Opera: The Great Composers and their Masterworks
by Joyce Bourne
Mitchell Beazley/ Octopus Books
224 pages, photos; $27.95 US

Joyce Bourne, who wrote the delightful Who’s Who in Opera (recently updated as Who Married Figaro?: A Book of Opera Characters), has packed a remarkable amount of material into this attractive, intelligent survey of opera from Monteverdi to John Adams.

She doesn’t find much space for the operas of Lully, Vivaldi, or Haydn, whose operas are all being rediscovered today. The operas of Martín y Soler, Halévy and Ambroise Thomas, all hugely successful in their time, and presently finding their way back into the repertoire, are completely shut out. But I enjoyed her broad-ranging approach. Along with discussions of the operas themselves, she looks at the composers, librettists, performers, theatrical venues, stage sets, directors, the artistic milieus and political context. As well, she offers an excellent discussion of voice types and vocal production, along with a glossary of musical terms.

The best thing about this book is that one quarter is devoted to opera of the past century, right up to the present. Only Verdi and Wagner get more coverage than Britten.

What does not work, however, is the practical information. The list of “major” opera houses includes the State Opera of South Australia, but omits Rome Opera and the Teatro Real in Madrid. Virginia Opera is mentioned, but not Vancouver Opera, an older, more ambitious company. Sloppy captions on photos – Time Square for Times Square, and singers like Juan Diego Florez left unidentified – detract only marginally from the superb photos. The index is reliable, and the layout is extremely attractive, with an effective use of a variety of typefaces.

In her final chapter, called “The Future of Opera,” Bourne makes the simple but often overlooked point that “if the music is not good enough, the work will not survive for long, no matter how good the story.” Like Schwarzkopf, Bourne objects to director thrusting their own concepts of an opera down the throats of audiences, particularly when they contradict what the composer and librettist wanted. But this is not a desire for directors to honour tradition by avoiding innovation altogether, but rather for them to work with “respect for the work they are directing, consideration for the singers, and the knowledge that many people in this audience are seeing this opera for the first time.”

Elizabeth Schwarzkopf:
From Flower Maiden to Marschallin
by Kirsten Liese
Amadeus Press
160 pages, photos; $27.95 US

During her recent recital in Koerner Hall last month, Frederica von Stade spoke about hearing Elizabeth Schwarzkopf sing over forty years ago, and what an impression it left on her. That made me think about the recital I heard Schwarzkopf give at Massey Hall in the early 1970’s. I can still picture her opening her arms like a butterfly spreading its wings – magnificent and unforgettable.

This large, lovely collection of interviews, testimonials and splensis photographs is not so much a biography as a tribute to the great singer. The only hint of controversy is when Schwarzkopf talks about how Karajan pressured her to take on roles that were too heavy for her, like Elizabeth in Tannhäuser. There is no discussion of her activities during the war, or her documented associations with the Nazi party. Instead the focus is on what her former student, American baritone Thomas Hampson, here calls ‘her passion, her sense of beauty and her singular sense of artistic purpose’ .

In Charles Scribner III’s moving interview with Schwarzkopf shortly before her death at ninety three years ago, she talks about her contempt for contemporary concept-driven productions and her intense dislike of updating the settings of operas. The word “criminals” comes up. Schwarzkopf realizes that she represents a vital tradition of singing, especially for the Viennese repertoire like Strauss and Mozart. “The fixed style of Mozartean singing has rules,” she tells Scribner.

Author and editor Kirsten Liese interviews Lillian Fayer, the photographer who took most of the stage and portrait photos included here. In these photos Fayer penetrates the artificiality of the costumes and makeup to reveal the extraordinary naturalness of the singer. So I was amused when Fayer tells Liese that she was always trying - unsuccessfully - to get Schwarzkopf to wear more makeup.

There are glamorous shots of her as Donna Elvira in Don Giovanni, which Schwarzkopf calls her most difficult role, and in her favorite role as the Marschallin in Rosenkavalier. In a few of the candid shots, we see her with her frequent accompanist, the legendary Canadian pianist Gerald Moore (author of a wonderful autobiography Am I Too Loud?). He is quoted here as saying, “Elizabeth hears things that nobody else can. She would hear the grass growing!”

New Aldeburgh Anthology
compiled by Ariane Bankes
and Jonathan Reekie
Boydell Press
360 pages, illustrated; $70.00 US

Ariane Bankes and Jonathan Reekie have compiled a dazzling collection of articles, poems, stories, photographs, paintings, set designs, memoirs, short fiction, to celebrate the Aldebugh Festival.

I cannot imagine a more fitting tribute to the festival that British composer Benjamin Britten, his partner tenor Peter Pears, and librettist Eric Crozier started in Britten’s native Suffolk over sixty years ago.

Expanding on the original Aldeburgh Anthology published in 1972, the editors have wisely followed their own “interests and inclinations.” The result is an evocation of the physical and poetic landscapes of Britten’s music, especially the operas, which are referred to throughout this volume.

Composer Hans Werner Henze describes the setting of the festival, where “ you can sense the vicinity of the sea; you can hear the facets of grey, silver grey, ash grey, white and mother-of-pearl of which the low-lying sky is composed.” Art historian Frances Spalding writes about the paintings and sculptures collected by Pears and Britten, including six Constables and a work by William Blake, whose poems Britten set. Art historian Kenneth Clark, who grew up across the river from Aldeburgh, writes, “My days were all pleasure… I loved the Suffolk country, the heaths and sandpits, the great oaks in Sudbourne wood and the wide river at Ilken.” Mezzo Janet Baker recalls singing for Britten, writing, “Ben was a king. When he walked into a room, the air began to crackle; everyone came alive, became more than themselves.” Journalist Tom Service writes about how composer, conductor and pianist Thomas Adès, just twenty-eight when he became director of the festival, continued the tradition of innovation and individualism.

So much to enjoy here. There’s a poem by Britten’s friend, colleague and librettist W. H. Auden, called The Composer, “Only your notes are pure contraption/Only your song is an absolute gift.” Another by W.G. Sebald, translated by poet Michael Hamburger, who’s represented here as well, closes with, “Whispering madness on the heathland of Suffolk. Is this the promis’d end?”

PERFORMANCE NOTES:

The Toronto Symphony under Peter Oundjian presents Britten’s War Requiem on November 11 and 12 in Roy Thomson Hall at 8.00. The Aldeburgh Connection presents Blessed Cecilia on November 22 at 2.30 in Walter Hall at the University of Toronto Faculty of Music. And on Jan. 28 and 30 at 8:00 in Roy Thomson Hall, the Toronto Symphony under James Gaffigan presents Leila Josefowicz performing a Violin Concerto, “Concentric Paths,” by Thomas Adès, who just completed nine years directing the Aldeburgh Festival.

2009 is the bicentenary of the death of Joseph Haydn and to mark the occasion the Haydn Festival Eisenstadt (seat of Haydn’s patrons the Esterhazy family) commissioned piano trios by 18 composers for the festival’s resident ensemble, the Haydn Trio Eisenstadt. While D2H -Dedicated To Haydn (Capriccio 7020) is described as a “global composition project”, it is in fact quite Euro - and more particularly - Austro-centric, with 6 composers from Austria, 6 more from Europe (U.K., Spain, Belgium, Germany, Hungary and France) and 6 from the rest of the world (China, Japan, U.S.A., South Africa, Argentina and Australia). Canada is included in a peripheral way – South African composer Bongani Ndodana-Breen, who spent a number of years in Toronto as director of Musica Noir, contributed Two Nguni Dances to the collection. As well as geographical spread, there is also a broad spectrum of ages represented here with birth years ranging from 1926 (Betsy Jolas) to 1976 (Gernot Schedlberger). With almost three hours of diverse offerings, this multi-disc set kept me busy for most of the month. The range of styles is vast, from quite conservative works by John Woolrich and Xiaogang Ye to the thoroughly modern from José Maria Sánchez-Verdù, Màrton Illès and Elisabeth Harnik, with plenty of adventures in between. Although there is a dearth of biographical information, each of the pieces does have a note by the composer explaining the (sometimes quite tenuous) link to Haydn. But I also enjoyed listening “blind” as it were, trying to guess how the music related to the master, or which part of the world the composer was from, sometimes with quite erroneous results. For instance I knew there was a piece by an Australian composer, so when I heard something that to my ear was reminiscent of the Aboriginal-inspired music of Peter Sculthorpe I had an “ah ha” moment. It turned into a “ha ha” though when I checked to find I was actually listening to KAGETSU – Etude on the name of Haydn by Yui Kakinuma (Japan). Mind you when I did get to Australian Elena Kats-Chenin’s Calliope Dreaming its repetitive dance-like motifs again sent my thoughts “down under” notwithstanding the fact that all the themes were evidently drawn from Haydn’s “Mourning Symphony” and the composer spent the first half of her life in Uzbekistan. The music that is most obviously reminiscent of Haydn came from two composers known for their humour, American William Bolcom and German Dieter Schnebel. Bolcom’s HAYDN GO SEEK pays homage to some of Haydn’s famous rondos and in the words of the composer intends to “play a constant game of surprise throughout, in as Haydnesque a fashion as I could muster from two centuries remove.” Schnebel is known for his theatrics and in a reverse take on the “Surprise Symphony” the first sounds we hear are the footsteps of the musicians and a few offstage notes as they approach the performance area. What follows is a de-construction of the finale from Haydn’s string quartet “The Joke” (Op.33, No.2) replete with spiccato bowing in the violin, pizzicato from the cello, pointillist piano chording and intermittent hissing and shushing from all concerned. Other tracks of note include Lalo Schifrin’s lush and lilting (and somewhat deceptively titled) Elegy and Meditation and Ah Haydn by Betsy Jolas. This last was of particular interest to me as I had been impressed by several of this French composer’s works in my formative years, but had not encountered any of her music in more than three decades. I was pleased to note that she is still active and that her music has not lost its edge. The Haydn Trio Eisenstadt was founded in 1992 and the current membership has been in place for just over a decade. As well as their residency at the Haydn Festival they have a very busy and successful recording career, with complete recordings of Haydn’s folksong arrangements (18 CDs on the Brilliant label) and the complete piano trios of Haydn, Schubert, Mozart and Beethoven. “Dedicated To Haydn” is their second foray into the realm of the contemporary and quite an extensive one at that. Kudos to all concerned.

The Capriccio label mentioned above is distributed by Naxos and it is to the Naxos catalogue that I tend to turn when I find a glaring hole in my collection. For instance although I have several dozen Haydn string quartets, when I wanted to listen to “The Joke” as referenced by Dieter Schnebel I found I did not have a recording. As I suspected it was easy to track it down. Haydn’s “Russian” String Quartets Op.33 are available in fine performances by the Kodàly Quartet on two CDs (Naxos 8.550788 & 8.550789) and once again I was able to fill in a gap in my collection without breaking the bank. It is not just the affordable prices and good to very good performances that make the Naxos line attractive to me, but even more important is the fact that their ever-expanding and ever-more adventurous catalogue is already complete when it comes to the standard repertoire and that everything stays in the catalogue and remains readily available. It is no wonder that Naxos has become the most successful purveyor of classical music of our time.

Piotr Anderszewski - Unquiet Traveller
Bruno Monsaingeon
Medici Arts 3077938

@Grigorian.Com

“Voyageur intranquille, Unquiet Traveller”, opens with pianist Piotr Anderszewski boarding the train that, by choice, will be his home, complete with grand piano and a kitchen, until the end of this tour. So begins the documentary of an extraordinary musical figure.

During this winter’s journey across Poland we will listen in on his conversations about musical aesthetics, love, and the composers for whom he has a special affinity. He speaks about his personal journey and the decisions that have led him to this point in his life.

His profound favourite composer is Mozart and he is delighted to vocalise passages from The Magic Flute, reducing the orchestral accompaniment to some basic keyboard figures. We also hear him in various venues across Europe playing Bach, Chopin, Szymanowski, Beethoven, Brahms, and Schumann. The film ends with a most affectionate tribute to Lisbon, now his home.

Anderszewski has the rare gift of sharing every performance with his audience, conveyed by his sincere, overflowing personality. Incidentally, he plays only works he likes!

Born in Warsaw in 1969, Anderszewski is a pianist with ample technique and an intriguing personal philosophy, proof that there is true musical force in his generation.

Jean Françaix 1912-1997
Trio di Colore
XXI XXI-CD 2 1580

Nadia Boulanger pronounced to the mother of 10-year old Jean Françaix: “I don’t know why we’re wasting our time teaching him harmony, which he obviously knows already. How he became so proficient at it is a mystery; he seems to have been born with it. Let us rather do counterpoint.” That love of harmony persisted throughout his life and career. Françaix was criticized in the 1950’s for not moving ahead with the serialists and dodecaphonic composers. His reply was disarming: “I would gladly be the spiritual grandson to Grand-Papa Haydn. The limpidity, the calm and the humour of his art seem to me the antidote to the contemporary idiom.”

Despite his protestations that he never changed, Françaix obviously evolved. As the composers of the minimalist movement (most notably John Adams) re-discovered harmony, so did Françaix discover his own version of minimalism. The perfect example of that evolution is one of his late compositions, the 1990 Trio for Clarinet, Viola and Piano. Together with his compositions from the 1970’s, 1940’s and even 1930’s, this disc becomes a great Françaix primer, beautifully executed by Trio di Colore. This young ensemble, formed at the acclaimed Indiana University – Jakob School of Music, received the First Prize and Gold Medal at the prestigious 2004 Fischoff Chamber Music Competition. The individual musicians are also winners of multiple competitions, guaranteeing an intelligent and beautiful reading of thes harmonic treasures by Jean Françaix.

Mentors and heroes have been celebrated musically for years. In improvised music interpretations are more individual, the choice of honourees is quirkier, but the sounds are just as impressive – as these CDs demonstrate.

Montreal bassist/composer Normand Guilbeault’s Ensemble has played the music of bassist/composer Charles Mingus (1922-1979) for years. Hommage à Mingus: Live at Upstairs (ambiance magnétiques AM 185 CD www.actuelle.com) finds the six man – and one woman, vocalist Karen Young – combo preserving Mingus’ purposely jagged stop-time themes and tempo switches. With Jean Derome’s snorting baritone saxophone and the broken phrasing of Mathieu Bélanger’s bass clarinet, the arrangements have more bottom. Young’s delivery adds emotion to a piece like Weird Nightmare, which benefits from Ivanhoe Jolicoeur’s whispering trumpet. Pianist Normand Devault consistently lays on the blues notes. Yet these link to the trumpeter’s sometime pre-modern plunger work and the steady pulse of drummer Claude Lavergne. The band proves that homage includes irreverence, when the pianist weaves a pastiche of other Mingus tunes into Song with Orange; and on Passions of a Woman Loved, the reeds quote Tequila.

Joe McPhee’s Angels, Devils & Haints (CJR 7 www.joemcphee.com) re-imagines the work of saxophone avatar Albert Ayler (1936 -1970). Besides two standards, the music is improvised. While Ayler’s themes were driven by thick percussion and raucous horns, McPhee plays alto or tenor saxophone or trumpet, backed by four bassists – Michael Bisio, Dominic Duval, Paul Rogers and Claude Tchamitian. Separated by heartfelt saxophone readings of Goin’ Home and Ol’ Man River, the outstanding originals capture the Ayler persona. The Gift is a pointillist exercise divided into saxophone tongue stops, flutter tonguing and frayed trills, while the bassists strike and slap cantilevered timbres, then divide into arco string stretches and pizzicato plinks. The title tune is the real stunner. As the bassists thump or pluck to unify pedal point undertow, McPhee reed bites, squeals and chirps. When the bassists use tremolo pumps to meet the saxophonist’s slip-sliding smears, multiphonics are exposed. McPhee then switches to spidery chromatic triplets on trumpet confirming underlying lyricism. Ultimately he returns to saxophone with ceiling-scraping altissimo. The finale finds the bassists’ portamento runs and McPhee’s floating and stuttering trills melding.

Four Torontonians and two Swiss honour Urs Blöchlinger on Tribute (Pet Mantis Records PMR 004 www.petmantisrecords.com). The compositions of Blöchlinger (1954-1995) reflect the saxophonist’s sardonic humour and hint at the depression that led to his suicide. Organized by local bassist Neal Davis, plus two Swiss who worked with Blöchlinger – pianist Christoph Baumann and drummer Dieter Ulrich – the horn section is all Torontonian: trombonist Tom Richards plus reedists Peter Lutek and Kelly Jefferson. Aylerian echoes animate Lutek’s nephritic cries, with Jefferson lyrical and Richards as fond of plunger work as Jolicoeur. This is especially effective on the lurching theme of King Arthur meets Hans Eisler in Hollywood. The trombone blats, Lutek’s alto saxophone slithers and Jefferson’s soprano saxophone trills draw out the narrative. Davis’ walking, Baumann’s comping and Ulrich’s ruffs let the horns interject quotes from other tunes which are diaphanous enough to expose a climatic round of honks and peeps. Kungusische Arbeitslied layers themes in sequence. Contrapuntally contrasting trombone growls and reed chirps, the group switches to a marching band emulation following a drum roll. Sluicing horn lines quicken the pace as Ulrich nudges the melody with montuno rhythm. Baumann’s sprawling dynamics signal another shift and suddenly roles reverse. Lutek’s nasal alto, Jefferson’s smooth soprano and Richards’ gutbucket trombone play the melody as the pianist’s key wandering replicates a fantasia. A bass string spank completes the tune.

The strangest acknowledgment is Hommage à Syd Barrett (Imuzzic CRCD 0821 www.cristalrecords.com). The Lyon-based i.overdrive trio honours Barrett (1946-2006), the songwriter/guitarist whose idiosyncratic tunes dominated Pink Floyd’s first LP before he left the group. With guitarist Philippe Gordiani using the pre-eminent rock instrument; trumpeter Rémi Gaudillat representing jazz sophistication; and drummer Bruno Tocanne weaving between the two, Barrett tunes are reinvigorated. Astronomy Domine balances Gordiani’s flanged and elongated riffs with melodiousness from Gaudillat and Tocanne’s mid-range banging. Distorted notes from effects pedals and whammy bars, plus prickly guitar licks are in the mix, but so are muted overtones and romantic obbligatos from the trumpet plus the drummer’s crunching rebounds and cymbal-splashes. Deference and deconstruction are realized with Interstellar Overdrive. Replicating the familiar riffs, Gordiani could be playing two guitars, while Gaudillat’s grace notes include a near-Arabic motif. Slurry brass triplets and staccato strumming combine for final redefinition.

The honourees aren’t around to hear these tributes, but each would be proud.

Telephone Game
Kate Schutt
Cuto CUTO 001 (www.kateschutt.com)

Kate Schutt came out with a very accomplished debut CD “No Love Lost” in 2007, which was especially impressive for a young artist with no label backing. She has built on that artistic success and reached further into her considerable creative storehouse for “Telephone Game”. Subtle and stylish, the record is not easily categorized, but leans to pop, soul and jazz, with a full roster of skilled instrumentalists (most notably Teri Lyne Carrington on drums) adding variety and depth. Schutt wrote all of the songs and the one that’ll have you reaching for the replay button is Open Window, with its sweet story of young love and Gregoire Maret’s epic harmonica playing.

Her strong resemblance to Rickie Lee Jones, both in singing style and lyric writing – at once gritty and vulnerable - can’t be ignored. Still, Schutt is carving her own path and although she draws on a few genres, she has a distinctive voice that asserts itself throughout the work. The only minor flaw with the record is that the arrangements are a bit inconsistent. On the one hand, horns add gutsy heft to Take Me With You and strings give a clever nod to the disco era on Fake ID, however on Take Everything and Blackout some of the background vocals sound disjointed and out of place. But it’s a minor distraction from what is otherwise a great record from a gifted musician and songwriter.

by Colin Eatock
Ashgate
206 pages, illustrations; $99.95 US

German composer Felix Mendelssohn, whose two-hundredth birthday is being celebrated this year, first visited England when he was twenty years old. He made nine more trips before he died in 1847, when he was just thirty-eight years old. It was in England that he scored his earliest successes, and for much of his career he was more appreciated in London than in his hometown of Berlin. In fact, as Colin Eatock writes in this groundbreaking study, “his musical ideals were uncannily aligned with the predominant English tastes of the mid-nineteenth century.”

Eatock, a composer, scholar and journalist who recently became editor of this magazine, paints a vivid picture of Mendelssohn’s visits to England. He describes how many of Mendelssohn’s  works were directly inspired by his travels around the British Isles, works like the ‘Scottish’ Symphony, The Hebrides overture, the three Fantasias, which he called his ‘Welsh’ piano pieces, as well as a number of Lieder ohne Worte, including the familiar Frühlingslied. The String Quartet Op.12 was written in London, and the ending of the ‘Reformation’ Symphony came to him at the bottom of a mine in Wales. Mendelssohn immersed himself in English musical life, even accompanying Queen Victoria on the piano as she sang songs written by him and his sister Fanny. No wonder a newspaper of the time called him an ‘adopted son of England.’

But what is even more significant for Eatock than the influence England had on Mendelssohn’s music is the influence Mendelssohn had on British music. Mendelssohn, writes Eatock, “did more to improve the status of music in England than any other continental composer of the nineteenth century.” In fact, he claims, he “shaped the nation’s musical values.” Yet following Mendelssohn’s death, his reputation in Britain declined. Eatock links the shift in attitudes towards his music to growing English  nationalism and its unfortunate companion, anti-Semitism – even though Mendelssohn, who was born Jewish,  had been baptized as a Lutheran when he was seven years old.

With quotations from contemporary sources, especially Mendelssohn’s letters, detailed footnotes and a useful glossary of names, this fascinating study of Mendelssohn’s ties to England deepens our understanding of his work, and increases our appreciation of his accomplishments.

Pamela Margles, theWholeNote’s regular book reviewer, can be contacted at

bookshelf@thewholenote.com

by Zubin Mehta with Renate Gräfin Matuschka
Amadeus Press
224 pages, photos;  $27.99 US

“As a conductor,” writes Zubin Mehta in this memoir, “I see in myself a friendly cultural policeman who shows people the way and directs everything.” Mehta is a self-described generalist – his conducting does not bear a personalized stamp, and his repertoire is too broad to provide him a distinctive niche. But his accomplishments, both musical and humanitarian, are significant. It’s a treat to be able to read about them here.

Mehta is candid about his thoughts on leading an orchestra and interpreting a composer’s score. But in spite of the title of his book, when it comes to the ‘score’ of his life he is more reticent - whether because of a reluctance to offend, or the presence of his second wife, actress Nancy Kovack, who has contributed a few pages of her own here. Perhaps understandably, there’s no acknowledgement of his intense relationship in the 1960’s with the great Canadian soprano Teresa Stratas, even though she is mentioned twice. But it’s odd that he is reluctant to write much about the event for which he is best known, the first - and most magical - Three Tenors concert, and the three singers involved, Carreras, Domingo and Pavarotti.

He discusses great conductors from the previous generation, like Bruno Walter, von Karajan, and especially his beloved teacher Hans Swarowsky. But there’s little about conductors of his own generation, except for his friend Daniel Barenboim. There is even less about younger conductors like Kent Nagano, who has assumed two of his most long-standing positions, at the  Munich Opera and the Montreal Symphony.

Mehta is a compassionate and amusing storyteller. I especially enjoyed his descriptions of his early life in India as part of a remarkable family belonging to the tiny Parsi religious community. His exceptional loyalties, especially to the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra, yield unique relationships, and show how his stated credo, to give audiences ‘a chance to forget their troubles and their disagreements for at least a couple of hours’ is in fact far more meaningful – and valuable - than it sounded when I first read it.

Mehta’s ties to Canada are strong, especially with both children from his first marriage (to a Canadian) now living here. His son Mervon Mehta recently became director of the Royal Conservatory of Music’s new concert series in the just-opened Koerner Hall.  Reading Mehta’s compelling voice here leads me to hope that we will again be able to hear him conduct in Toronto, after many years away.

Pamela Margles, theWholeNote’s regular book reviewer, can be contacted at

bookshelf@thewholenote.com

by John Luther Adams
Wesleyan University Press
176 pages, photos & diagrams; US $24.95

This book by Alaska-based composer John Luther Adams describes the process he went through to create his most ambitious work yet, The Place Where You Go To Listen. In a room located above the entrance to the Museum of the North at the University of Alaska, Adams has constructed a complex, self-contained environment filled with lights and sounds. The rhythms of sunlight and darkness, phases of the moon, seismic vibrations of the earth, fluctuations of the earth’s magnetic field, are all monitored from stations around Alaska, then electronically  translated into music and visuals.

Adams’ journal documents two-and-a-half years spent dealing with innumerable challenges and frustrations. So we understand how exasperated he must have felt when a member of the museum staff suggested hanging a painting of the aurora inside the space.  As New Yorker music critic Alex Ross points out in his foreword, and as Adams’ diaries makes clear, what came out of the difficult process is a deeply personal work.

As the work nears completion, he wonders whether he has enough courage for a life in art, writing that  “sometimes I feel like a fraud, as though my life doesn’t live up to the aspirations of my work.” Inevitably, he wonders about his place in the tradition of European classical music. Yet he finds confidence knowing he is carrying on the tradition of his teachers, the experimental visionaries Lou Harrison and James Tenney, who taught at York University in Toronto for many years.  “Those of us who believe that music can help change the world,” he writes, “must use whatever tools we can get our hands on to envision and create change.”

I enjoyed Adam’s previous book, Winter Music: Composing the North, enough to want to read this one. This new book leaves me longing to fly up to Alaska to experience The Place Where You Go to Listen first-hand.

Pamela Margles, theWholeNote’s regular book reviewer, can be contacted at

bookshelf@thewholenote.com

This month I have the pleasure of welcoming two new members of the DISCoveries team, free-lance writer Michael Schwartz who is an Early Music aficionado, and well known Toronto Jazz commentator Geoff Chapman. Mr. Schwartz has chosen an oboe-centric recording of music from the court of Frederick the Great for his maiden voyage and Mr. Chapman takes us on a tour of recent piano-based jazz releases. This latter is a theme repeated in our Classical reviews as well, with four solo piano discs and a collection of pretty much the entire standard repertoire of the Piano Quartet. But for me, September has turned out to be the Month of the Piano Trio.

2009 is the bicentenary of the death of Joseph Haydn and to mark the occasion the Haydn Festival Eisenstadt (seat of Haydn’s patrons the Esterhazy family) commissioned piano trios by 18 composers for the festival’s resident ensemble, the Haydn Trio Eisenstadt. While Dedicated To Haydn (Capriccio 7020) is described as a “global composition project”, it is in fact quite Euro - and more particularly - Austro-centric, with 6 composers from Austria, 6 more from Europe (U.K., Spain, Belgium, Germany, Hungary and France) and 6 from the rest of the world (China, Japan, U.S.A., South Africa, Argentina and Australia). Canada is included in a peripheral way – South African composer Bongani Ndodana-Breen, who spent a number of years in Toronto as director of Musica Noir, contributed Two Nguni Dances to the collection. As well as geographical spread, there is also a broad spectrum of ages represented here with birth years ranging from 1926 (Betsy Jolas) to 1976 (Gernot Schedlberger).

With almost three hours of diverse offerings, this multi-disc set kept me busy for most of the month. The range of styles is vast, from quite conservative works by John Woolrich and Xiaogang Ye to the thoroughly modern from José Maria Sánchez-Verdù, Màrton Illès and Elisabeth Harnik, with plenty of adventures in between. Although there is a dearth of biographical information, each of the pieces does have a note by the composer explaining the (sometimes quite tenuous) link to Haydn. But I also enjoyed listening “blind” as it were, trying to guess how the music related to the master, or which part of the world the composer was from, sometimes with quite erroneous results. For instance I knew there was a piece by an Australian composer, so when I heard something that to my ear was reminiscent of the Aboriginal-inspired music of Peter Sculthorpe I had an “ah ha” moment. It turned into a “ha ha” though when I checked to find I was actually listening to KAGETSU – Etude on the name of Haydn by Yui Kakinuma (Japan). Mind you when I did get to Australian Elena Kats-Chenin’s Calliope Dreaming its repetitive dance-like motifs again sent my thoughts “down under” notwithstanding the fact that all the themes were evidently drawn from Haydn’s “Mourning Symphony” and the composer spent the first half of her life in Uzbekistan. The music that is most obviously reminiscent of Haydn came from two composers known for their humour, American William Bolcom and German Dieter Schnebel. Bolcom’s HAYDN GO SEEK pays homage to some of Haydn’s famous rondos and in the words of the composer intends to “play a constant game of surprise throughout, in as Haydnesque a fashion as I could muster from two centuries remove.” Schnebel is known for his theatrics and in a reverse take on the “Surprise Symphony” the first sounds we hear are the footsteps of the musicians and a few offstage notes as they approach the performance area. What follows is a de-construction of the finale from Haydn’s string quartet “The Joke” (Op.33, No.2) replete with spiccato bowing in the violin, pizzicato from the cello, pointillist piano chording and intermittent hissing and shushing from all concerned. Other tracks of note include Lalo Schifrin’s lush and lilting (and somewhat deceptively titled) Elegy and Meditation and Ah Haydn by Betsy Jolas. This last was of particular interest to me as I had been impressed by several of this French composer’s works in my formative years, but had not encountered any of her music in more than three decades. I was pleased to note that she is still active and that her music has not lost its edge.

The Haydn Trio Eisenstadt was founded in 1992 and the current membership has been in place for just over a decade. As well as their residency at the Haydn Festival they have a very busy and successful recording career, with complete recordings of Haydn’s folksong arrangements (18 CDs on the Brilliant label) and the complete piano trios of Haydn, Schubert, Mozart and Beethoven. “Dedicated To Haydn” is their second foray into the realm of the contemporary and quite an extensive one at that. Kudos to all concerned.

We welcome your feedback and invite submissions. CDs and comments should be sent to: The WholeNote, 503 – 720 Bathurst St. Toronto ON M5S 2R4.

David Olds

DISCoveries Editor

Gounod & Fauré
Benoit Leblanc; Pierre McLean
XXI XXI-CD 2 1584

Fauré and Gounod, despite having been born almost 30 years apart, shared a great affinity during their lifetime. Fauré landed his first “music job” through Gounod’s intervention and both frequented the French salons where many of their songs received their premieres. Despite their differing styles (Fauré was called a “living metronome” for his precise phrasing, Gounod, in Fauré’s own words was “one of those rare composers who constantly introduces new elements in his music”), their songs frequently appear together in the lieder repertoire. They share equally romantic texts and the ability to showcase voice.

In this new recording, the voice being showcased is that of a young Montreal artist, Benoit Leblanc, accompanied beautifully by the acclaimed Montreal pianist and vocal coach, Pierre McLean. Leblanc’s baritone is a beautiful instrument of warm timbre and velvety texture. It occasionally and comfortably drifts toward the lower range of bass-baritone and sometimes strays, somewhat less comfortably, onto the tenor’s turf.

It never loses, however, the lyrical strength that permeates the melodies. Small wonder that - Leblanc possesses not only a Bachelor of Music Degree, but also a Masters Degree in interpretation. I for one look forward to hearing him sing some other gems of the lieder repertoire, especially Mahler and Schubert. If his command of German proves as irresistible as his knack for French songs, we can expect some major revelations in this seemingly crowded field. A must buy for lovers of the human voice.

Fauré - Treize Motets; Messe Basse;
Cinq Cantiques
Ensemble de la chapelle du Quebec;
Bernard Labadie
XXI XXI-CD 2 1670

This disc is a re-release of La Chapelle de Québec’s very first recording from 1989, originally released on the ADES label. Founded in 1985 as the Ensemble vocal Bernard Labadie, it was this ensemble of young professional singers and graduating students that the famous Violons du Roy was originally created to accompany.

This collection features music written by Fauré during his 40 year career as a church musician and includes 13 motets, the Messe basse for women’s voices and five cantiques, including the beloved Cantique de Jean Racine as well as settings of traditional Noëls. Though prolific in the output of sacred vocal music, the composer wrote no music for solo organ. He obviously delighted in incorporating his own modern style into church music, continually creating variations in vocal groupings and innovation in harmonic sonorities. The ensemble handles these cleverly, providing great variety in the voices assigned to solos, duets and trios, proving Labadie to be quite generous in allowing a good number of the individual ensemble members to shine. And shine they do, as well with this relatively modern repertoire as with the Baroque and Classical fare that is their usual focus.

Wagner - Das Rheingold
Mario Hoff; Erin Caves;
Christine Hansmann; Tomas Möwes; Staatskapelle Weimar; Carl St. Clair
ArtHaus Musik 101353

@Grigorian.Com

Ever since Patrice Chereau’s revolutionary Centennial Ring of 1979, televised around the world, Wagner’s monumental cycle has become a household name with new productions cropping up regularly at opera houses of Europe and America. Being an expensive proposition and risky investment, there is great pressure (and great opportunity) for directors and designers to come up with something new and valid to say to justify the expense. Judging by Das Rheingold only (I haven’t seen the rest of their cycle) I believe the Weimar team has succeeded with this different, interesting and entertaining new version.

Wagner’s connection to Weimar and his effort to gain Liszt’s support for the project is what gave the designers the idea to use Siegfrieds Tod, the very first drama Wagner wrote and dedicated to Liszt, as a framework for their cycle. The struggle for world domination between two powers, in this case Wotan and Alberich, is the central theme with both willing to take part in the stage action. Alberich is a powerful figure, by no means a dwarf, but puts on the dwarf costume deliberately to break through the “partition” that separates him from the action.

The gods are a bunch of half-drunk, decadent and stupid wasters sitting around the kitchen table waiting for the underprivileged but very clever demi-god Loge to help them out of the trouble Wotan got them into. As this most action packed opera unfolds, with Wagner’s powerful and compassionate dramatic music there is an uneasy triumph at the end, but signalling tragedy yet to come.

A small theatre working with local, but excellent singing artists - Möwes as Alberich and Caves as Loge are absolutely superb - this performance works on all levels and is very satisfying. The young conductor from Texas, Carl St. Clair breathes musical life into it and certainly sounds dynamic and passionate, truly Wagnerian.