Sci-fi Spectacular: It sounds like an entertaining night in Roy Thomson Hall, and it surely was last week, as the TSO presented an array of themes and excerpts from movies and television sho…
SOURCE: National Post (Canada) at 05:03PMThere was a meeting of violinist-conductors Saturday night at Roy Thomson Hall, although Itzhak Perlman is still more violinist than conductor, and Peter Oundjian has long been more conducto…
SOURCE: National Post (Canada) at 01:26PMDouble bills come in a few flavours: contrasting, coordinating, heavy and light. The COC pairing of Alexander Zemlinsky’s A Florentine Tragedy and Giacomo Puccini’s Gianni Schicchi manag…
SOURCE: National Post (Canada) at 04:40PMThe Toronto Symphony Orchestra has called on some good friends to celebrate its 90th season, including Itzhak Perlman, a violinist who was around for the 44th. Just like old times is not a b…
SOURCE: National Post (Canada) at 06:27PMSuperintendent of music for Louis XIV, Jean-Baptiste Lully (1632-87) has a secure place in music history. Some might question his stature as a composer of viable operas, but the production o…
SOURCE: National Post (Canada) at 11:27PMCan you hum the Barcarolle from The Tales of Hoffmann? Of course you can, even if you think you cannot. Can you provide a synopsis of the plot? Of course not, even if you suppose that you ca…
SOURCE: National Post (Canada) at 02:04PMBruckner-Schalk? You mean like Bach-Busoni (or Lennon-McCartney)? Everybody knows that Bruckner’s not-so-well-meaning students Franz and Josef Schalk prevailed on the master to make unnece…
SOURCE: National Post (Canada) at 03:05PMThe Toronto Symphony Orchestra has asked some former music directors back to mark the 90th season. Most recent among the returnees: Jukka-Pekka Saraste, who left under a cloud in 2001. Labou…
SOURCE: National Post (Canada) at 06:57PMPlaying all 32 of Beethoven’s Piano Sonatas is a major undertaking, usually parceled out over a few weeks or even an entire season. Canadian pianist Stewart Goodyear plans to dispatch the …
SOURCE: National Post (Canada) at 11:13AMThe Toronto Symphony Orchestra always brings a fair balance of domestic and international content to its annual New Creations Festival. This year the principal import attraction was Peter E�…
SOURCE: National Post (Canada) at 04:02PMFrom the Berlin to the Ontario Philharmonic, from Carnegie to Koerner Hall. This should be my cue to reflect on how the differences are not at vast as all that. But the plucky orchestra from…
SOURCE: National Post (Canada) at 12:22AMSome wonderful things happened during Tchaikovsky’s Symphony No. 6 (Pathétique) as performed Saturday night in the Maison symphonique. Among the longest-awaited and most miraculous: I…
SOURCE: National Post (Canada) at 12:02PMSuspense grew steadily in the opening minutes of the concert Thursday night at Roy Thomson Hall. Would the Toronto Symphony Orchestra accomplish what it had lately failed so often to do, by …
SOURCE: National Post (Canada) at 01:45AMStop the presses: The Toronto Symphony plays Brahms’s First Symphony. Not a likely reaction a few years ago, but Peter Oundjian is now getting into such a groove with his hometown band tha…
SOURCE: National Post (Canada) at 01:12AMThere is no press release, but consider it official: The Canadian Opera Company is a European house. All the hallmarks are there: good soloists, a reliable orchestra, a sturdy chorus, intell…
SOURCE: National Post (Canada) at 07:37PMAll these years later, she can still pack them in. I mean Ofra Harnoy, the Israeli-born Toronto cellist who rose as high as the cover of Gramophone in the 1980s, then gave up her career for …
SOURCE: National Post (Canada) at 06:37PMExiled from his hometown opera house for 20 years, Robert Carsen has made a serious comeback, directing Gluck’s Orfeo ed Euridice at the end of last season and opening the 2011-2012 COC ca…
SOURCE: National Post (Canada) at 02:20PMShall I dispense with — or at least defer — the normally mandatory yak-yak about how long we have waited for it, how badly we need it, how much Kent Nagano and the MSO deserve it…
SOURCE: National Post (Canada) at 02:20PMThe Blackcreek Summer Music Festival came to a close on Saturday night, well ahead of schedule, and with less than a full crowd in the Rexall Centre, even after three concerts with the Londo…
SOURCE: National Post (Canada) at 02:30PMHas the Gryphon Trio hit the big time? A full house greeted these Canadians on Thursday for the first of two Beethoven concerts in Walter Hall. Further evidence came from the energetic yet n…
SOURCE: National Post (Canada) at 03:34PMBig cancellations can occasion big debuts. The loss of headline soprano Christine Brewer to Toronto Summer Music created an occasion on Thursday to hear two up-and-coming American singers in…
SOURCE: National Post (Canada) at 12:07PMThe combined ages of the young string players assembled to play Dvorak’s Piano Quintet in Walter Hall – “fellows” in the parlance Toronto Summer Music and its adjacent Academy– mig…
SOURCE: National Post (Canada) at 10:32AMThe London Symphony Orchestra’s three-concert visit to the Rexall Centre at York University is down to one, the BlackCreek Summer Music Festival confirmed on Thursday. Only the concert of …
SOURCE: National Post (Canada) at 08:33PM“Beethoven and the Romantics” is less a theme for Toronto Summer Music than a pretext for great programming. On Tuesday the festival took full advantage of the opportunity by matching so…
SOURCE: National Post (Canada) at 04:21PMToronto Summer Music this year is dedicated to Beethoven and the Romantics, a broad theme that handily encompasses most of the music that pianists in particular love to play. How, then, to a…
SOURCE: National Post (Canada) at 12:18PM
