Bartók Marathon All In Day’s Work For Borromeo
By Colin Eatock
TORONTO - The Borromeo Quartet has been presenting complete Bartók cycles for more than a decade, and their ingrained knowledge was apparent in a polished and exhilarating marathon event at Toronto Summer Music.
Brass Group Sets Spark To Ottawa Chamber Festival
By Charles Pope, Jr.
OTTAWA, Ontario – High-decibel intensity marked the onset of Chamberfest, an annual two-week event that's getting bigger and better. The Canadian National Brass Project launched it with classic fanfares and a world premiere.
Sigiswald Kuijken Shoulders J.S. Bach On Cello Outrider
By Alan Conter
MONTREAL – An odd new-old instrument, the violoncello da spalla, made its Canadian debut at the 13th Montreal Baroque Festival, where an affinity between Vivaldi and little-known eastern European gypsy music was also explored.
Classical-Jazz Mix Is Obsessive Lure For Alberta Eight
By Bill Rankin
EDMONTON, Alberta - What do you get when you blend a string quartet with a jazz quartet? Kent Sangster's Obsessions Octet, which has been exploring fresh sonic terrain since the musicians began grooving a decade ago.
Schafer Envisions Fire, Brimstone For End Of Time
By Colin Eatock
TORONTO - It’s unlikely that composer R. Murray Schafer has ever been accused of smallness of vision. One of his largest works, the 1980 Apocalypsis, for close to 1,000 performers, is being revived at the 2015 Luminato Festival.
Tafelmusik Salutes Bach’s Leipzig In ‘Circle of Creation’
By Colin Eatock
TORONTO - The admired Canadian baroque orchestra has come around to thinking that modernity isn’t all bad. J.S. Bach: The Circle of Creation is its third multimedia blend of a well-honed HIP ethos with cutting-edge technology.
Paired Dark Tales: Vintage Lepage At Canadian Opera
By Colin Eatock
TORONTO - It was in the early 1990s that director Robert Lepage and designer Michael Levine twinned Bluebeard’s Castle and Erwartung with a boldness that has aged well – or perhaps it’s better to say that it hasn't aged at all.
Toronto Symphony Salutes Armenian Music And Artists
By Colin Eatock
TORONTO - A packed house heard the orchestra give a concert featuring such musicians of Armenian descent as violinist Sergey Khachatryan, soprano Isabel Bayrakdarian, and music director Peter Oundjian.
Nézet-Séguin Triumphant In Montreal Return
By Robert Markow
MONTREAL - The Canadian music director of the Philadelphia Orchestra could have told the Orchestre Métropolitain he no longer had time for them. Yet he returns each season to conduct, and the results are remarkable.
Period Keyboards Recast Beethoven Works With Cello
By David Gordon Duke
VANCOUVER - How would you feel if you were brought out of 168 years of retirement? This locally owned Broadwood piano lent an authentic sound to an all-Beethoven weekend with pianist Robert Levin and cellist Steven Isserlis.
Pianist Eve Egoyan Surveys Landscape Of Modern Music
By Holly Harris
WINNIPEG - For 24 years, the contemporary music series GroundSwell has offered a steady diet of cutting-edge artists. The latest, adventurous Canadian pianist Eve Egoyan, offered solo concerts including two of her own commissions.
‘Not For TV,’ But Lizée Work Still Prime-Time Fare
By David Gordon Duke
VANCOUVER - In a small space called the Orpheum Annex, Nicole Lizée's "This Will Not Be Televised" anchored a concert entitled "Displaced Emotion," part of the Vancouver Symphony's continuing nod to the new.
East Greets West In A Now That Sounds Like Then
By Colin Eatock
TORONTO - Although five works by Canadian and Chinese composers including Fuhong Shi were premieres, a New Music Concerts event Feb. 14 seemed a throwback to high modernism and post-war avant-garde tricks of the trade.
Marionettes Bring Charm, Finesse On Trek From Austria
By Richard Todd
OTTAWA - The Salzburg Marionette Theatre has toured North America with a playful show built around Schumann’s Papillons and Debussy’s Boîte à joujoux. Remarkably life-like puppets teamed with pianist Orion Weiss. Paris is next.
Toronto Symphony Shines Spotlight On Nielsen At 150
By Colin Eatock
TORONTO – Danish composer Carl Nielsen is still on the fringes of the canon, but his music has a chance to find a wider audience this concert season, with a mini Nielsen-fest in Toronto, and more to come in the U.S. and Europe.
Les Violons du Roy Take Regal Sound To Canadian West
By Bill Rankin
EDMONTON, Alberta - An eight-stop tour by the Quebec chamber orchestra has an early romantic flavor, with an arrangement of Schubert's String Quartet in D Minor (Death and the Maiden), plus Mendelssohn and Schumann.
Canadians Twice Remember Fallen With ‘War Requiem’
By David Gordon Duke
BRITISH COLUMBIA - Two cities honored Remembrance Day weekend with Benjamin Britten’s War Requiem. In Vancouver, a great tradition is upheld. In Victoria, under conductor Tania Miller, a first endeavor has shining worth.
‘Stickboy’ Opera Makes Bold Case Against Bullying
By Konstantin Bozhinov
VANCOUVER — In its world premiere by Vancouver Opera, Neil Weisensel and Shane Koyczan's opera comes across as a brilliant depiction of librettist Koyczan's experience as an overweight teen taunted and beaten up by peers.
New Music Band Esprit Shows Its Singular Palette
By Colin Eatock
TORONTO - There aren’t many orchestras with an exclusive commitment to new music like Esprit, led by Alex Pauk. Ives' 1906 Central Park in the Dark, on a recent bill, may be the oldest work the group has ever performed.
