Toronto Summer time Music | Barber: Three Songs, Op. 10; Errollyn Wallen: Evening Ideas (Canadian Première); Richard Rodney Bennett: A Historical past of the Thé Dansant; Mahler: Rückert-Lieder; Schoenberg: Choose Songs from Vier Lieder, Op. 2; Berg: “Schlafen, schlafen” (Vier Lieder, Op. 2, No. 1); Weill: “My Ship”, “Communicate Low”, “Bother Man”, “Je ne t’aime pas”. Dame Sarah Connolly, mezzo-soprano; Joseph Middleton, piano; Walter Corridor, July 16, 2024.
One of many sensible options of Toronto Summer time Music is its two-fold mission of sharing and fostering nice music-making, whereby every year world-renowned musicians supply masterclasses to pre-selected fellows. It wasn’t stunning, then, to listen to enthusiastic cheers from these rising artists as they welcomed two of their mentors, Dame Sarah Connolly and Joseph Middleton, to the Walter Corridor Stage.
This area, no less than in comparison with Koerner Corridor, leaves one thing to be desired acoustically. But it surely provides a suitably intimate setting for an art-song recital, particularly in a program similar to Connolly and Middleton’s, the place theatricality and the sense of the phrases are as essential as their musical setting.
The American/English first half and German second half every hovered between the worlds of jazz/cabaret and late-romanticism. Samuel Barber’s 1936 three songs, settings of James Joyce, are good representatives of the composer’s private model of romantic pathos, commuting between post-impressionist harmonies and Rachmaninovian textures. Connolly was delicate to each nuance, and he or she discovered an equal associate in Middleton’s virtually onomatopoeic pianism, from the falling rain figurations of the primary music, to the angular ‘voice of winter’ within the haunting lullaby of the second, to the thunderous anguish of the final music.
The second set of songs, commissioned by Leeds Lieder competition and composed for Connolly and Middleton by Belize-born British composer Errollyn Wallen, continued the theme of evening and sleep. This 2023 cycle shifts mercurially between jazz, post-Debussyist impressionism and poetic nostalgia. The disquieting opening music, which includes excerpts from Shakespeare’s Macbeth, is extremely chromatic and sits on the larger register of Connolly’s voice.
The strain is then relieved for Wallen’s personal poem, set in a bluesy quantity, depicting a younger Ella Fitzgerald dealing with the dazzling stage lights. Distinction comes within the form of a darkly poetic third music to Emily Dickinson’s ‘There’s a sure slant of sunshine’, earlier than Wallen returns to jazzy quasi-improvisation impressed by Howard Hodgkin’s portray ‘Evening ideas’, which can be her chosen total title.
Connolly revelled within the swift temper modifications all through the programme, as she assumed completely different roles and characters. Within the 1994-composed A Historical past of the thé dansant by Richard Rodney Bennett, one other composer of wide-ranging stylistic pursuits, we’re taken to the world of the Nineteen Twenties. The texts are offered by Bennett’s sister, M. R. Peacocke, impressed by pictures of their mother and father’ holidays within the French Riviera. Connolly and Middleton infused these colourfully entertaining, funky songs with aptitude and joie de vivre.
Initially conceived orchestrally, Mahler’s Rückert Lieder battle to ship their full quota of heart-wrenching ardour when heard with piano accompaniment. However Middleton, who has recorded these songs with Connolly on a extremely acclaimed disc, made as convincing a case as doable, emulating orchestral colors by a mix of imaginative pedalling and delicate contact. Connolly was in equal measure transferring, defiant and tragic. The final music, “Ich bin der Welt abhanden gekommen”, absolutely one of the vital stunning ever composed, was a masterclass of singer-pianist rapport.
A range from Schoenberg’s and Berg’s early music cycles continued the journey from late- to post-romanticism, shading into expressionism. Connolly opted for a lighter tone in Schoenberg’s “Erwartung”, highlighting the distinction with the spiritual monumentality of “Schenk mir deinen goldenen Kamm”.
Lastly, we have been handled to 4 of Kurt Weil’s deliciously sensuous cabaret songs, culminating within the pain-ridden “Je ne t’aime pas”. However the spotlight of the live performance, no less than for me, got here with the encore, “King David” by Herbert Howells, a couple of melancholic king who can solely be consoled by the music of a nightingale, touchingly evoked within the piano. ‘And the king within the cool of the moon, Hearkened to the nightingale’s sorrowfulness, Until all his personal was gone’.
Few eyes have been left dry.
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Michelle Assay is a Marie Curie/UKRI World Fellow on the Universities of Toronto and King’s School London engaged on Girls and Western Artwork Music in Iran (Womusiran.com). She holds a PhD from the Sorbonne and College of Sheffield and has been a Leverhulme Fellow on the College of Huddersfield. She is the creator of award-winning articles on Russian and Soviet music and on Shakespeare and music, and often seems in live shows as a pianist. She is a daily broadcaster for the BBC and contributor to Gramophone, Worldwide Piano, and Bachtrack, together with Ludwig Van.