With everyone getting their pre-Passover and Easter concerts out of the way, the classical music cup is spilling all over the carpet this week. This is but the tip of a fine-sounding iceberg:
TUESDAY & SATURDAY
- The Array Ensemble, the Toy Piano Composers and Ensemble Paramirabo.
Work of the Toy Piano Composers features in two concerts this week. The first one is a free, no-risk opportunity to sample these fresh compositional voices:
-Tuesday at noon: Seven members of the Array Ensemble, led by artistic director and percussionist Rick Sacks, present five new works written for them by the Toy Piano Composers at the Richard Brasshaw Amphitheatre. You’ll find all the details here.
-Saturday at 8 p.m.: Members of the Toy Piano Composers Ensemble team up with a group of likeminded young Montrealers, the Ensemble Paramirabo, in a concert of new music at Heliconian Hall. I’ll have more on the concert later in the week. Tickets are but $10 here.
TUESDAY
- Pianist Rachel Kiyo Iwaasa for Music Toronto and the Jane Mallett Theatre, 8 p.m.
This West Coast-based advocate of contemporary music mixes old and new in interesting ways, beginning and ending her recital with Mozart and Beethoven. You’ll find all the details here.
For a sense of Iwaasa in action, here she is playing Phobos and Deimos Circling by Canadian composer Jocelyn Morlock (a piece that is not on her Toronto programme):
WEDNESDAY TO SUNDAY
- Tafelmusik Baroque Orchestra with violinist Elizabeth Wallfisch at Trinity-St Paul’s Centre — 7 p.m. Wed., 8 p.m. Thu.-Sat., 3:30 p.m. Sun.
English violin dynamo Elizabeth Wallfisch takes members of Tafelmusik as well as dancers Esmerelda Enrique and Paloma Cortés on a Spanish journey dominated by the music of Luigi Boccherini. You’ll find all the details and background information here.
WEDNESDAY & THURSDAY
- Toronto Symphony Orchestra with violinist Karen Gomyo at Roy Thomson Hall — 8 p.m. Wed., 2 p.m. Thu.
Conductor laureate Sir Andrew Davis and charismatic violinist Karen Gomyo team up for Édouard Lalo’s crowd-pleasing Symphonie espagnole. Also on the programme are Maurice Ravel’s Rapsodie espagnole and Antonin Dvorák’s Symphony No. 8. Details here.
THURSDAY & FRIDAY
- Pianist Stephanie Chua and violinist Véronique Mathieu at the Junction Craft Brewery, 8:15 p.m.
As part of the Canadian Music Centre’s New Music in New Places concerts, these two adventurous young performers perform the music of Emilie Lebel, who is just finishing up her doctoral work at U of T, as well as Derek Johnson, James Rolfe, Caitlin Smith and the granddaddy of Toronto composers, Healey Willan. Regular admission is $20, but an extra $5 adds a flight of beers. Details here.
SATURDAY
- Amadeus Choir and the Elmer Iseler Singers at Metropolitan United Church, 7:30 p.m.
Conductor Lydia Adams is pulling out all the stops in a presentation of J.S. Bach’s monumental Mass in B Minor, with orchestra as well as great soloists — soprano Monica Whicher, mezzo Vicky St Pierre, tenor Lawrence Wiliford and bass-baritone Stephen Hegedus — joining the massed voices of the professional Elmer Iseler Singers and the accomplished amateurs of the Amadeus Choir. Details here.
SUNDAY
Three great concert options featuring excellent young soloists:
- Mezzo Wallis Giunta at the Glenn Gould Studio, 2 p.m. This singer is going places, including the stage of the Metropolitan Opera. But first, a solo recital with pianist Ken Noda. Too bad there are no details posted about her programme here.
- Pianist Jonathan Biss at Koerner Hall, 3 p.m. This thoughtful, elegant interpreter is presenting an intense, fascinating and challenging programme that bookends execerpts from Leos Janácek’s cycle On the Overgrown Path and Alban Berg’s Op. 1 Piano Sonata with the Op. 12 Fantasiestücke and Op. 6 Davidsbündlertänze by Robert Schumann (The Janácek cycle includes the Schumann references, too). You’ll find the details here. In case you need an introduction to Janácek’s compelling little pieces, here are three that Biss has chosen, performed by Balázs Fülei from the great Hall of the Franz Liszt Academy in Budapest:
- The Toronto Summer Music Festival is announcing its season at a concert featuring Canada Council Instrument Bank winners — violinist brothers Nikki and Timothy Chooi and cellist Rachel Desoer of the Cecilia String Quartet — with pianist Jeanie Chung at the (unfortunately acoustically challenged) Isabel Bader Theatre at 4:30 p.m. The programme is an excellent collection of showstoppers, from Bach’s sixth unaccompanied cello suite to Sergei Prokofiev’s Sonata for Two Violins, Op. 56. Details here.
John Terauds