Luminescence Concert at the HPO

Last night marked Maestro James Sommerville's last concert as the Principal Conductor of the Hamilton Philharmonic Orchestra. So far as I know he has had a very good relationship with the players of the orchestra and, if last night's prolonged applause at the concert's end is any indication, he is adored by concert goers. He will return as a guest conductor next season. He has also championed new music through the What Next Festival which will apparently be held in mid-May.

They began with the Symphony in D Major by Joseph Boulogne, Chevalier de Saint-Georges presented, one must presume, in honour of Black History Month. He's a fascinating character, a champion fencer, violin virtuoso, conductor and colonel in the Legion-St. Georges fighting against Louis XV during the revolution. He was one of numerous composers writing in the International Style which was most most effectively employed by Mozart whom Saint-Georges may well have met in Paris.

I remembered, as the first movement began, learning about Sonata Form as a teenager because the music followed the formula clearly. That's not to say the music isn't charming and elegant but that it reminds me of the numerous early Haydn symphonies for similar forces (i.e. strings, and pairs of horns and oboes); very nice but not too deep.

They followed this with the Sinfonia Concertante in Eb Major by the aforementioned Mozart. The soloists were Leslie Newman, Flute, Graham Mackenzie, Oboe, Eric Hall, Bassoon and Ken Macdonald, Horn. All but Mackenzie are regulars in the orchestra. He is Principal in the Windsor and Niagara Symphonies and has freelanced with the HPO.

The piece was lost and rediscovered, rearranged for clarinet, oboe, horn and bassoon by another hand, in the 1860s. Scholar Robert Levin "reconstructed' the piece, restoring the flute solo and rebuilding stretches of the orchestration which he thought questionable. This is the version which was performed last night.

It's a delightful piece and not at all like a classical concerto grosso, although the soloists do play without the orchestra some of the time. It is more like a piano concerto with the solo parts arranged for four winds, who are each given virtuosos turns and there is plenty of contrapuntal trading-off of phrases. It was entertaining to listen to the bassoon play parts which were every bit as intricate as those played by the flute. I thought I wouldn't have particularly wanted to be the horn player blowing this demanding part only a few feet from the principal horn of the Boston Symphony! All of the soloists were very impressive, reminding me of what skill and talent is found within the ranks of the players of this professional group.

After the break they played Ravel's Pavane pour une Infante Défunte. It must be, after the Bolero, his best known orchestral work. It is truly transcendent music. It seems timeless in the sense that time seems to stand still as the piece is played. The tempo is slow, but steady as a piece for dancing must be, yet it slows and stops, then starts again, and the movement doesn't stop, it is merely suspended. The strings sound was wonderful and Ken Macdonald shone again in the horn solos.

We were reminded, in Craig Coolin's excellent notes in the program, of Ravel's own words: "It is not a funeral lament for a dead child, but rather an evocation of the pavane which could have been danced by such a little princess as painted by Velasquez at the Spanish court."

Las Meninas

They finished with Francis Poulenc's Sinfonietta. It's a four movement symphony full of the peculiar stylistic traits that occur throughout his music like short enigmatic phrases, unique modernist harmonies and occasional stretches of surprisingly romantic music. The orchestra gave a precise and detailed reading of this complex and varied work. In particular, there was some beautifully nuanced playing from Principal Trumpet Michael Fedyshyn.

There was a good crowd for this concert although the Great Hall was hardly sold out. I encourage Hamiltonians to get out and support this first rate orchestra and keep it in the black.

Many try to consume local food and I hope you also consume, at least some, local culture. After spending more than two hours in the car and paying more than $20 for parking earlier in the week in order to see Un Ballo in Maschera in Toronto, last night I parked for free and was in the car for little more than 20 minutes all told and I don't live downtown!

COC Masked Ball at Four Seasons Centre

We attended the current COC production of Verdi's Un Ballo in Maschera Tuesday evening at the Four Seasons Centre in Toronto. Nothing like a great Italian opera to warm a chilly Ontario evening. Lovely theatre, a promising cast, a full house. What could possibly go wrong?

So far as the music was concerned, nothing much. All of the principal singers were as good as you'd get in any major opera house. The orchestra, under Maestro Stephen Lord, played excellently and Sandra Horst's chorus were first-rate once more.

The combination of Barbara Ehnes set design and Jossi Wieler's stage direction, however, resulted in a bizarre night at the opera.

All three acts were played in what pretends to be the ballroom of a Southern American hotel in the 1960s but looks more like a garish snack bar in a bus terminal. The same set serves all three acts. It is the witch Ulrica's cave only by moving the furniture about and, with the addition of a couple of dangling lynched corpses, it serves as the gallow's field as well.

The action has been transplanted to the American South. The direction alters numerous elements of the opera as it would be performed in a traditional production including lots of silly or distracting stage business. Conte Riccardo and Renato are best buds complete with a "cool" hand slapping handshake. Oscar (a young man in Somma's libretto) is transformed into a flirty young woman who, in Act Three, is costumed in a version of Björk's notorious Swan Dress.

Björk is not in this production

The cast includes a mute woman in Jackie Kennedy-esque dress, complete with pillbox hat. She's Riccardo's invented wife but, not having read the director's notes, I spent most of the opera musing on who she might be and what she was doing in this opera. When the men "disguise" themselves to visit Ulrica they take off their jackets and ties and roll up their trousers to their knees. In the ballroom cum gallow's field scene, everyone is in their pyjamas or nightwear. The blind Ulrica turns up, with an open bottle of spirits, at the masked ball with her sight miraculously restored.

American tenor Dimitri Pittas was a bright-voiced Ricardo. He sang well but was tiring by the solo aria Ma Se m'é forza perderti when there was some insecurity in his high notes. The idea that misfortune is more grievous when it befalls those of high estate is integral to tragedy. In this production Ricardo may be rich and powerful but, on account of the direction, including some cringe-worthy buffoonery, and his aspiration to betray his wife, he lacks nobility. This weakens the drama.

Roland Wood was a vocally excellent Renato and dramatically convincing within the confines of this production. His singing of Eri tu che macchiavi quell'anima was very impressive and his sound sometimes reminded me of Louis Quilico. (Sorry to those of you for whom this is sacrilege.)

Gregory Dahl capably portrayed a one-armed Silvano.  Giovanni Battista Parodi and Evan Boyer were entertaining and vocally perfect as the conspirators Tom and Samuel.

Simone Osborne shone as Oscar. She made the transformation of this role from young man to young woman work. She sang beautifully in both arias and demonstrated lots more juice in the ensembles than most soubrettes who sing this role. I found the amount of silly stage business she was required to do while other characters ought to have been the centre of the audiences attention distracting, but that's hardly her fault. I heard her last as Gilda in Rigoletto and she proved last night that she is a versatile actress as well as a fine singer.

Adrianne Pieczonka was breathtaking. Amelia is the only one who is allowed to be a tragic character in this production and the soprano was a startling contrast to everyone else on stage in spite of having to play most of the show in pyjamas and a robe. She managed to be believable in the midst of the absurd set and staging. This is her first outing in this role and she really did sing magnificently. It seemed that she never had to sing louder than mezzo-forte to get it done while some other singers competed with the orchestra. Her pianissimo singing was chilling.

Adrianne Pieczonka elegant even in pyjamas.

It is my contention that if a work of art requires explanation from another medium to be understood, it lessens its import. Art works ought to be able to be fully comprehended on their own terms without justification. This production requires the audience to have read the Director's Notes for it to make the effect the director intends and, even at that, it didn't work for me. 

Much of what unfolded on stage last night simply didn't ring true. Perhaps it worked better in Europe, where the production originated, where America is much more foreign than it is here and the incongruities might be less obvious...

You can't fault the COC for trying to be innovative and keep up with current trends in opera at other major international houses. However, I'm not inclined to spend big bucks to see "contemporary reinterpretations" that are as far off the mark as this one. I'll think hard about attending any Robert Carsen directed shows having been so disappointed in the bland production of Orpheo ed Euridice in 2011. I guess I'll add Jossi Wieler and make a list.

The Desolation of Tolkien

Yesterday afternoon I sat through The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug, the second instalment of Peter Jackson's elaborate adaptation of the J.R.R. Tolkien novel. This Composer's Notebook post isn't about Howard Shore's score and I say sat through because the film, like the book, is episodic and I had no idea how much of the story I would be treated to before it ended.

This was complicated by additions to the plot (whether originating with the creative team or inferred from other Tolkien works I can't say) which postponed the inevitable destruction of Laketown by Smaug, the Dragon, until this time next year.

I'm not crazy about the book. I read the LOTR in my late teens and have re-read it a couple of times. But I first read the Hobbit aloud to a class of 11 year olds. I subsequently read it aloud to children perhaps a half dozen times. It's not an ideal Read-Aloud novel. It's overly long and wordy. But, because most of the characters are male, because it is a fantasy adventure and because it is so easy for boys to identify with the protagonist, it engages them in a way that most other books can't. It has mature world view, and literary and artistic merit. Reading such a book aloud to children was a way to share these values with my students.

Many of the criticisms of the first film The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey were made precisely because the movie was much like the first part of the book. The book is a short epic and a picaresque adventure besides. It goes on for 365 pages of small type in paperback. Both film and book take some time to get going, even drag a bit. But the first part of the book is only the set-up and was never intended (as critics thought the film was) to stand on its own.

I enjoyed The Desolation of Smaug less than the first movie because it's so unlike the novel. Characters are added like Tauriel, a female elf warrior, for example, who, armed with a bow, reminded me of the publicity shots of The Hunger Games.

Evangeline Lilly as Tauriel

There are orc battles, reminiscent of the LOTR movies. At one point, as Legolas bounced across a raging river, slaying orcs as he went, the viewer might easily be watching a video game. Legolas, incidentally, isn't a character in Tolkien's The Hobbit. He's introduced in the LOTR.

Orlando Bloom as Legolas

This time, Jackson has turned The Hobbit into another fantasy-action film, much like any other fantasy-action film.

It's one thing to write an original story, with an original setting and characters, as James Cameron did with Avatar, and quite another to take an established literary classic like The Hobbit and alter it so much that it hardly resembles its source beyond the broad plot outline.

It's what happened to the James Bond novels after the first two films. By the end of the sixties only the books' titles and Bond himself remained in the films.

Sir Thomas Sean Connery as James Bond

In the case of The Hobbit, The Desolation of Smaug, it's my opinion that it's really too bad, but I will go back and see the end of the story at this time next year, as will millions of other paying customers. This film is, after all, commercial art.

The Xmas Choral Season Commences in Hamilton with the Mac Choirs

The Annual Yule Yell, as the Hamilton Spectator's former music critic Hugh Fraser dubbed it, has begun in earnest. Unfortunately, I started to hear Xmas music several weeks ago in stores and on television. Frankly, the second time I heard Gene Autrey sing Rudolf the Red Nosed Reindeer was already once too many and that was long ago. Personally, I think there should be a law banning commercial use of seasonal music before American Thanksgiving.

Nonetheless, I took in the concert by the McMaster Choirs under Rachel Rensink-Hoff on Friday night at Central Presbyterian Church in Hamilton. It wasn't quite December yet but the choir, a credit course for some, must wrap up its activities before the end of the school term.

I've no official connection to McMaster but my wife taught there for more than 20 years and I accompanied her to many concerts by the Mac choir conducted by Philip Sarabura (now conductor of the Brantford Symphony and violinist in the Hamilton Philharmonic), David Holler (now conductor of the Fanshawe Choir, the Gerald Fagan Singers and the Mohawk Community Choir) and, at present, Rachel Rensink-Hoff. Each demonstrated his/her professional expertise and personal taste through his/her choice of music for this choir of about 100 members.

This time, it was a diverse program. They sang 4 different settings of O Magnum Mysterium (one in English). Except for three selections, the program was comprised entirely of modern music or modern arrangements (i.e. post 1970).  There was the celebrated O Magnum Mysterium by the Spanish High-Renaissance composer Thomás Luis Victoria, an elaborate sectional Ave Maria by Felix Mendelssohn with tenor solo, semi-choir and organ (expertly played by Central's Music Director Paul Grimwood) and The Three Kings composed by Canadian choral music icon Healy Willan.

Doctor Rensink-Hoff may have chosen so much music written specifically for the sort of choir she conducts (i.e. a university chorus) as an antidote to last year's seasonal offering, a full-blown performance of Handel's Messiah. In this concert she demonstrated that she is a highly skilled and knowledgeable choral conductor, eliciting a diverse and polished musical performance from her young performers.

 Professor Rachel Rensink-Hoff

She must have considered, in her programming choices (aside from the obvious consideration of difficulty) how the music would be received by her singers and the audience. No conductor is likely to choose repertoire which she knows will be disliked by either, however much she might like it herself. She is also a Music Educator and, even though many of her choristers are not singing in the choir for credit, she has a responsibility to provide them with a balanced and enriching musical experience and, although the program was very heavily weighted to new music, it was varied and of very high quality. Certainly, the performance suggested that the choristers enjoyed the music a lot.

She may not have given much thought to how the audience would react. This is, after all, a school choir and the audience must have been made up, for the most part, of the chorister's families who, as any music teacher knows, will be impressed with whatever their children sing. Any audience would have loved this concert and this one gave it the seemingly obligatory standing O.

My professional chorister's ear was most impressed by the 35 voice Women's Choir. Typically such a university group is made up of the women who, for whatever reason, aren't singing in the SATB group. They sang beautifully, notably in the three pieces (God Will Give Orders and All His Angels by Sarah Quartel and Nada Te Trube by Joan Szymko) with 'cellist Kirk Starkey. Conductor Rensink-Hoff clearly knows her craft to be able to coax such sound and interpretation from what might be her least promising singers.

As for the full choir, highlights included Vaclav Neylybel's Estampie Natalis (with percussion and Mac music professor David Gerry's piccolo), an exciting performance. I also enjoyed hearing such beautiful singing in the glorious O Nata Lux by American Morten Lauridsen.

It was, altogether, a very enjoyable evening of quality choral singing.

Interview with singer and actor Reid Spencer

Here's a link to my recent interview with Reid Spencer with whom I worked during my time in the chorus of the Canadian Opera Company. He's a fascinating fellow to talk to, especially for someone, like me, who has an interest in singing and the various form of musical theatre, which includes opera. Little of that discussion made it into this piece, however, which is intended for a much more general audience.

None the less, there's lots of interesting biographical information and the url of his website through which those who'd be interested in studying privately with him, or otherwise contacting him, can get in touch.

Falstaff at Opera Hamilton

I went to see Verdi's comic masterpiece, Falstaff, on Tuesday night. The buzz from the Spec columnist and online blogs was that it was a great show, but I'm sceptical and wasn't sure, based on my experience with other OH productions, what to expect.

John Fanning with Falstaff padding

What I got was a wonderful theatrical and musical experience. In this smallish theatre with a thirty-one piece orchestra the opera came off almost as a chamber piece from near the middle of Row E.

I was disappointed to see such a sparse crowd, especially since OH continues to make tickets to these Tuesday performances available for $30 on WagJag. There are two more performances (Thursday, Oct. 24 and Saturday the 26th) and if there's any possibility of getting to one of them I'd encourage you enthusiastically, but you won't get in for 30 bucks.

Falstaff is pronouncedly unlike any of Verdi's other operas. Verdi took a 16 year break after Aida, wrote Otello and then didn't write Falstaff until 6 years after that, at the age of 80. I wonder what Verdi had been listening to which resulted in the extraordinary solo ensemble writing which is so different from that of his other operas.

The principal demand in staging this opera, is to move the singers around on stage and provide interesting things for them to do while, at the same time, positioning them such that they can always see the conductor because so much of the music is complex and moves so quickly. The men's and the women's parts are often written as two teams in the numerous ensembles, sometimes scooting along simultaneously in different metres. It's quite possible to solve the problem with a static staging in which the players find their mark and stand on it. That was not the case last night.

Allison Grant's staging was detailed and followed, for the most part, Boris Godovsky's axiom that the movement in opera should proceed from the rhythm and structure of the music. There was lots of appropriate comic stage business but I didn't find that it distracted from the singing.The performers were always in sync which tells me that the stage director understood this challenge.

This is an ensemble piece and the ensemble singing was impressive. Moreover, the casting was appropriate both from a physical and vocal standpoint, and the voices complemented one another.

I didn't much like the spartan set which reminded me of community theatre. It got tiresome to see fully costumed people hiding behind parts of the set and laundry on a line. On the other hand, the entire production would probably fit in a box van. It is usually better to budget for really good singers and instrumentalists than elaborate sets.

Dundas baritone John Fanning sang the fat knight. He's got a big baritone voice and has sung the Dutchman in Der fliegende Höllander which is usually cast with a bass-baritone so that tells you something. He's sung Wotan in the Das Ring des Niebelungen, Mandryka In Strauss's Arabella (at the Met) and the villains in Les Contes de Hoffman among numerous other leading roles in major houses. Fanning had a really good night showing lots of different colours and dynamics in his singing and his top notes became freer as the evening went on.

James Westman, as Ford/Fontana, provided an excellent foil to Fanning's Falstaff. We last heard him at OH as Conte de Luna in Trovatore and I wondered whether there'd be sufficient contrast between his baritone voice and Fanning's. Fanning, the older singer who's sung lots of big German roles, has a broader, more mature sound and Westman's voice seems positively lyric in contrast. Excellent casting by David Speers and his team.

Soprano Lynn Fortin anchored the women's ensemble and was excellent both in her vocalizations and acting. It's a peculiar fact that neither Alice Ford or Meg Page (sung capably by Ariana Chris) has neither an aria nor a substantial duet to sing. This didn't prevent Fortin from holding the stage and the audience's attention in her scenes.

Lynne McMurtry expertly handled the role of Dame Quickly. James McClennan was an aptly blustering and vocally strong Dr. Caius. Jon Paul Décosse (Pistola) and Jeremy Blossey (Bardolfo) both sang excellently and played the characters broadly with lots of comic interplay.

Sasha Dijihanian was a delightful Nanetta singing some ravishing sustained high notes in her duets with tenor Theo Lebow as Fenton. He's a pretty feisty singer and I was pleased to hear his ringing top notes sounding every bit the Italian tenor.

Conductor and General Director David Speers got the most out of the orchestra and I didn't miss the big orchestra as I had in Trovatore and Rigoletto.

The new chorus master, Sabatino Vacca has solved the chorus problem, for the time being, by reducing the choir to sixteen voices. However, there's precious little chorus singing in Falstaff. Who knows what he'll do about Carmen (in April) which has a whole lot of demanding choruses?

If you've been reading these recounts you know I don't usually give such unreserved praise to opera productions. I've got to hand it to Opera Hamilton for this one, though.

Peter Grimes at the COC

We attended Tuesday night's performance of Benjamin Britten's opera Peter Grimes, performed by the Canadian Opera Company at the Four Seasons Centre in Toronto. The performance was not sold out. Indeed, the audience thinned out somewhat as the evening went on.

I'm not very fond of Britten's music (in spite of having performed quite a lot of it) and find the subject of this opera to be rather dreary. Britten adopted a kind of pan-diatonicism, gleaning his harmonic materials from the notes of his melodies and then adding polytonality (playing different streams of the texture in different keys). This results in music which is at once tonal and curiously harmonically static. To my ear, the music often doesn't have a clear tonal direction. You can hear this clearly in The Four Sea Interludes, adapted from the opera, which are a staple of the Twentieth-Century orchestral repertoire. Productions of the opera are mounted at major opera houses about as often as those other 20th Century operatic masterpieces, Poulenc's Les Dialogues Des Carmelites and Stravinsky's The Rake's Progress.

On this occasion, all three acts were played on single set (the back wall of which is brought forward on the stage at one point). The set represents a church hall with a raised proscenium stage at the back. It looks very like a church or community hall or even an elementary school gymnasium but has windowed doors and clerestory windows on both sides and skylights in the ceiling allowing for very effective lighting effects, especially during the interludes in the opera.

The director's conceit is that George Crabbe (played by Thomas Hauff), upon whose poem the libretto is based, is there on stage imagining his poem coming to life and sometimes even interacting with the characters.

Ben Heppner

Last night, Tenor Ben Heppner took the title role. He had cancelled the première and wasn't in very good voice for last night's performance either. He warmed into it as the evening went on, though, and sang pretty effectively in the second and third acts. The role is a demanding one from a dramatic point of view and his acting certainly didn't suffer from whatever vocal discomfort he was experiencing. His portrayal of Grimes mad scene in the third act was very powerful.

Ileana Montalbetti

Soprano Ileana Montalbetti was cast as Ellen Orford. According to the program notes this is her first really big role. She was a dramatically effective Ellen and sang much of the role proficiently, especially when singing alone or with the orchestra, although much of it was full out. The broad vibrato of her top notes battled with Heppner's in their first act duet and affected the tuning of the women's quartet (with Auntie and the two nieces). She possesses a fine instrument, however, and I look forward to hearing her in other repertoire where this characteristic of her vocal production will be less critical.

Alan Held

Bass-Baritone Alan Held sang and portrayed Captain Balstrode, Grimes only friend, and was the outstanding individual performer of the evening with a strong voice and excellent dramatic skills. He's done big Wagner roles in major houses and it was clear from his performance that he'd be at home there as well.

I was also impressed with Peter Barrett playing Ned Keene, although all the singers playing secondary roles (five of them COC Ensemble products) were very fine. Special mention must go to American Mezzo Judith Christin as the laudanum addled town gossip, Mrs. Sedley.

The COC orchestra, under Maestro Johannes Debus played brilliantly. There was impressive ensemble playing from the brasses and lovely playing of the many dissonant passages in the high woodwinds (there's an Eb Clarinet in the orchestra). Concertmaster Marie Bérard and Principal Cellist Bryan Epperson both took beautiful solo turns.

The real stars of the night have to be the Sandra Horst's COC chorus. There's a lot of chorus singing in this opera and, as opera choruses go, it's pretty difficult music. They gave a nuanced performance, sometimes subtle and quiet (some stunning off-stage singing), sometimes very loud and dramatic. They portrayed, to a person, the Borough itself, as a dramatic character and Grimes' real theatrical adversary.

There are five more performances, closing on Oct. 26. I encourage you to attend one of them. This is, all things considered, a wonderful production and we're not likely to see this opera performed again in Toronto any time soon.