Toronto Masque Theatre celebrated midwinter on Thursday night by whisking its Enoch Turner Schoolhouse audience to Paris in an intimate evening of words, music and movement notable for its eclecticism.
- Classical Music 101: What Does A Conductor Do? - June 17, 2019
- Classical Music 101 | What Does Period Instrument Mean? - May 6, 2019
- CLASSICAL MUSIC 101 | What Does It Mean To Be In Tune? - April 23, 2019
Billed as a Parisian soirée, the programme featured art song, poetry, film, modern music for piano, baroque-era chamber music and a sacred detour into the Lamentations of Jeremiah complete with interpretive dance.
The show, which runs until Saturday night, is sold out.
The evening is divided into three parts by two intermissions. Since I didn’t stay for the final third, I can’t call this a complete review.
What I did see left a mixed impression. The performers and performances are excellent, but it’s hard to figure out how everything fits together into a coherent show.
Toronto Masque Theatre founder and artistic director Larry Beckwith and Kathleen Kajioka were in fine form on baroque violin, together with gamba player Justin Haynes and Christopher Bagan, who alternated between harpsichord and a modern grand piano.
Highlights from the baroque selections on the programme were a dramatic Sarabande in Spanish style from a solo gamba suite by Marin Marais (1656-1728), a gorgeous suite for solo harpsichord by Louis Couperin (1626-1661) and the engrossing Septième concert (seventh suite) from Les goûts réunis by Couperin’s nephew François (1668-1733), who made a show of “uniting” French and Italian performance styles.
The baroque vocal highlight was the Troisième leçon de Ténèbres by the younger Couperin, expressively sung by sopranos Teri Dunn and Agnes Zsigovics.
Moving around in a tight circle in front of them was corporeal mime Giuseppe Condello in fairly jerky, grounded opposition to the soaring, intertwined melodies being released behind him.
The star of the modern portion of the programme was tenor Colin Ainsworth, who contributed readings of art songs by Francis Poulenc that were a bit low for his lyric voice. (The final third of the programme featured two songs by Gabriel Fauré which I assume would sit more comfortably in Ainsworth’s vocal range.)
Nicolas van Burek read poetry in both its original French, followed by a translation, but it and the other pieces arranged around it didn’t always have anything obvious in common apart from having been written in France. There was a film clip in each third of the programme. Neither the first or second enhanced or complemented the evening in any way.
Even though this Parisian Soirée lacked cohesion, it was rich in fine moments, warmly presented in the intimate yet acoustically rewarding Enoch Turner Schoolhouse.
John Terauds
- Classical Music 101: What Does A Conductor Do? - June 17, 2019
- Classical Music 101 | What Does Period Instrument Mean? - May 6, 2019
- CLASSICAL MUSIC 101 | What Does It Mean To Be In Tune? - April 23, 2019
