Keyed For Europe, Toronto Symphony Crowns A Festival
By Colin Eatock
TORONTO – Kicking off a European tour for the city back home, maestro Peter Oundjian and the Toronto Symphony Orchestra performed a festival concert for Toronto Summer Music, now in its ninth season. Next stop, Vienna.
Intimate Brahms From Bremen At Lanaudière Fest
By Earl Arthur Love
JOLIETTE, QUEBEC - In a bucolic setting some call "Tanglewood North," the small but first-rate Deutsche Kammerphilharmonie Bremen under Paavo Järvi kicked off a final summer festival week of three visiting orchestras.
Twentysomething Handel Sparkles In ‘Triumph Of Time’
By David Gordon Duke
VANCOUVER – The music of Handel has occupied a key place in the summer offerings of Early Music Vancouver for a number of seasons. This year's festival keystone was Handel's first oratorio, Il trionfo del tempo e del disinganno of 1707.
2 Chamber Music Festivals Enrich Ottawa’s Summer
By Richard Todd
OTTAWA - Cellist Julian Armour first founded Chamberfest, then Music and Beyond, making Canada's capital a top destination for music lovers in North America. Why such festive abundance? Therein lies a tale.
Piano Competition Is Bang-On Clash Of Loud, Louder
By Robert Markow
MONTREAL – Australian-British Jayson Gillham won the 2014 Montreal International, a disturbing tourney in which most contestants seemed to regard the piano as an adversary to be attacked, beaten, and conquered.
Tafelmusik Honors Director Lamon As Long Tenure Ends
By Colin Eatock
TORONTO – A festive tribute to Tafelmusik Baroque Orchestra's artistic director and concertmaster Jeanne Lamon included a postmodern melange of new variations on Purcell themes and a medley of Lamon's favorites.
Winnipeg Taking Canadian Works To Carnegie Hall
By Holly Harris
WINNIPEG – The Winnipeg Symphony is the only Canadian orchestra invited to the final Spring for Music this week at the New York venue. The program includes an appearance by percussionist Dame Evelyn Glennie.
Toronto ‘Devereux’ Strong But Short On Stylishness
By Colin Eatock
TORONTO – The Canadian Opera Company is delving into lesser-known repertoire, including Donizetti's Roberto Devereux, which is onstage in a production that replaces bel canto subtlety with verismo-like intensity.
Pinchas Zukerman Trades Baton For Bow in Ottawa
By Richard Todd
OTTAWA – Pinchas Zukerman has made his mark in this city as music director of the National Arts Centre Orchestra. But recently the conductor picked up viola and violin to play a recital with pianist Yefim Bronfman.
Jerusalem Quartet Leads An Intimate Survey of Brahms
By David Gordon Duke
VANCOUVER – Two chamber music societies, one favoring the venerable, the other with a penchant for the rising young, joined forces for a quintet-rich Brahms festival featuring the Jerusalem Quartet, pianist Inon Barnatan and friends.
New Concertos Headline Toronto ‘Creations’ Fest
By Colin Eatock
TORONTO - For sheer size and scope of ambition, the second piano concerto of Magnus Lindberg was among several works at the New Creations Festival that invited comparison with the greatest works in the genre.
Choruses Outshine Pale Repertoire In Toronto Showcase
By Colin Eatock
TORONTO - Three of Canada's best choral ensembles combined into a 60-voice "super choir" of supple flexibility to perform music of Latvian composer Uģis Prauliņš and counterparts from Finland, Poland, Norway and Canada.
Canadian Opera’s ‘Così’ Doesn’t Equal Sum Of The Hearts
By Colin Eatock
TORONTO - Operatic arithmetic doesn’t always work in quite the same ways that normal math does. The sum of an ambitious production of Mozart’s Così fan tutte at Canadian Opera Company is a hodge-podge, engaging in some respects, tedious in others.
Winnipeg Festival Takes ‘New Music’ To New Territory
By Holly Harris
WINNIPEG – For 23 years, the Winnipeg Symphony's annual New Music Festival has been a mid-winter rite in the frigid Manitoba clime. "This year we break out into new genres,” says music director Alexander Mickelthwate of the week-long fête entitled Beyond.
Early Music Group Brings Life Spark To Sepulcral Hall
By Lev Bratishenko
MONTREAL - Studio de musique ancienne offered Venetian polychoral music as part of the Montreal Museum of Fine Art's "Splendors of Venice" exhibition. But Bourgie Hall, where they performed, is no Saint Mark's Basilica.
Bronfman Brings Power, Glory To Beethoven Cycle
By David Gordon Duke
VANCOUVER - Part of the fun in hearing Yefim Bronfman do all five Beethoven piano concertos within the context of three Vancouver Symphony Orchestra concerts was in how this game of connections played out.
Rossini’s Comedic ‘Italian Girl’ Finds Home in Calgary
By Bill Rankin
CALGARY -- Calgary Opera has commissioned or co-produced four new main stage shows in the past decade, including Jake Heggie's Moby Dick. But it opened the 2013-14 season with some delicious nineteenth-century fun.
Gamelan Hybrids Display Uneven Charms in Toronto
By John Terauds
TORONTO -- The Indonesian gamelan has long fascinated Western composers. And what they love, they must appropriate. The Esprit Orchestra explores how Lou Harrison and others have gone about it.
Ax’s Brahms Spices Bland Night With Toronto Symphony
By Colin Eatock
TORONTO -- Peter Oundjian, in his tenth season as music director of the TSO, led the local premiere of Gary Kulesha's Third Symphony and teamed with Emanuel Ax in Brahms' Piano Concerto No. 2.
