December 2003 - Nr. 13
The real Music of Christmas
Sybille Forster-Rentmeister
This season offers us the best of everything. The music industry has created programs to lighten our long nights and warm our hearts. And while not every offering is Christmas music, it could be, as long as there is this very special feeling of renewal that can be experienced when great music is played and performed in various ways.
Different people prefer different kinds of musical fare. Some like choirs and go and listen to some of the very famous ones we have here in Toronto, like the Toronto Mendelssohn Choir. We went to Massey Hall to listen to the season opener in November, which marks season the 110th anniversary of the founding of the choir. It is no wonder that the choir’s favourite composer is Mendelssohn and the first offering was Elijah. And while the music was more than pleasant, like all work of Mendelssohn, the seats in the Massey Hall were designed to keep a Victorian audience awake. They are not exactly suitable for modern dwellers. Too tightly arranged patrons that sport more than a size 8 suit find themselves wearing their shoulders around their ears in order not to disturb their neighbours. Thus the experience is too historical and outright uncomfortable for some. The performance of Choir and orchestra under Noel Edison was lovely, but tame, not monumentally exciting. Add on the bad seats and a few folks left during intermission, as did we. Pain and a concert is not my most desirable combination. But the rest of the season is not necessarily taking place in Massey Hall and surely will be enjoyed by all for the right reasons. Go to www.tmchoir.org for all the news.
The Toronto Symphony…
… has fabulous programming this season. Earlier in the year we reviewed a few violin concerti. This time we chose one of the piano concerts with talented Angela Hewitt as soloist. She is especially famous for her many Bach recordings and renditions.
The concert started with Carl Maria von Weber’s Overture to Oberon and set the mood for a romantic and poetic evening. Robert Schumann’s Piano Concerto in A Minor, Op. 54 was a perfect vehicle for this elegant piano virtuoso. The first movement of the concerto was written 4 years prior to the rest of the work as a fantasia and is structured as such, defiant, poetic and exploratory, following a profusion of possibilities.
In the second movement, an intermezzo sets accents with a staccato melody between piano and strings and is followed up with an interplay between the sentimental cellos against arpeggios in the piano, only to find their way back to the early first melody, leading into the finale, in which a brilliantly bold theme leads to another free fantasia, showing off the players technical and emotional skill. Angela Hewitt earned much applause for this vivacious performance.
The concert continued after the intermission with a the symphony’s playful rendition of Mozart’s Idomineo Ballet Music, K 367, making the audience receptive for Beethoven’s Symphony No. 1 in C Major, Op. 21, a cleverly worked out symphony, reminiscent of Haydn. Beethoven did brake with a few expected conventions and introduced a few surprises, like key changing, himself. The symphony proved to be one of Beethoven’s most popular during his lifetime.
The evening was conducted by British Nicholas McGegan. He was enthusiastic and entertaining himself. His style was light yet firm. He conducted without the magic wand and used his hands most expressively.
Christmas Via Salzburg
A most pleasant experience proved to be a concert in the Glenn Gould Studio with a group called Via Salzburg, founded by one of the Seiler sisters of String Quartet fame. Via Salzburg was founded by Mayomi Seiler and consists of a group of 14 mostly younger performers with a penchant for the real experience of the music. Standing up, except for the cello and harpsichord players, while playing their period instruments is quite different than sitting down. This becomes clear to the audience almost immediately. The motion of the artist’s body emphasizes the emotion of the music and makes the communication stronger, the music more lively. This form of performance, especially in an intimate space like the Glenn Gould Studio, engages the members of the audience more directly too. The superb acoustic allows for nuances otherwise not possible. The pianissimos can be more so than in any other space. In one of the pieces performed with Dennis James as soloist on an unusual instrument, a glass armonica, something no one in the audience had seen or heard before, when the mike was taken away, one had to reach for the sound; and this personal engagement as a member of the audience made the experience very immediate.
Right from the start, when Heinrich Ignaz Franz von Biber’s Battalia was played, with its movement of atonal strings - as in people talking all at once and not in harmony, one could hear chuckles in the room. All other choices too were of a lighthearted nature, not trying to be serious at all. Bach, Joseph Emanuel as well as Johan Sebastian found themselves being interpreted with verve and enthusiasm. Mayomi Seilern plays her circa 1740 J.B. Guadagnini violin with a certainty that can only come from a long association with the music and the instrument, and indeed she plays the violin since she was 3 years old. Her German father and Japanese mother were both pianists and met in New York were they both studied. An oriental upbringing with further education of long duration in Salzburg strengthened her resolve to have found a career for life. This certainty adds strength to her performance, as was especially apparent that night during the Felix Mendelssohn’s Octet for Strings in E-flat major, op. 20. It was amazing to watch her play vivaciously and with such team spirit among her players, all of them with soloist qualities.
That night they spontaneously decided to wear something seasonal and add red as a colour to the wardrobe, realizing full well that the eyes consume as well as the ears. It worked out very well and underlined the individuality of each artist.
The evening ended with well-deserved huge rounds of applause, the appropriate reward for such fine artistry. It was like the promotional material said: an unforgettable concert experience.
There are 3 more concerts in this series, which can be subscribed to by contacting before January 23, 2004 this number: 416-972-0113, or emailing to viasalzburg@sympatico.ca
Go
to it, you’ll never will feel so alive with music than here!
An interview with Mayumi Seiler, who we met the next morning, will soon follow.
