Early and Period Music

I miss German composers. They are an unavoidable part of the musical topography for anyone playing music from Mozart to Schoenberg, but in early music, there are only a few chances to play anything German or Austrian. There’s Bach, of course, and the odd piece by Telemann, which I suppose is enough for most non-Germanophiles. Handel’s Messiah rolls around every December, too and a baroque violinist will occasionally program a Biber violin sonata, but that’s about it. There isn’t, alas, exactly a major movement in the city devoted to reviving Heinrich Schutz, nor is anyone particularly interested in programming anything by C.P.E. Bach anymore. Hasse? I never hear him in Toronto. Graun? Forget about it. So I’m particularly indebted to Opera Atelier for increasing diversity and enlivening the musical conversation in the city by adding a bit of Christoph Willibald Gluck to their regular repertoire. More specifically, I’d like to throw my support behind their decision to put on his best-known opera, Orfeo ed Eurydice, this month.

Never heard of Gluck? Don’t worry. Gluck is very much a conventional Classical (with a capital C) composer, so if you know Mozart, you’ll have a pretty good idea of what to expect. Gluck wrote Orfeo when Mozart was just a child, and given that the opera got its first performance in Vienna, it’s very likely that it was a direct influence on the young composer. It’s reasonable to say that Gluck comes across as an old-fashioned version of Mozart, with perhaps more of a French influence (accompanied recits, dance movements, a lot for the chorus to do) but his Orfeo is much more hummable, than, let’s say, Monteverdi’s. Combine this music with Opera Atelier’s diverse and estimable talents, e.g. Marshall Pynkowski’s direction, and accompaniment furnished by Tafelmusik under David Fallis, and this show is a sure-fire hit. Opera Atelier performs Orfeo ed Eurydice at the Elgin theatre April 9 to 18.

Tafel in the Underworld: The story of Orpheus, the famed musician descending into hell to charm the denizens of the underworld and rescue his princess, has captivated musicians for centuries. As epic stories featuring heroic musicians go, though, the myth of Orpheus still pales, at least in contemporary relevance, to the ongoing saga of Who Will Lead Tafelmusik. Finding yourself under scrutiny as a potential artistic director for one of Canada’s top orchestras is not unlike having to face down Cerberus, a comparison which, I would venture, is not lost on potential candidates.

This month’s installment of the Tafelmusik audition process (a season with invited conductors/concertmasters) brings us violinist Aisslinn Nosky, who will be leading Tafelmusik in a program of music by Purcell, Charpentier and Telemann. Nosky’s got quite a few things going for her, as an up-and-coming musician with a following in Toronto (her chamber band I Furiosi has just about the youngest audience I’ve seen at a classical music concert) as well as having a long history with the group as both a student and full-time member. Is Aisslinn Nosky the next Jeanne Lamon? Does she have what it takes to beat the odds and win Canada’s most coveted music job? Well, we won’t know that until next year. You can, however check it out and decide for yourself from April 23 to 26 at Trinity-St. Paul’s Centre as well as April 28 at George Weston Recital Hall.

Ahearn at TEMC: There are a number of members of the Tafelmusik crew who are busy this month with a few smaller (and potentially less stressful) chamber music concerts. Tafelmusik violinist Patricia Ahearn will perform a solo concert under the Toronto Early Music Centre banner in a program at St. David’s Anglican Church that features a few of the Germanic stalwarts of the early music repertoire I mentioned earlier – Bach, Biber and Telemann. And what a solo program! It’s a concert of monstrous pieces – namely an unaccompanied Telemann fantasia, the Bach unaccompanied violin sonata in G minor, and the Biber passacaglia. None of these pieces is particularly easy by itself on a program, so all three together on the same bill is quite an ambitious array of difficult music. Watching Ahearn pull this off will be a thrilling experience – she’ll be performing on Sunday April 19, at 2:30pm.

Early at Eastminster: Tafelmusik’s artistic director Jeanne Lamon and principal cellist Christina Mahler are also highlighting a chamber concert at Eastminster United Church in a concert of Haydn and Boccherini on April 18 at 8pm. They’ll be joined by a couple of notable younger musicians – namely Edwin Huizinga and Kerri McGonigle, so this should be an enjoyable performance that brings together a couple of established artists with two of Toronto’s most talented up-and-comers.

Torture at Calvin: Aisslinn Nosky will also be performing earlier in the month with her regular band, I Furiosi at the group’s most regular venue, Calvin Presbyterian Church (26 Deslisle Ave., St. Clair subway). They’re calling it Instruments of Torture, which sounds either particularly unpromising or promising, depending on your bent. One thing it won’t be, though, is painful to the ear; I Furiosi is known for putting together amusing musical miscellanies that never take things too seriously. Given the title, it’s likely to include a few selections to appease your organological fetish, and the group will throw in a pop tease here and there. I Furiosi will be presenting Instruments of Torture along with lutenist Lucas Harris on Friday April 10 at 8pm.

17th-Century Avant Garde: There’s one more chamber concert featuring Tafelmusik violinists going on this month - the group Musicians in Ordinary, probably the hardest-working instrumental group in Toronto, will be presenting a concert featuring Chris Verrette and Patricia Ahearn along with their core duo of soprano Hallie Fishel and lutenist John Edwards. This particular concert, entitled In Stile Moderno, features the music of Renaissance Italy’s avant-gardists. Claudio Monteverdi broke more than a few conventions of traditional style and perceptions of good taste when he began publishing madrigals and instrumental music as a court composer in Mantua. The musical establishment of the day was outraged, but Monteverdi’s musical revolution eventually made him the most famous composer of his day. It’s also interesting to note that he didn’t do it alone - the master had a few followers in his circle who either tried to imitate his style or were just sick of the last two hundred years of tedious Renaissance polyphony. Salamone Rossi was one such disciple, and he didn’t do too badly either: although he never enjoyed Monteverdi’s level of fame, he’s still the most famous (and the most talented) Jewish  classical composer before Mendelssohn.

The Musicians will be dedicating a concert to the music of the aforementioned two audacious Italians along with some of their Mantuan “modern style” contemporaries. You can check them out at Heliconian Hall on May 2 at 8pm. 

David Podgorski is a Toronto-based harpsichordist, music teacher and a founding member of Rezonance. He can be contacted at earlymusic@thewholenote.com.

We don’t often connect the city of Venice with world domination, given that today it’s associated in the popular imagination with being a well-known (and increasingly soggy) tourist destination and not much else. Journeying back in time through its music, we learn that Venice the political entity was one of the major players in Europe for nearly 700 years, from the early Middle Ages to the 18th century. The Most Serene Republic of Venice comprised not only the city itself, but the rest of Northeastern Italy, the islands of Crete and Cyprus, ports north of Athens and an archipelago of various Greek islands as well as ports in Albania and Croatia. Just as Rome was an empire based on one city, so too was Venice – but the latter remained  the envy of the other European powers long after the Romans had quit. Venice came to be one of the richest cities in the world over time, the envy of The Ottomans and the Papal States. For a power no one bothered to teach us about in school, the Venetians didn’t do too badly at the game of empire.

The rich history of the Venetians, fuelled as it was by a voracious appetite for wealth and power, was, unsurprisingly, also something of a golden age for culture, and Venice’s rulers and patricians funded a galaxy of talented musicians, composers, artists and architects throughout the Middle Ages and Renaissance. Titian, Giovanni Canaletto, Francesco Guardi and the entire Bassano family remain influential artists from the period of Venice’s glory, artists who still hold significance in the art world today. Similarly, Venetian musicians were some of the greatest composers in Renaissance Europe: Diruta and Zarlino, Claudio Merulo, Cipriano de Rore, Andrea and Giovanni Gabrieli, and the father of opera himself, Claudio Monteverdi are all Italian composers who spent most of their lives in the city of Venice.

For concert programmers, especially of early Baroque and vocal music, the city of Venice is a veritable gold mine gold mine, and the Cantemus Singers, a local choral group dedicated to Renaissance and Baroque music, have tapped this Venetian vein for their upcoming concert at the Church of the Holy Trinity on March 21 and 22, In a concert titled, appropriately enough, “The Glories of Venice” the 14-voice a cappella group will be delving into a fascinating chapter in the city’s musical history by performing selections from the madrigals and motets of Adrian Willaert, de Rore, the two Gabrielis and Monteverdi. They’ll also be featuring Giovanni Gabrieli’s glorious Easter motet for double choir Angelus Domini Descendit and Monteverdi’s remarkable Missa da cappella, a tour de force of sacred music writing from the early Baroque. They’ll be joined by new members Amy Dodington and Rachel Krehm as well as lutenist Ben Stein. As choir concerts go, this program seems remarkably focused in both its scope and style, so if you’re at all interested in Renaissance vocal music or Italian music, or just enjoy choral music in a lovely intimate venue, this is definitely the concert for you.

Capella Intima’s Dido: If you’re in the mood for a vocal concert that takes you further from Italy and closer to (say) England, Capella Intima has just the concert you’ve been looking for. They’re touring a version of Purcell’s Dido and Aeneas based on its first ever public concert performance in 1780, almost a century after the work was first debuted at a girls’ school in 1688. Warming to the occasion, Intima has come up with “An Evening of Antient Music” – namely, what musicians and concertgoers of previous centuries, exhibiting both more than a little historical chauvinism and a fanaticism for new music, called a performance of any piece that was more than a half-century old. Capella Intima is touring their Dido around Southern Ontario, including performances in Hamilton and St. Catharines, and will be taking the show to Toronto for a special evening of music making. They will be joined by Sheila Dietrich, soprano; Jenny Enns Modolo, alto; Bud Roach, tenor; and David Roth, baritone, for the Purcell as well as some rounds, a few catches (like a round, but with dirtier lyrics), and airs. You can catch this at Trinity-St. Paul’s Centre, on March 6 at 7:30 pm.

Out of the Ordinary: If you’re a fan of English poetry as well as English song, check out the Musicians in Ordinary’s concert devoted to the poetry of John Donne. Donne’s intricate poems include some of the most sensual and the most spiritual in English literature. To assist in evoking the poet’s craft, the Musicians in Ordinary have invited Seth Lerer, a scholar of Renaissance literature from theUniversity of California at San Diego, to read some of his work as part of the concert.

Donne’s contemporary, the Renaissance composer Thomas Campion, was also a Donne fan and expressed his appreciation by setting a few of Donne’s poems to music. Soprano Hallie Fishel will be singing these with some accompaniment from John Edwards on lute at Heliconian Hall on March 7 at 8pm. This concert will be a musical tribute to a seminal figure in English literature. But be prepared! While much of Donne’s writing is full of light and grace, his  Nocturnal Upon St. Lucy’s Day, which is on the program, is bleakness personified.

According to St. John: Tafelmusik is helping to escort us through Lent this month with an appropriately pious concert. Johann Sebastian Bach’s St. Matthew Passion’s reputation as the composer’s magnum opus seems completely unshakeable save for his underappreciated Passion According to St. John, and it’s the latter that the orchestra will be bringing to Trinity-St Paul’s Centre on March 19 to 22. From the opening chorus, “Herr, unser Herrscher” to the closing chorale “Ach Herr, lass dein lieb Engelein,” the St. John Passion is some of the finest vocal music of the 18th century. Ivars Taurins will conduct the Tafelmusik orchestra and chorus; soloists Julia Doyle, Daniel Taylor, Charles Daniels and Peter Harvey will be on hand to deliver some spectacular arias. Whether or not you’ve ever heard a performance of the St. John Passion or any other of Bach’s vocal music, this concert is definitely a must-see.

Finally, the hardworking Musicians in Ordinary will be performing a second time this month – this time as part of their series as the ensemble-in-residence at St. Michael’s College. They will be playing St. Basil’s Church on March 16 at 7:30 pm, as part of a free tribute to that most famous of saints (and alleged inventor of whiskey) St. Patrick. The concert repertoire itself isn’t particularly Irish, but instead features some large-scale works by some 17th-century Italians: Monteverdi, Fontana, Marini and the like. With the Saint Michael’s Schola Cantorum choir joining the group along with harpsichordist Boris Medicky and violinists Christopher Verrette and Patricia Ahearn, this looks to be a concert well worth checking out – as well as being a chance to hear some of the top players in the city free of charge.

David Podgorski is a Toronto-based harpsichordist, music teacher and a founding member of Rezonance. He can be contacted at earlymusic@thewholenote.com.

A pattern I’m beginning to see in early music concerts in Toronto is something you might describe as musical tourism – rather than a mixed program or a concert built around a particular composer or work, groups experiment with a time and place in history and give the audience a soundtrack to that particular moment. I’m thinking specifically now of Toronto Consort’s “Paris Confidential,” which I saw late last year and quite enjoyed – it was a fascinating look at Renaissance Paris, complete with music from the City of Lights circa 1550. This month, I’d like to look at other Toronto groups who are both geeking out on history and putting together some fabulous concerts in the process.

Take for example, Leopold: you have to have at least some background in history to have heard of Leopold I, a very unlikely figure, one might think, to inspire a concert program. Nevertheless, European civilization owes quite a bit to Leopold I of Austria, who ruled over the Holy Roman and Austro-Hungarian Empires for the latter half of the 17th century. Leopold came to power as the King of Bohemia in 1655, after Europe had already been wracked by decades of brutality in the Thirty Years War, which had been waged across the length and breadth of the European continent and had ended when Leopold was just a child. You might think, after three decades of constant warfare, as well as the attendant expense and famine, that a rookie 15-year-old king would welcome a break from fighting and usher in a new era of peace, but the kid wasn’t having any of it. The first thing he did was team up with Poland to wage war against the Swedes for five years. Leopold won that war, having in the meantime become king of Austria, Croatia, and Hungary, as well as Holy Roman Emperor of Germany. This bought Eastern Europe nearly two decades of peace – until Leopold went on to battle Louis XIV of France and the Ottoman Turks multiple times from the 1670s until his death in 1705. In so doing, he established himself as the major belligerent of one of the most violent centuries in human history.

Alongside waging constant warfare and his perceived obligation to defend Christendom from the Islamic hordes, the northern barbarians and France, Leopold was, surprisingly, a generous musical patron and composer himself. Many fine Baroque composers, including Antonio Bertali, H.I. Biber, J.J. Fux and Johann Schmelzer owe their careers to his patronage. This month, the Toronto Consort will pay tribute to this magnificent sponsor of European musical life. Lutenist and conductor Lucas Harris will join the ensemble for a program based on a manuscript of music from Leopold’s court in Vienna, including that composed for the emperor’s court and chapel. This all goes down at Trinity St. Paul’s Centre on February 6 and 7.

Guadalupe: Blood-soaked European battlefields are fairly common grist for history’s mill. But history can also be built on strange events in the most unlikely of places, as in our next concert, which was inspired by an apparition seen by a simple farmer in a tiny village in Mexico. When the Virgin Mary appeared to a farmer on a hill in Guadalupe (now incorporated as a suburb of Mexico City) and told him to build a church there, the Spanish authorities honoured the pious man’s request by building a monumental cathedral. Centuries later, it is surely an inspiring place. The cathedral at Guadalupe is now a number one tourist destination for Catholics worldwide and the Virgin of Guadalupe is a cultural and religious icon for Mexicans everywhere. The Tallis Choir is dedicating a program to the basilica at Guadalupe on February 28 at St. Patrick’s Church, featuring music from 17th-century Mexico and Spain. The Tallis Choir will be joined by Philip Fournier on organ and WholeNote columnist Ben Stein on lute in music by Tomas Luis de Victoria, Guerrero and Padilla. Since it’s a very rare chance to hear music from 17th-century Mexico, I highly recommend you take this opportunity to hear it.

Paris 1737: From the emperor’s palace in Vienna to the cathedral of Guadalupe, the next stop on the musical tour this month is Paris, which probably takes the prize for being the most clichéd tourist destination of all time. Still, when Georg Phillip Telemann took a trip there in 1737, he got a chance to perform with some of the greatest musicians of the day, including the French flutist Michel Blavet and the viola da gamba virtuoso Jean-Baptiste Forqueray. Telemann prepared for the occasion by writing a dozen quartets which the group (along with a lesser-known violinist and cellist) performed, and nearly 300 years later, the composer’s Paris Quartets are a classic of the early music chamber repertoire. This month, Scaramella will present a program devoted entirely to Telemann’s Paris Quartets at their usual haunt at the Victoria College Chapel on the U of T campus on March 7. Scaramella, or rather gambist Joëlle Morton, will be joined by American flutist Kim Pineda, as well as Toronto-based musicians Edwin Huizinga (on violin) and Sara-Anne Churchill (on harpsichord). While it may not have the variety of a mixed program, the Paris Quartets make for a great concert for anyone who appreciates late Baroque music. This concert will feature top-drawer music from a composer who in his day was considered by many to be better than Bach.

House of Dreams: Of course, if you’re into musical tourism, Tafelmusik has that beat covered with their concert and multimedia event “House of Dreams,”  the brainchild of Alison Mackay, who, not coincidentally, came up with “Paris Confidential,” mentioned above. Mackay’s presentation/concerts are a great way of giving people a chance to explore the cultural and social history of the music, and are as educational as they are entertaining for audiences (besides, it gives us something to look at during the concerts). For this project, Mackay mashed up the music of Handel, Marais, Bach, Sweelinck and Vivaldi with paintings from the same time and place as the composers. As if that weren’t enough, Mackay actually collaborated with the European museums in all these composers’ hometowns, so this concert, in addition to being a giant whistle-stop tour of London, Paris, Leipzig, Delft and Venice, will actually show you what it was once like to live in those cities. As a cultural experience and musical tour, it’s hard to beat. The extravaganza will take place February 11 to 15 at Trinity St-Paul’s Centre, before launching out on an Australian tour.  This program, which spans both the length of Europe and the Baroque era, is nothing if not ambitious, but don’t let that put you off. At least you won’t have to worry about jet lag.

David Podgorski is a Toronto-based harpsichordist, music teacher and a founding member of Rezonance. He can be contacted at earlymusic@thewholenote.com.

In deference to holiday tradition, I’ll mention the Messiahs first: Tafelmusik’s sing-along Messiah will be at Massey Hall at 2pm on December 21 this year, while Aradia’s Dublin Messiah will happen on the December 20 at 7:30 at St. Anne’s Anglican Church. These are the only two Messiahs in Toronto I think you need to see. If a Messiah was all you were planning on catching over the holidays, please turn the page!

Right. Now if you’re serious about music, and you want to find some first-rate medieval, Renaissance, and baroque music this holiday season, or if you’re just looking for an antidote to every saccharine Christmas carol you’ve been subjected to in every shopping mall you’ve been to since the beginning of November, keep reading. You certainly might find something new in the Toronto Consort’s Christmas concert, “The Little Barley-Corne,” a program of Yuletide hits from Renaissance Europe. This program is based on the Consort’s fifth album of the same name, which although, or indeed perhaps because, it included very few tunes that were immediately recognizable as traditional Christmas carols, was a breakthrough hit for the Consort, and quickly established them as a Toronto-based early music group that deserved to be taken seriously. It will certainly be a special treat to revisit this seminal album again after 15 years. The Toronto Consort performs The Little Barley-Corne December 12 to 14 at Trinity-St. Paul’s Centre.

Caprice: Another early music group that deserves our attention is Montreal’s Ensemble Caprice, a recorder-based baroque ensemble that quickly gained recognition on the Montreal scene for their free, and at times bizarre, interpretations of Telemann and Vivaldi. This group can typically be trusted to blow the roof off the concert hall. Caprice will be coming to Ontario to present their Christmas program “Baroque Christmas Around the World,” which features Arcangelo Corelli’s Christmas Concerto, some 17th-century South American songs, traditional carols and music by J. S. Bach and Handel. It also has the potential to be more subdued than a typical Caprice concert – a roof-raising Christmas concert being somewhat blasphemous in the eyes of the concertgoing public – but I can guarantee the group will perform with panache. This all takes place at the Port Hope United Church in Port Hope December 12 at 7:30pm and in Barrie December 14 at Grace United Church on December 14 at 2:30pm.

Poculi Ludique: If you’re looking for something completely out there as an alternative to Christmas carols and the Messiah, or if you’re just something of a medievalist, consider checking out this group of medieval-revival performers and musicians: the Poculi Ludique Societas (or the “Cup and Game Society”). This group will be performing selections from the York Mystery Plays on December 13 at 7:30pm at St. Thomas’s Anglican Church. The York Mystery plays were a series of performances based on bible stories ranging from the Genesis creation to the Passion of Jesus that were performed in the city of York around the 14th century; some were centred around the biblical story of Christmas. Each guild in town was responsible for a specific performance (based around a Christian divine miracle or mystery, hence the name). The mystery plays seem like a particularly insightful view into what life was like in the Middle Ages, given that the typical medieval European was a devout Christian and a member of a guild of some kind, but couldn’t read the bible (or even his own name) and depended on dramatizations like the York Mystery Plays to understand what he was supposed to be believing. In any case, the Poculi Ludique Societas are all medieval scholars from the University of Toronto and can probably explain all of this much better than I can. Plus, the music is under the supervision of Larry Beckwith of Toronto Masque Theatre, so the musical part of the production is in capable hands. As an unusual form of entertainment that nevertheless captures the original meaning of Christmas, this may be exactly what the Christmas season needs.

Tafel’s Quest: But if you’re looking for good live music, there’s no need to limit yourself to holiday-themed entertainment in the coming weeks. For example, Tafelmusik’s musical quest for a new artistic director, featuring the most outstanding violinists they can find, continues in the beginning of December. Amandine Beyer, a virtuoso violinist from France, will lead the ensemble in an all-French program at Trinity-St. Paul’s Centre on December 4 to 7. It looks to be a killer program of French composers, including Rameau, Corrette, Campra and Rebel. Beyer herself will attempt to wow the crowd with a Leclair concerto, and we’ll see once and for all if the orchestra can put on a sublime performance of French baroque repertoire. It’s all very exciting, as you can probably guess.

Scaramella: Another Toronto group that’s keeping busy over the holiday season is Scaramella, led by Joëlle Morton. They’ll be playing a concert devoted to the English composer William Lawes on December 6 at Victoria College Chapel at 8pm. As a gamba-based ensemble, doing a concert devoted to Lawes just makes sense – he was great composer of music for everything viol, from duets to consorts of four, five and six gambas. As a figure from music history, he’s even more compelling, living as he did during the period of the English Renaissance and taking the laws of composition (sorry, couldn’t resist) to strange and unusual places. His music is both engaging and intelligent, but his approach to tonality is at times either extremely liberal or extremely strange. If you don’t manage to catch their Lawes concert, Scaramella is also doing a program of 17th-century German composers in Victoria College Chapel on January 31 at 8pm. This time the group will be joined by countertenor Daniel Cabena – this concert could be worth a look as well.

Out of the ordinary: If you’re looking for something to do over New Year’s Day, you might want to drop by Heliconian Hall at 2:30, where the Musicians in Ordinary will be playing their annual New Year’s Day concert. They’ll be joined by Christopher Verrette and Patricia Ahern of Tafelmusik as well as Boris Medicky on harpsichord for a mixed program including Scarlatti, Vivaldi and Corelli. The Musicians have put together a solid lineup of players to play some decent repertoire for this concert.

Finally, there are a couple of other concerts worth mentioning as we get into the coldest days of winter: Toronto Masque Theatre will be performing Handel’s Acis and Galatea at the Enoch Turner Schoolhouse on January 15, 16 and 17 at 8pm. And a group of six young Toronto-based violinists are taking an encyclopedic approach to concert programming and tackling all six of Bach’s unaccompanied solo violin partitas in one go. That concert will include Tafelmusik violinists Julia Wedman, Cristina Zacharias and Aisslinn Nosky, as well as Elyssa Lefurgey-Smith of Aradia. You can catch it all at Metropolitan United Church on January 9 at 7:30pm.

David Podgorski is a Toronto-based harpsichordist, music teacher and a founding member of Rezonance. He can be contacted at earlymusic@thewholenote.com.