Toronto Summer Music Festival 2014 - a Preview
Toronto Summer Music Festival 2014 –
A Preview
By Joseph So
“Summertime, and the music is
lovely...”
With apologies to
Ira Gershwin for my corny appropriation (and alteration) of his lyrics from the divine Porgy and Bess, I must say it sums up
perfectly my feeling of the state of summer music in our fair city of
Toronto. For years, one would have to travel far and wide in the
summer to get a classical music fix. But this is no longer the case –
the TO summer is no longer the musical desert of yore. Yes I still
make my annual treks to a few select places for opera – I had just
returned from the Glyndebourne Festival and the Münchner
Opernfespiele. But now I make sure that I am in town for TSMF
(Toronto Summer Music Festival), a three-week celebration of
classical music-making of a very high order. This year, more than
ever, the offerings are enticing indeed.
The theme of TSMF
2014 is The Modern Age, a period that loosely encompass
classical music in the first quarter of the 20th century,
give and take a decade or so at either end. This takes us from around
1890 through to the 1930's, a period when music underwent extremely
exciting transformations from tonality to serialism, culminating in
the works of the so-called Second Viennese School. A look at the
program of 2014 TSMF shows the emphasis however is on tonal music,
highlighting the works of Late Romantic musical giants the likes
of Strauss and Mahler, to the Impressionism of Ravel and Debussy, the
Russian music masters Rachmaninoff, Stravinsky and Prokofiev, as well
as the great English composers Elgar and Vaughan Williams. Also
entering into the equation is the rise of popular musical idioms such
as folk and jazz. With such a broad stroke, the 2014 edition of TSMF
is ambitious, audacious, and exciting, with something for
every musical taste. There are plenty of programming highlights to be sure,
so my choices here reflects my personal taste. For full details, go
to http://www.torontosummermusic.com/
Pianist Beatrice Rana
The two areas of
focus of the 2014 TSMF remain chamber music and art of the song. The
Festival opens with the Emerson String Quartet in a recital at
the acoustically friendly Koerner Hall on July 22. Chamber
cognoscenti will remember them as having played so beautifully on the
soundtrack of The Late Quartet. Now we can hear them in
person in a program of Beethoven, Schubert and Britten. The
brilliant Italian pianist Beatrice Rana, winner of the 2011
Montreal International Musical Competition (Piano Edition) and the
Silver Medal of the 2013 Van Cliburn Competition, will give a recital
on July 23 at Walter Hall, in a program of Bach, Chopin and
Prokofiev. The New York based Orion String Quartet will be in
town July 24 for a program of Haydn, Brahms, and Dvorak, with special
guest pianist Peter Serkin (who is a great pianist in his own
right of course but old-timers like yours truly still think of him as
son of the great Rudolf). It's extremely exciting for the Festival
to present soprano Sondra Radvanovsky in a recital of songs
and arias, including the works of Beethoven, Verdi, Cilea,
Rachmaninoff, Duparc and Copland. (July 31 Koerner Hall). While not
all the songs fall within the Festival theme, Radvanovsky is such a
wonderful singer that even if she sings the telephone book, it'll be
worth hearing! Anyone who saw her magnificent performance as
Elisabetta in the recent COC Roberto Devereux will know what I
mean.
Soprano Sondra Radvanovsky
For the Art of the
Song, audiences can experience the artistry of a great singer,
British baritone Christopher Maltman together with the dean of
collaborative pianist Graham Johnson on August 6 at Walter
Hall. I had the great good fortune of hearing Maltman just last week,
as Lescaut in Manon Lescaut at the Royal Opera House Covent
Garden. Part of a stellar cast that included the hottest tenor on the
planet Jonas Kaufmann and the super-glamorous Latvian soprano
Kristine Opolais, Maltman more than held his own in a rather
thankless role. The theme of Maltman's recital, The Soldier –
from Severn to Somme, is one of remembrance, of the victors and
victims of war in the songs by Mahler, Mussorgsky, Butterworth, Ives,
Finzi and Poulenc. Graham Johnson is one of three artists giving
public masterclasses as part of the Art of the Song program. The
other two are baritones Francois LeRoux and Sanford Sylvan. Maltman
will appear in a Musicians Up Close event on August 5th
2 pm in Walter Hall, just before the Johnson masterclass. Perhaps the
biggest coup of TSMF 2014 is the presence of the Toronto Symphony
Orchestra. Principals of the TSO will give a chamber recital of
works by Dohnanyi, Mahler and Strauss (August 7 Walter Hall). The big
event is the Closing Night Concert with the full TSO forces on August
12 at Koerner Hall before they leave for their European tour. The
participation of the TSO this summer is surely a watershed that will
make TSMF a major musical force to be reckoned with in the future.
In late May, I had
the opportunity to sit down with TSMF Artistic Director Douglas
McNabney for a wide-ranging talk. This was our fourth pre-festival
talk, since his taking over the TSMF from Agnes Grossmann. He was in
town to present the noon-hour preview concert at the Richard Bradshaw
Amphitheatre, and spent the day busy dealing with TSMF business. Ever friendly, cordial and totally unflappable, McNabney fielded my
questions with thoughtful, articulate answers. As usual, we reviewed
the past season as well as looked a little into the future:
TSMF Artistic Director Douglas McNabney
LSM: Let's begin by first looking
back at last year's festival. Would you say your goals were
accomplished?
DM: Oh yes, very
much so! Last summer we had a 30% increase in attendance, and our advance ticket sales this year are ahead of last year.
LSM: What do you think accounted for
this big jump in attendance?
DM: The Festival
has become better known, and we don't have any competition in the
summer. I really believe the festival theme, La belle epoque,
was partly responsible. Paris at the turn of the century...it caught
the imagination of the public. It's a thread that ran through all the
concerts.
LSM: That's great. Looking back at
last season, what do you think could have been done better or can be
improved upon in the future?
DM The big
challenge is always reaching our public. We have 1200 seats to sell
in Koerner Hall and 500 seats in Walter Hall. You would think if we
could reach our target audience, we shouldn't have difficulty filling
these seats. The traditional print and broadcast media have changed
and they no longer pay as much attention (to classical music.) This
year we've done something really interesting to increase the
notoriety of the Festival. We've got the involvement of Toronto
Symphony Orchestra...
LSM: That's quite a coup! How did
you manage to get them on board? It should raise the profile of
TSMF.
DM: They've put us
in their season brochure. They announced the European tour and the
first stop is Toronto Summer Music. We print 30,000 copies of our
brochure; and they print 500,000! It always surprises me how many in
Toronto have never been to the Festival, but that's only normal as
it's only our 9th season. We're really beginning to
establish ourselves, having events like the TSO put us into the
spotlight. From there we can do more interesting things. We are
really punching above our weight, to invite an organization like the
TSO. A lot of it is based on personal connections... I know Andrew
Shaw and Loie Fallis very well. These are people I've gone to school
with. There is a trust there.
LSM: Part of building audience is
through outreach. How's that going?
DM: The big thing
we did last year was the “Shuffle” and it was a hit. It's based
on the shuffle function of the ipod. For the first two years (of my
tenure), we called it the Friday Night Experiment. I was always
looking for an occasion to do something a little different, an
alternate style. Some of our public would go to this and other public
would come and it would be an interesting mix, and through that
people may buy tickets to the regular season. (We found out) no,
that's not how it works. Last year we found the right way –
marketing it as almost a different festival. We have to go for a
different public, serving a different public. It increases the
notoriety of Festival and when people talk about TSMF they can find
something in it for them, and it's not going to be the Emerson String
Quartet, and it's fun and it's very high quality. These are not
garage bands... it's going to be world music and serious jazz bands.
I think we're doing the right thing.
LSM: How do you do the promotion for these new, alternate events?
DM: Last year we
did the promotion in and around Heliconian Hall (the concert venue)
in Yorkville, mostly with sandwich boards. It's 'Pay What You Can.'
The Yorkville area is teeming with people; our concerts in Heliconian
Hall were frequently full – we couldn't seat everybody for one of
the tango shows. It's fun and different. We bring some of the
Festival young artists into the program. They really love it – it's
different and eclectic. They come and and play just one movement of
the work. The idea is to do something a little different while
maintaining the quality. It worked well last year and we're going to
continue with it.
LSM: I'm curious – how did you get
Sondra Radvanovsky on board?
DM: I work with
Roman Borys of the Ottawa Chamberfest, two of us work together as a
package. It means she's taking one week out of her holiday to do
this, but she thought it was an interesting enough proposition. The
details are still under negotiation. [Note: since the interview, the
program has been announced, and it includes Ah Perfido!
Beethoven's formidable concert aria, plus several operatic chestnuts
and some of the best known songs by Rachmaninoff and Duparc]
LSM: I noticed that you are offering
song recitals with your Art of the Song fellows...
DM: Yes. In the
past, we've always had the Art of Song participants to sing within
Mentors and Fellows programs. Many people complained that it wasn't
enough of an occasion to highlight the singers. This year they'll
have two concerts. Eight singers and five pianist, and we'll get to
hear them all.
LSM : What are you most proud of in
this year's festival?
DM: Bringing the
Toronto Symphony is a huge undertaking. It's a tremendous financial
responsibility, much bigger than anything the Festival had undertaken
in the past. I had to work really hard to convince the board to do
this. The TSO has been helping us...it's a wonderful collaborative
effort, to help us reach potential new donors. For the TSO, the
alternative was to do their regular, free concert at David Pecaut
Square. That reaches a big public, but this way they get to play in
Koerner Hall for the first time. There's a whole video team assembled
to document the concert and their tour.
LSM: I've
noticed that there is a strong Asian presence among the Art of the
Song program participants, and there seems to be more Asians in the
audience for both the symphony and the opera. Are you trying to tap
into that?
DM: Yes we do have
a very strong Asian presence (among the fellows) this year. We still
don't have the (Asian) public yet. Having them as fellows, we hope we're
going to bring in the audience. We have an Asian board member –
he's young, energetic and well connected. We are working on building
long term relationships with the communities – it's building trust
and it's always long term.
LSM: As a voice fan, I must say
I've really been impressed with the wonderful people you've brought
in for the Art of the Song program, despite the disappointments of a
few cancellations in the past...
DM: This year we
have Christopher Maltman here to do a very well thought out program,
with a real theme that takes you through World War One. Graham
Johnson is here for a week to give masterclasses. This is just our
4th Academy, already we've had Sir Thomas Allen, Gerald
Finley, Elly Ameling, Roger Vignoles, and Julius Drake, all amazing
artists and teachers. The only one missing is Malcolm Martineau and
I'm working on it!
LSM: Let's talk a little about this
year's theme, The Modern Age. I've noticed that the programming have
pretty much stayed within the boundaries of tonality rather than
venturing into Serialism, which is of course the major musical
transformation of this period. Can you say something about that?
DM: You know, one
of my big passions is Schönberg
and the Second Viennese School. I am interested in the whole creative
process, his whole voyage, how he got into it following the horrors
of World War One, its parallels in the visual arts, the Cubist
movement and the German Expressionism, etc. But I won't be doing that
as part of TSMF. We're doing the Chamber Symphony, still very tonal,
but that's as far as we'll get this year. We'll have some of our
young artists do this repertoire. This material has to be presented
in a special way so as not to lose my audience...
LSM: Looking into the future –
what would next year's theme be?
DM: It's Music
of the Americas, a very rich and diverse thematic area with lots
of possibilities. We'll take some of the American composers who
studies in France – everybody from America studied in Paris in
those days. Just Copland is a lot of fantastic music; we can also
broaden into jazz. The problem next year is to limit it to the great
music.
LSM: Thank you
and my best wishes for a very successful Festival.
Labels: Preview
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