Toca Loca Takes Residence
by Jason van Eyk
Fledgling new
music ensemble Toca Loca takes roost at the Music Gallery in 2006 for a
year-long residency. The Music Gallery, Toronto’s internationally recognized
home for creative music, has always been committed to providing the environment
for new and unusual music to come into its own. This Toca Loca residency is
just another positive way in which it is putting that environment to good use.
In the words of Toca Loca’s Gregory Oh “This is an ideal vehicle for younger
ensembles that have not yet established their funding and resource base.
Having a home, a rehearsal space and a place to play in is an incredibly
valuable commodity.”
Formed in 2001, Toca Loca is
one of Toronto’s youngest ensembles. “The name is a kind of triple word play in
Spanish,” Oh explains. “Toca can mean to touch or strike, or a kind of hat. So crazy touch, crazy
play, crazy hat,... and beyond that it’s just a name with a nice percussive
feel - like what we do.”
In just a few
years Toca Loca has made some pretty
big strides with a handful of notable concerts and a truly different attitude.
As Oh says “We try to avoid being too stodgy. We are trying to add a little bit
of zest to Canada’s music scene.”
Don’t mistake
zest for dumbing down, though. They
certainly don’t avoid daring programming, pulling in some of the heavy hitters
of new music alongside challenging Canadian works. Under their belts already: repertoire by Alice Ho, Chris Paul
Harman, Claude Vivier, Georges Aperghis, Gyorgy Kurtag, Michael Finnissy, Heinz
Holliger, Walter Buczynski, Thomas Kessler, James Rolfe, Jocelyn Morlock,
Andrew Staniland, Melissa Hui, Toshio Hosokawa, and Unsuk Chin, just to name a
very few.
Add to that some
significant commissioning, CBC broadcasts, and tours to the USA, and you’ve got
a sense of a little powerhouse just ready to explode out on the new music scene
in a big way. “We’re never out there just to replicate the recital hall
experience, we’re less top-button-done-up than that.”
Toca Loca
launches their Music Gallery residency on February 24th with a programme of
French spectralist music, including Gerard Grisey’s Vortex Temporum
(dubbed ‘the most important chamber work of the late 20th century’) and works
by Phillippe Leroux – a composer whom Discoveries editor David Olds has made a
personal plea to hear more often in Toronto.
“The thing about
the spectralists,” Oh says, “is they really believe the human ear has limits
and that you should create for those limits rather than always challenging
them. To me the music is very exciting, very kinetic, very fluid. In terms of
an audience, it’s not the youth we have to worry about, young people are much
more tuned to hearing new sounds. It’s the more settled audiences, shall we
say, the ones who are already sure they know what they like. We’d really like
to say hey, give this a chance.”
Future concerts follow in
March, September and November. Keep posted to the Music Gallery website (www.musicgallery.org) for future
announcements.
Robert von Bahr's BIS revisited
by Bruce Surtees
A
quarter of a century ago, I was introduced to Robert von Bahr, founder and owner
of Scandinavian record label BIS, and I can still remember so clearly his
confidence in the future of his label. We met up again last December at a lunch
with WholeNote. Von Bahr’s enthusiasm and confidence was unquenched, twenty-five years on.
When von Bahr founded BIS in
1973, he focused on recording neglected domains of music instead of an
established body of familiar music, and this philosophy seems to have stood him
well. He talked about the genesis of BIS.
“I had long planned to do
something, since no one else in my country was. The opportunity came when
I was working as a summer step-in cantor in the Cathedral of Stockholm.
The organist also ‘did’ the Synagogue and, since I was studying to teach
singing, at the Stockholm Conservatory, she told me to go to the Shul to listen
to ‘that incredible voice’. I did, was totally bowled over, and took the
decision right there to start with recording him, quickly, before he died,
since he was about 70 (he died at almost 95 years old, still singing). I
persuaded Eric Ericson and his choir to participate, and that was that.”
This recording, made in
September of 1973, became BIS LP-1. This recording was later transferred to
compact disc in 1989 as, appropriately, CD-1. The baritone was Leo Rosenblüth
with instrumental soloists and the Musikhögskolans Kammarkör conducted by the
legendary Eric Ericson. That recording is still available as is every recording
ever issued on BIS. That he has never deleted a recording says much for the
integrity of Robert von Bahr, a musician who records musicians, and who
critically auditions every new recording before it goes into final production.
As a matter of interest, the
flautist on this first BIS recording, and many others since, is Gunilla von
Bahr, Robert’s ex-wife, who is internationally recognized and for whom
Einojuhani Rautavaara wrote his concerto for flute and orchestra, Dances
with the Winds in 1974-75. His present wife, also one of the current world
leaders in flute playing, is Sharon Bezaly, for whom almost a dozen concertos
have been written.
During
those early years, Robert drove to the recording sessions along with his equipment but
today BIS dispatches personnel and equipment to venues around the world,
producing recordings of the highest artistic and technical excellence.
Many of the BIS recordings
are unique and significant in the music recording world. The complete Sibelius,
for example, is a major undertaking which includes original versions of the
composer’s Fifth Symphony, En Saga, Karelia, and others,
and the original version of the violin concerto. The Sibelius family allowed
BIS to record this longer first version which, because of strict copyright
protection, cannot receive a public performance for another 20 years! The
soloist for this Sibelius recording is Leonidas Kavakos, who recently performed
the final version with the Toronto Symphony Orchestra.
Osmo Vänskä, the conductor
for the Sibelius orchestral works, is now music director of the Minnesota
Orchestra and has embarked on a Beethoven cycle to be recorded by BIS in
surround sound. The first disc to appear contains the Fourth and Fifth
symphonies [SACD Hybrid 1416]. I had no expectation of hearing anything to
challenge or displace the well-known recordings of these pieces, but these are
very special performances. There are no extremes of tempi or unusual balances
which may impress upon first hearing but become tiresome later. These are two
of those all too rare performances that touch the anima of the composer. The
sound, both in stereo and surround sound, is totally convincing in timbre and
dynamics.
Also of interest is the
Orchestral Music of Grieg, conducted by Ole Kristian Ruud with the Bergen
Philharmonic. The fourth installment is the complete incidental music to Peer
Gynt, including dialogue [SACD Hybrid 1441/42]. The recording is in
Norwegian but it sounds rather lyrical. The orchestral playing is quite
exquisite and the impression of being in the hall is quite realistic,
particularly so in a surround sound system.
In
addition to these three albums, Robert sent along a few recent discs of which he is
particularly proud, including Yevgeny Sudbin plays Rachmaninov, which includes
the second Sonata, op.36, in a performance based on the Horowitz
version, together with the Variations on a Theme of Chopin, op.22. These
are powerful performances by an emerging Russian pianist of formidable
technique which deserve many re-hearings [SACD Hybrid 1518].
Von Bahr is also quite proud
of The Swedish Radio Choir directed by Tonu Kaljuste in Schnittke’s Concerto
for Choir (1984/5) & Voices of Nature (1972) together with three
works by Arvo Part [CD-1157].
The TSO’s own Peter Oundjian
leading the Amsterdam Sinfonietta in Mozart A major concerto, KV622 with basset
clarinet player Martin Frost and Frost with the Vertavo String Quartet playing
the Clarinet Quintet in A major, KV581 are two of BIS’s recordings heralded by
Robert Von Bahr. In surround sound, these excellent performances are recorded
to perfection [SACD Hybrid 1263].
Von Bahr also says a
must-listen is The Bach Collegium Japan, playing the four Bach Suites,
BWV1066-69, directed by Masaaki Suzuki. For many, these are definitive versions
of the very popular Bach pieces by the group who is involved in the ongoing
project of the complete cantatas. These familiar suites have enjoyed umpteen
performances over the years but none more eloquent than these and certainly
none so faultlessly recorded [SACD Hybrid 1431, two discs priced as one].
The
best selling BIS disc ever is Vivaldi’s The Four Seasons played by the
Drottningholm Baroque Ensemble [CD-275]. But what about recordings which
aesthetically should be made but which will have no, or very little,
expectation of recouping costs? Von Bahr thinks they are still worthwhile, and
mentioned two recordings in this connection.
“The first is Kaikoshru
Shapurji Sorabji’s 100 Etudes, a trifle about 7-8 hours in duration. Our eminent star
pianist Fredrik Ullén, a neurologist who can read scores of any complexity as
we mortals read Donald Duck, has just warmed up with the 25 first and easy
ones, which will have been released when this goes into print. The last
two etudes are gargantuan mountains of about 50 minutes each and they are
seriously difficult... this collection, while being interesting to listen
to, is basically surpassing what is manually possible on a keyboard.”
Von Bahr feels the same way
about another recording featuring a different solo instrument: Claude Loyala Allgén’s Solo Violin Sonata.
“Just imagine the
commission: ‘you have access to a solo violin, but I want to hear a
string orchestra’. Something like that must have gone on in Allgén’s
mind. Ulf Wallin has spent 5 years of his life to learn the piece. The
recording started in 2002 and has gone on until 2005, in 5 installments of a
good week each. The duration is 170 minutes (but the 3 discs will be priced as
2) and he is basically playing on all 4 strings the whole time. Why does
anyone climb Mount Everest? “Because it’s there”. Well, I guess the
answer to these two projects would be the same. Invaluable music,
incredibly performed.”
When asked about his plans
for the future, von Bahr, as expected, has many ideas.
“To try to finish off the
cycles we have started, before I die... Sibelius, Bach Cantatas, the
Complete Flute Repertoire, small things like that, the van Beethoven project
with Osmo Vänskä and Ronald Brautigam, to make sure that Yevgeny Sudbin really
gets established as the world class pianist he is.”
There
are some 1,350 BIS titles available now and another 150 more recorded not yet
released. The entire catalogue and artist information can be accessed at www.bis.se
To Market to Market
Petric & Forget's independent twist
by
Allan Pulker
One of Canada’s unique
contributors to the world of classical and contemporary art music is accordionist,
Joseph Petric, the only accordionist in the world today who devotes himself
solely to concertizing, commissioning, recording, transcribing and writing
about the accordion. With twenty-one CDs to his credit and another on the way,
he has made a tremendous contribution to the discography of his instrument.
Even more significantly, he has commissioned many new works for the accordion,
in his words, “to fill gaps in the repertoire.” In the words of the
cognoscenti, he has “redefined the accordion canon!”
Joseph Petric was introduced
to the accordion at the age of five by his father. “Music-making in my family
and community was something used for social occasions. It was functional music,
so I got my start playing functional music.”
With an undergraduate degree
in music from Queen’s University and a master’s degree in musicology from the
University of Toronto, Petric is no stranger to art music. The aim that informs
his music making is to discover the common ground between music as an artistic
statement and functional music, regardless of the style or period.
“Bach’s music is functional,
music written for an occasion, for church or social gatherings. What I have
found playing this music on the accordion is the vernacular and dance elements
emerge, the harmonies trigger kinetic responses.” The cycle of 5ths in the
first movement of Bach’s c-minor suite, he told me, would do Piazzolla proud!
Another composition in Petric’s wide-ranging repertoire is Berio’s Sequenza,
which incorporates “nothing less than a non-measured prelude.”
Petric was fortunate to
study for a time with harpsichordist and early music specialist, Colin Tilney,
focusing on the challenges of playing baroque repertoire in an artistically
convincing way. “We discovered that the
accordion can do interpretive things that are not possible on the harpsichord,
adding levels of awareness to repertoire that is considered to be old. ...
Recent research suggests that J.S. Bach was a fearless explorer of new sounds.
His Goldberg Variations were the longest piece for solo keyboard written in the
eighteenth century.” Bach, too, embraced the interchangeability of instruments,
which is one reason that Petric is totally comfortable with playing his music
on an instrument that did not even exist in his time.
The Petric Bach project that
prompted this story is the endeavour under way to perform and record Bach’s
organ sonatas with Quebec oboist, Normand Forget. Both have similar interests
in both new and old music, but their meeting in 2000 was quite accidental, the
outcome of both participating in a concert given by Quebec’s Nouvelle Ensemble
Moderne of which Forget was a charter member and with which Petric was
performing as a soloist. The two worked initially on a transcription that
Forget had done of Schubert’s Die Winterreise. Their most recent offering is the Bach organ sonatas. They
emphasize the interpretive, developing new ways of engaging the role of the
listener as interpreter. “Contemporary audiences come better prepared to listen,”
Petric says.
The duo will perform the six sonatas at a
concert at Enoch Turner Schoolhouse on March 1. As enterprising as the folks
behind the recent “Mega Launch” I wrote about in December, they are using the
event as a fund-raiser to support the production of the independent CD of these
works. The price of admission includes a copy of the CD, which will be mailed
to ticket holders once it has been produced.
Recently In Town
Andrew Porter in converstion with Pamela Margles
Andrew
Porter is known and admired mostly as a music critic. But he was visiting
Toronto in December to direct Mozart’s The Magic Flute for the Canadian
Opera Company Ensemble Studio, in his own translation. I spoke with him in his
temporary home in an apartment near the Edward Johnson Building, where The
Magic Flute was being performed. He is unsparing in his opinions. But his
mellifluous voice punctuated by a gleeful laugh, his gracious manner, and above
all his matter-of-fact sensibility seduced me into believing he is not just fair, but largely correct.
We
talked the morning after the second of three sold-out performances. On the
coffee table in front of us was an oversized facsimile of the score in Mozart’s
hand. ‘I only brought it along to answer questions – I can’t say I directed
from a facsimile.’ I had brought with
me that morning’s Globe & Mail review. ‘Do you mind if I glance through it?
Is it a good review?’ he asked. Then ‘It’s a nice review – he really understood
what I was at.’
Porter
himself was thrilled with the
performance and its enthusiastic reception. ‘I’m very happy with this young
cast. They all projected awfully well. They’re not used to speaking in
theatrical speech, so I had to work on the dialogue very hard. I was very
nervous to begin with, thinking I wasn’t getting what I wanted. But when I told
them to be free, within a framework, they responded marvellously. Every
rehearsal was largely concerned with engaging the audience, right to the back
row. There are all sorts of little tricks.
I would say, “Sing that for someone sitting there. Just meet her
eye, and say, “That phrase is for you.”’
‘Ideally
I would have really liked the house lights up a little more so that there was
even more interplay with the audience. When Papageno sings, “I can see pretty
girls all around me,” I would like him actually to be able to see them. It
makes them feel that you’re not just addressing the drama within the proscenium
arch, but you’re actually talking to the people in the audience. That’s not
Wagner’s way, but it is very much Mozart’s and Verdi’s. I love the Macmillan
because it has a big forestage. Nowadays, they’ve all been destroyed. Early in
the 20th century, theatres were Wagnerized so that everything could be kept
behind the proscenium frame. We raised the pit a bit so there was interplay
between the voices and the instruments, which you don’t get in a deep sunken
pit.’
Mozart’s ensembles inspired
some of Porter’s most masterly touches. ‘The quintets are some of the most
wonderfully composed music in the world, I think.’ He carefully worked on
getting the singers to listen to each other and blend. ‘It’s no good having the
singers scattered all over the stage singing from different places. Those are
magic moments. It should be natural. The singer should feel comfortable.
Singers can, of course, sing lying on their stomachs, up on steps, or rolling
around, but - why?
On
the whole, I’m against additions to what the composer and librettist wrote
- unless they are by directors of
genius like Peter Sellars. He doesn’t actually add, he interprets. I love his
production of The Magic Flute, which couldn’t be more different from
mine. There are so many possibilities in the world.’
Porter’s
experience working at the COC was thoroughly happy. ‘It’s such a well-run
company. It’s been marvellous just seeing the mechanics of it. I just murmur to
the stage manager, Leslie Abarquez, that I’d like the curtain a little bit
quicker - and it happens.’
‘It’s
a wonderful orchestra – I’ve heard it a lot - and Bradshaw is a wonderful
musician. A friend said he heard things in the score he’d never heard before.
Bradshaw also seems to be a very good fundraiser. He’s managed to get the new
opera house built. The plans look wonderful.’
These days, writing mostly
for Opera and the Times Literary Supplement, opera is Porter’s focus. ‘I’ve
reached a point where I can pick and choose what I want to write about. I don’t
have to record everything that goes on, so I just write when I have something
to say.’ He devotes special attention to apprentice performances such as the
one he directed here. ‘I sometimes feel that I never want to see another Bohème
in my life. It isn’t true, of course. I go all the time, and I love it. But I
don’t bother to review another revival of Carmen unless a marvellous new Carmen
or José turns up. It’s much more exciting to review a college or conservatory
performance and discover singers who are continuing to discover themselves.’
The
New Yorker and the Financial Times no longer devote nearly as much space to
classical music as they used to, when Porter wrote regularly for them. ‘I’m
rather depressed about the state of reviewing now’. ‘Paper after paper has
stopped even employing music critics in London. They are now being dumbed down
like everything else.’
Along
with his own judgments, his reviews will include vivid, clear, and witty
descriptions of what he has heard, based on his authoritative knowledge of all
aspects of music-making. The audience’s
response often becomes part of that picture.
He once wrote about Peter Sellars’ Così fan
Tutte, “I can understand resistance to this Così as easily as my
surrender to it.” He comments, ‘I’m
rather proud of reviews when people say to me afterwards, “I can see why you
liked it and I can see why I would have hated it,” or the other way around.
What I hope to do is to give an accurate account of what happened and what was
heard, as far as possible. That is what reviewers should do - describe. Of
course it’s coloured by opinion all the time.’
‘It’s
very seldom that I say “Don’t miss this,” except by writing in such an enthusiastic way that someone would say,
“That is something I must go to,” or “That is something I would hate, even
though this chap liked it.”
‘If
something is a huge success for the public, that fact should be mentioned, even if I’ve absolutely hated
it. Yet I’m bothered sometimes when I go to Covent Garden, where the ticket
prices are so high that audiences
have to believe that what they have seen is worth it. You can get huge applause
that doesn’t seem to be discriminate.’
‘We had a Butterfly in London last month directed by film
director Anthony Minghella. It was a huge hit. I thought it was a travesty of
Puccini’s opera, and it didn’t move me at all. It was just a grand show. The
baby was a little puppet moved by two puppeteers. It just seemed to destroy the
pathos. I think my review was fair. It
said it was a smashing show, but didn’t get to grips with the spirit of the
opera.’
Porter has been a notably
strong advocate for contemporary music. ‘The really important composers I’ve
grown up with are Elliott Carter, Hans Werner Henze, Peter Maxwell Davies,
Harrison Birtwistle…Roger Sessions was
a voyage of discovery for me when I first came to America.’ The festschrift published
two years ago, Words on Music: Essays in Honour of Andrew Porter on the
Occasion of his 75th Birthday, features contributions by prominent
scholars, composers and critics. But he is proudest of the tribute from Carter,
a four-bar composition, For Andrew.
‘I think Carter is the greatest living composer. He writes such
emotional music – his Piano Concerto is wonderful drama, filled with
passion.’
‘I
remember the premiere of Carter’s third String Quartet. It was a
terrible night in New York, yet Tully Hall was absolutely thronged with people.
Carter had the New York Times against him for a long time. The Times said, “It
has to be admitted in the end that Carter remains a cipher.” That was for the
very performance that packed Tully Hall!’
‘Yet
you could say that same thing against me when I write about, shall I say,
moments when John Adams seems to be just too soggy. Younger people love it. I
admire the operas rather a lot. But my ears are not young enough or fresh
enough to understand this new thing he’s bringing. It doesn’t seem to be new –
it just seems old.’
Porter has always been
a passionate advocate of period instruments. ‘There’s something about the sound
of original instruments that is very communicative. I love
Furtwängler’s performances, although no-one would think they were in authentic,
historical style. They were just great interpretations. And of course I want to
hear Alfred Brendel play Beethoven on a modern piano. But I also love the sound
of the instrument Beethoven wrote for. I’m not only for one or the other. I’m
not an either/or person in that way – I hope – because each has
different merits.’
‘Period
instruments have now influenced the way that modern orchestras play, so that
you get conductors like Charles Mackerras taking certain kinds of timbre,
phrasing and lightness learned from using early instruments, and applying them
in the correct works. We don’t get a Furtwängler or Karajan kind of performance
any more. I remember a sublime performance of Bruckner’s Eighth in Carnegie
Hall with Karajan. It’s one of the big performances of one’s life. I heard a
wonderful Flute in Salzburg conducted by Furtwängler. It was the longest
– but it didn’t seem a minute too long.’
Porter
is also a famously keen advocate of performing opera in English for
English-speaking audiences. His own thirty-five translations are widely
performed – Opera Atelier uses his Flute translation.
‘In
every production you look at your cast, your audience, the number of
performances, the hall, then decide specifically in each case which language to
use. The quality of the translation available is another factor. For my
translation of the Flute I
worked all the time to get as close to the sounds of the original as you can
get. It’s gains and losses. You get the
merits of communication in the one, and the sounds of the original language in
the other. It’s perfectly right for the COC to do the Ring here with an
international cast in German, and for the English National Opera to do the Ring
with a British cast in English.’
‘But
would you have had this Magic Flute in German? There’s not a
great composer who hasn’t wanted his works to be done in translation. Verdi,
Wagner - they wanted the audience to understand what was being said because the
music makes sense when you know what it’s expressing. It’s a word perfectly
sung that gives you a sudden pang. Singers nearly all say that the most
important thing is to express the words. There was a little moment last night
where Miriam Khalil sang the word “joy” in such a way that it produced joy in
one’s heart. If the word had been in German, it wouldn’t have made that kind of
particularly thrilling moment.’
‘A
director like Peter Hall works so much to get the singers to express the words
to the audience. I admire his work all the time, including his Flute.
Jonathan Miller produced an Otello in my English translation that was
moving. A lot of Verdi’s beautiful sounds were changed, of course, because that
always happens in translation, but the directness of what they were saying was
superb. People respond to the drama.’
For
the future, he says, ‘The opera I long to direct is Fidelio. Flute and
Fidelio are the two operas closest to me. If we had the cast and a
theatre small enough that you could hear the spoken dialogue, I’d love to do Fidelio
- in English, of course. I’d have to
translate it first.’
PUBLICATIONS
Words on Music: Essays in Honour of Andrew
Porter on the Occasion of his 75th Birthday, edited by
David Rosen and Claire Brook; Pendragon Press 2003
Verdi’s
Macbeth: A Sourcebook, edited by David Rosen and Andrew
Porter; Norton 1984
Many
of Porter’s reviews from his twenty-year stint at The New Yorker were published
in five volumes: A Musical Season: A Critic from Abroad in America;
Viking
Music
of Three Seasons 1974-1977; Farrar, Straus, Giroux
Music
of Three More Seasons 1977-1980; Knopf
Musical
Events: A Chronicle 1980-1983; Summit Books
Musical
Events: A Chronicle 1983-1986; Summit Books
A
number of his thirty-five opera libretto translations are readily available. Hushion
House publishes many of them in their series of English National Opera
Guides, including Otello, Tristan
& Isolde, The Force of Destiny, and
Don Carlos. Pendragon Press has published Turk in Italy. Porter’s
translation of The Ring of the Nibelung is published by Norton.
Porter has written opera librettos for The
Song of Majnun by Bright Sheng (recorded on Delos with Ward Holmquest,
conductor) and The Tempest by John Eaton
