“You never know where you're going to meet a composer.”

Jacques Israelievitch was introducing Duo for Violin and Piano by Oscar Morawetz at the Canadian Music Centre on June 11. The occasion was the launch of the Centrediscos CD Fancies and Interludes, a collection of four 20th-century works by established Canadian composers recorded live at York University where both performers, Israelievitch and Christina Petrowska Quilico, are members of the faculty.

“On the subway or even ringing your doorbell.”

He was remembering the moment in 1988 shortly after he and his family moved to Toronto from St. Louis. He was about to begin his 20-year record run as TSO concertmaster when Morawetz appeared on his doorstep, music in hand. The composer presented the concertmaster with his Duo.

Later, Israelievitch took the score to his music room with its 90-odd boxes of carefully catalogued scores. Under “M” he found it, the same Duo, but autographed by Morawetz to Josef Gingold, the legendary concertmaster under George Szell in Cleveland and influential pedagogue at Indiana University. Israelievitch studied with Gingold, later becoming his teaching assistant. Duo (1951) was one of many scores Gingold did not have time to learn, scores which he passed on to his student.

Israelievitch played the piece with elegance and strength, bringing out the music's eloquence. He was aided by Petrowska Quilico's considerable support on the piano.

Earlier the violinist talked about passing the time while riding the subway in Chicago by studying the full score for Hindemith's Octet. A seatmate peered over his shoulder and asked if the score was by Hindemith. Surprised, Israelievitch engaged him in conversation, discovered he was a composer and within four stops had commissioned a piece from him. Three weeks later, Israelievitch's apartment bell rang and over the intercom he heard the words: “I'm the composer you met on the subway. I have your commission.”

After the Morawetz, Israelievitch and Petrowska Quilico played James Rolfe's Drop (1998) which combined percussive and repetitive keyboard writing with tentative, quasi-lyrical violin passages. Filled with referential phrases that often seemed familiar, the work ended with Israelievitch alone, a few quiet touches of the bow tenderly playing on the strings, the sound dropping reluctantly on the ears of the audience that crowded the CMC's first floor.

A heartfelt standing ovation followed. The violinist said simply: “I hope you enjoy the CD.”

Against the Grain Theatre is dedicated to experimentation. One of their experiments consists of an attempt to break down the traditional barrier between song recital and music drama. A clear example was their combination two years ago of Kurtág's Kafka Fragmente and Janácek's Diary of One Who Disappeared. Although the Kurtág is a performance piece, the Janácek would normally be done as a recital. Yet having the Diary staged and acted out (by the wonderful Colin Ainsworth and Lauren Segal) added a great deal to the musical experience.

In their most recent production, "Death & Desire," the directors, Joel Ivany and Topher Mokrzewski, have been careful not to simply repeat the earlier experiment. Whereas the Kurtág and the Janácek had been performed as two discrete halves of the evening, the works in their latest offering, Schubert's Die schöne Müllerin and Messiaen's Harawi, were intertwined. That certainly set up an interesting relationship between the two works, though I was unconvinced by the way the protagonist in the Messiaen became Schubert's Fair Maid of the Mill (as we used to refer to her; this production preferred The Miller's Lovely Daughter). On the other hand, the manner in which the mezzo-soprano became the voice of the brook in the penultimate song of the Schubert cycle was magical.

There was an interesting suggestion in the program that the Messiaen was composed at a time when the composer's first wife first descended into madness. The significance of that certainly came across in the song Doundou tchil, which constituted the end of the first half of the evening and in which the French text disintegrated into something completely incomprehensible.

The performers were Krisztina Szabó as the Woman in Harawi and Stephen Hegedus as the wanderer in Die schöne Müllerin. Szabó was superb throughout. I thought that, in the first half of the evening, Hegedus was better in the lyrical songs than in the more assertive parts, but in the second half he was very fine throughout. The works were interestingly staged by Ivany; and Mokrzewski played the piano with the excellence which we have come to expect from him.

There is always a threat that productions of opera come to resemble a kind of museum. Companies see the productions of new works as a risk, while Carmen and La Traviata will always fill the house. Fortunately Tapestry Opera is one of several companies that focus on the production of new work.

A highly charged, fully packed Koerner Hall audience greeted the appearance of Yannick Nézet-Séguin and his Montreal-based Orchestre Métropolitain for their Toronto debut April 24. In a brief introduction to the concert's first half, Nézet-Séguin spoke of his 15-year relationship with the orchestra and the “French colour” they would bring to the evening of English music he had programmed.

Elgar's Enigma Variations had an intensity that revealed the architectural solidity of the piece. Wonderfully balanced full chords proceeded via a series of crescendos. There was sentiment without sentimentality (swells were swell) and a jocularity that foreshadowed the Edwardian Age about to dawn. (The work was composed just at the end of the 19th century.) With each variation dedicated to a friend or loved one (the first lovingly portrays the composer's wife), Elgar's creation is filled with tenderness and nostalgia. Its pastoral qualities (for King and Countryside you might say) were epitomized by a wind choir supported by strings. The famous Variation IX, “Nimrod” was dedicated to the memory of Paul Desmarais, a great supporter of the orchestra. The slow build begun by the flute and oboe duet buttressed by low strings reached great and stately heights before suddenly disappearing into the air, like fluttering insects in the wind.