Volume 25 Issue 6 - March 2020
FEATURED: Music & Health writer Vivien Fellegi explores music, blindness & the plasticity of perception; David Jaeger digs into Gustavo Gimeno's plans for new music in his upcoming first season as music director at TSO; pianist James Rhodes, here for an early March recital, speaks his mind in a Q&A with Paul Ennis; and Lydia Perovic talks music and more with rising Turkish-Canadian mezzo Beste Kalender. Also, among our columns, Peggy Baker Dance Projects headlines Wende Bartley's In with the New; Steve Wallace's Jazz Notes rushes in definitionally where many fear to tread; ... and more.
FEATURED: Music & Health writer Vivien Fellegi explores music, blindness & the plasticity of perception; David Jaeger digs into Gustavo Gimeno's plans for new music in his upcoming first season as music director at TSO; pianist James Rhodes, here for an early March recital, speaks his mind in a Q&A with Paul Ennis; and Lydia Perovic talks music and more with rising Turkish-Canadian mezzo Beste Kalender. Also, among our columns, Peggy Baker Dance Projects headlines Wende Bartley's In with the New; Steve Wallace's Jazz Notes rushes in definitionally where many fear to tread; ... and more.
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VOCAL<br />
Schumann – Myrthen<br />
Camilla Tilling; Christian Gerhaher; Gerold<br />
Huber<br />
Sony Classical 19075945362<br />
(sonyclassical.de)<br />
!!“To my beloved<br />
Clara on the eve<br />
of our wedding<br />
from her Robert.”<br />
So wrote Robert<br />
Schumann on a<br />
specially bound<br />
set of 26 recently<br />
composed songs<br />
dedicated to Clara, collectively titled Myrthen<br />
for the myrtle branches and flowers that traditionally<br />
adorned bridal wreaths.<br />
In it, Schumann drew from nine poets, with<br />
Rückert, Goethe, Heine and Robert Burns (in<br />
translation) accounting for 19 of the songs.<br />
Schumann specified those to be sung by a<br />
woman or a man, suggesting a young couple’s<br />
ongoing relationship. Here, the appropriately<br />
light-and-bright voices of soprano Camilla<br />
Tilling and baritone Christian Gerhaher are<br />
ably supported by pianist Gerold Huber.<br />
Myrthen begins with the well-known<br />
Widmung (my favourite among Schumann’s<br />
<strong>25</strong>0-plus songs); others in the set that will<br />
be familiar to many are Der Nussbaum, Die<br />
Lotosblume and Du bist wie eine Blume. Of<br />
those less-often encountered, the tender Lieder<br />
der Braut and Hochländisches Wiegenlied,<br />
the sprightly Räthsel and Niemand, and the<br />
plaintive Aus den hebräischen Gesängen are<br />
particularly gratifying. The wistful, concluding<br />
Zum Schluss promises, almost prophetically,<br />
that only in heaven will the couple receive “a<br />
perfect wreath.”<br />
Robert and Clara married in 1840, after<br />
years of obstruction from Clara’s father. Sadly,<br />
their marriage ended in 1856 with Robert’s<br />
early death in a mental asylum. Myrthen,<br />
Robert’s wedding gift to Clara, thus represents<br />
an enduring, significant, poignant testament to<br />
what is surely classical music’s most enduring,<br />
significant and poignant love story. Texts and<br />
translations are included.<br />
Michael Schulman<br />
A Voice of Her Own – Musical Women Who<br />
Persisted 1098-1896<br />
Toronto Chamber Choir; Lucas Harris<br />
Independent n/a (torontochamberchoir.ca)<br />
!!<br />
Sacred and<br />
secular music<br />
require two wholly<br />
different mindsets<br />
and the singers<br />
of the Toronto<br />
Chamber Choir,<br />
with Lucas Harris<br />
as artistic director,<br />
have the wherewithal to do both in spades.<br />
Both genres demand an immersion of sorts<br />
into the music itself. The performance by this<br />
choir does more than simply tick all the boxes;<br />
it soars impossibly high, taking the music<br />
to another realm altogether. Another challenge<br />
– admirably handled by the choir – is the<br />
fact that the music spans almost 800 years of<br />
evolved tradition.<br />
The program itself is an inspired one and<br />
is quite representative of women composers<br />
who, as the title suggests, emerged with high<br />
honours in a world dominated, at every level of<br />
art and its commerce, by men. This recording<br />
gets off to a glorious start with music by the<br />
ecstatic mystic, Hildegard of Bingen (1098-<br />
1179). In the extract from Ordo Virtutum,<br />
where the monastic nun adapted the language<br />
of visions and of religious poetry, the choir’s<br />
interpretation is resonant and retains the<br />
exquisite purity of the music.<br />
From the soaring intensity of the<br />
anonymous 17th-century composition Veni,<br />
sancte Spiritus by the nuns of Monastère des<br />
Ursulines de Québec through songs from<br />
Gartenlieder by the prodigiously gifted Fanny<br />
Mendelssohn Hensel (1805-1847) to the deep<br />
melancholia of Clara Schumann’s (1819-1896)<br />
work, the musicians and choristers achieve<br />
unmatched levels of elegance and refinement.<br />
Raul da Gama<br />
Whither Must I Wander<br />
Will Liverman; Jonathan King<br />
Odradek ODRCD389<br />
(odradek-records.com)<br />
!!<br />
Wanderlust –<br />
both literal and<br />
figurative – lies<br />
dormant in the<br />
human genetic<br />
makeup. It is often<br />
awakened, especially<br />
among artists,<br />
and takes flight into both real and imagined<br />
landscapes often with breathtaking results.<br />
From Wandrers Nachtlied, Goethe’s poetry<br />
set to song by Nikolai Medtner, to lieder from<br />
Mondnacht penned by Robert Schumann;<br />
from Songs of Travel by Ralph Vaughan<br />
Williams to King David by Herbert Howells<br />
and At the River by Aaron Copland, Whither<br />
Must I Wander captures the timeless beauty of<br />
man’s propensity for real and imagined travel.<br />
The music is interpreted by Will Liverman,<br />
an outstanding lieder singer blessed with a<br />
warm-toned baritone. Liverman shows himself<br />
to be an artist of the first order. His performance<br />
here eschews melodrama and his interpretations<br />
are understated yet powerfully<br />
convincing. Howells’ King David is typical.<br />
Although Liverman is still young, and will<br />
surely mature, his singing already combines an<br />
authoritative vocal sound with accomplished<br />
interpretative insights into the music.<br />
Liverman has an outstanding relationship<br />
with pianist Jonathan King. Together the<br />
two parley with the familiarity of old friends.<br />
The singer is aware of when to recede from<br />
the spotlight, making way for King to embellish<br />
melodies. The pianist, for his part, always<br />
rises to the occasion; his playing is full of<br />
adventurous handling of harmony and tone.<br />
Together with Liverman’s vivid storytelling,<br />
this makes for a profoundly dramatic and<br />
characterful performance<br />
Raul da Gama<br />
A Howl, That Was also a Prayer<br />
Ekmeles<br />
New Focus Recordings FCR245<br />
(newfocusrecordings.com)<br />
!!<br />
New York-based<br />
contemporary<br />
new music vocal<br />
ensemble Ekmeles is<br />
spectacular in their<br />
first solo release.<br />
Featuring commissions<br />
by Christopher<br />
Trapani and<br />
Canadian Taylor Brook, and a third work by<br />
Erin Gee, the six singers perform these innovative<br />
21st-century works with precision and<br />
understanding.<br />
Brooks’ nine-part microtonal a cappella<br />
Motorman Sextet is based on David Ohle’s<br />
1972 cult novel. The opening party-like vocal<br />
chatter sets the stage. The clear-spoken narrative<br />
by different voices features atmospheric<br />
backdrops like multi-voice unison spoken<br />
words, dynamic swells, held notes, high voice<br />
staccatos and atonal harmonic touches.<br />
Gee sound-paints new dimensions to my<br />
favourite pastime in Three Scenes from Sleep,<br />
taken from a larger piece. No words here; just<br />
voice-created clicks, pops, rustles, held notes,<br />
rhythms, high-pitched intervals and the final<br />
closing more-song-like held-low note which<br />
musically illustrate the unconscious sleep state.<br />
Trapani’s End Words features live voices<br />
with prerecorded vocal fragments and electronics.<br />
The three movements, based on<br />
texts by Anis Mojgani, Ciara Shuttleworth<br />
and John Ashbery respectively, are driven by<br />
tight ensemble performance. The first movement<br />
electronics add another voice to the clear<br />
ensemble articulations and swells with low<br />
drum-like thunder manipulations, squeaky<br />
electronic birds and plucked string effects.<br />
The closing third movement is unique with<br />
the opening electronic bell sounds leading<br />
to a strong electronic “duet” with the almost<br />
spoken vocals.<br />
Director/baritone Jeffrey Gavett leads<br />
Ekmeles in an exciting futuristic musical<br />
direction.<br />
Tiina Kiik<br />
Ogloudoglou – Vocal masterpieces of the<br />
Experimental Generation 1960-1990<br />
Sara Stowe<br />
metier msv 28593 (divineartrecords.com)<br />
! ! English soprano Sara Stowe is a versatile<br />
and inventive musician with repertoire<br />
ranging from contemporary concert music<br />
80 | <strong>March</strong> <strong>2020</strong> thewholenote.com