TUESDAY
- Pianist Mehdi Ghazi at the Richard Bradshaw Amphitheatre, noon.
Mehdi Ghazi showed a lot of promise when pianist Alain Lefèvre met him at a master class in Algeria. Lefèvre, with the help of Canadian diplomats, invited the student to come study at the arts centre in Orford, Qué., and the Conservatoire in Montréal. Today, we get to gauge the talented 22-year-old’s progress in a “look at what I can do!” programme that includes pieces by Ravel, Liszt and Robert Schumann’s fearsome Op. 13 Symphonic Etudes. It’s free — and get there early.
http://youtu.be/bC-XsfV7tfo
WEDNESDAY & THURSDAY
- Soprano Karina Gauvin and conductor Jean-Marie Zeitouni with the Toronto Symphony Orchestra at Roy Thomson Hall, 8 p.m.
Karina Gauvin gets to reprise her magnificent 2010 ATMA recording of Benjamin Britten’s Les Illuminations with conductor Jean-Marie Zeitouni in a programme that opens with Gabriel Fauré’s lovely Pélléas et Mélisande suite of incidental music, and closes with Johannes Brahms’ weighty Symphony No. 4.
For more info and tickets, click here.
Here’s Gauvin singing “Antique” in a promo video from the Illuminations recording:
THURSDAY
- Pianist Olga Kern with violinist Vladimir Spivakov at Koerner Hall, 8 p.m.
There should be plenty of musical fireworks as these two Russian powerhouses team up for a substantial recital that features Johannes Brahms’ Sonata No. 3 for violin and piano, César Franck’s A-Major Sonata, Igor Stravinsky’s Suite italienne and Fratres by Arvo Pärt.
For more info and tickets, click here. (There was a handful of seats still available in the first balcony on Tuesday morning.)
FRIDAY, SAT. & SUN.
- Taptoo!, the opera, at the Jane Mallett Theatre, 8 p.m. (2 p.m. Sun.)
There’s still a strange silence in town over the commemoration of the War of 1812, which pitted Britain (a.k.a. Upper Canada) against the United States. Admittedly, it’s awkward to celebrate a war with the people who are now meant to be our closest allies and trading partners.
In order to get the anniversary on the calendar, Toronto Operetta Theatre fires the opening volley in the form of Taptoo!, an opera by composer John Beckwith and librettist James Reaney that has sat neglected for a decade.
Here is how Ramsay Cook, editor of the Dictionary of Canadian Biography, described it in 2003:
Beckwith’s score echoes with familiar tunes from the past — “Over the Hills and Far Away” and “Marching Down to Old to Quebec”, for example — refashioned with a contemporary flavour. Reaney’s libretto recounts familiar historical incidents from the Battle of Fallen Timbers to the founding of York, adds some fictitious ones, and re-creates a past that evokes contemporary meaning. The result is a marvellous entertainment as an opera should be. It is also an exploration of the meaning of the Canadian past not as “history” but rather as “collective memory.”
For more info and tickets, click here.
SATURDAY
- Daniel Levitin and the Kitchener-Waterloo Symphony present Beethoven and Your Brain at Koerner hall, 8 p.m.
In what should be an educational as well as entertaining outing, McGill University researcher Daniel “This is Your Brain On Music” Levitin teams up with the Kitchener-Waterloo Symphony and its music director, Edwin Outwater, in a show-and-tell involving the audience and the music of Ludwig van Beethoven.
The actual musical programme features the Egmont Overture, the fourth movement of Symphony No. 9, the second movement of Symphony No. 3 and all of Symphony No. 5 (which we heard so magnificently rendered by conductor John Storgaards at the Toronto Symphony last week).
For more info and tickets, click here.
SUNDAY
It’s Toronto Symphony Orchestra principal string-player day:
- Jeffrey Beecher and friends at Mazzoleni Hall, 2 p.m.
Principal double-bass Jeffrey Beecher has organized an afternoon of chamber music with principal cello Joseph Johnson, pianist Vanessa Lee and, the promoters say, “others.” The programme includes works by J.S. Bach, Béla Bartók and Nino Rota.
For tickets, click here.
- Teng Li and the Esprit Orchestraat Koerner Hall, 8 p.m.
Teng Li
Principal viola Teng Li joins the Esprit Orhestra and music director Alex Pauk in a performance of Alfred Schnittke’s Viola Concerto. The programme of new-ish music also features Ohoi (I prinicipi creativi), by Giacinto Scelsi, and two Canadian works: Claude Vivier’s Wo Bist du, Licht! and Zefiro torna, by John Rea.
For info and tickets, click here.
Here is Yuri Bashmet performing the closing 9 minutes of the Schnittke concerto, to give you a taste:
John Terauds