a "chest infection" but would go on anyway. It certainly didn't impede her performance much, if at all. Zerbinetta's music is extraordinarily florid (and very high, I noticed a couple of Es in the score). Archibald seemed to under-sing some of the time, but the highest, flashiest bits were full sung out. She performed all of this in the midst of very busy, almost gymnastic, staging.
The real star of the show was British mezzo Alice Coote. Hers is seamless mezzo soprano voice with glorious, really thrilling, top notes.
Among the men, John Easterlin was the standout. He has a shining tenor voice and dealt capably with the very high testitura of the roles of the Dancing Master and Brighella. The dancing and singing of the four male Commédia players (Easterlin with Peter Barrett, Michael Uloff and Christopher Enns) was precise and very entertaining.
American veteran baritone Richard Stillwell sang the Music Master and Richard Margison the roles of the Tenor and Bacchus.
Simone Osbourne, Lauren Segal and Teiya Kasahara (all past or present COC Ensemble members) did some lovely ensemble singing as the Nymphs on Ariadne's wrecked stage of a desert island.
The COC orchestra, under Andrew Davis was simply marvelous. I must mention the outstanding playing of principal clarinetist James T. Shields.