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Critic's picks: Toronto concerts and opera May 6 to 12

By John Terauds on May 6, 2013

Shannon Mercer sings Britten wwith the Aldeburgh Connection on Tuesday.
Shannon Mercer sings Britten with the Aldeburgh Connection on Tuesday.

MONDAY

This year’s fourth and final concert-chat exploring new music in Toronto features two of the city’s younger groups: the Toy Piano Composers and JunctQín Keyboard Collective, both of which have been putting together some very interesting concerts and collaborations. It’s a great opportunity to put a face to a sound — and vice versa. Details here.

  • Organist Mark Herman at Casa Loma, 8 p.m.

The eighth annual local festival of all things pipe organ-related — Organix 13 — kicks off on a lighthearted note with one of the great young virtuosos: American Mark Herman. He’ll blow the dust out of the Mighty Wurlitzer at Casa Loma with his own transcriptions of theatre organ music.

Here’s a sample of what he does:

TUESDAY

  • Members of the COC Orchestra at the Richard Bradshaw Amphitheatre, noon. Free admission.

Because the city doesn’t have a permanent wind orchestra, we almost never get to hear gems like Richard Strauss’s Op. 4 Suite and Op. 7 Serenade. Thirteen of the COC Orchestra’s wind players are stepping forward to give us one of those rare opportunities in this free hour-long concert. Details here.

  • Aldeburgh Connection at the Glenn Gould Studio, 8 p.m.

The second of the three concerts in the Aldeburgh Connection’s grand-finale Britten Festival of Song features soprano Shannon Mercer and mezzo Susan Platts singing music Britten wrote for female voices. Aldeburgh Connection co-artistic directors Stephen Ralls and Bruce Ubukata accompany at the piano as well as providing spoken narrative. Details here.

WEDNESDAY

  • Opening performance of Dialogues des carmélites at the Four Seasons Centre, 7:30 p.m.

Director Robert Carsen’s 2007 production for Lyric Opera of Chicago of Francis Poulenc’s 1957 masterpiece features a dream cast that includes Toronto sopranos Isabel Bayrakdarian and Adrianne Pieczonka and mezzo Judith Forst. COC Music Director Johannes Debus conducts. This could be the great mainstage operatic experience of the season in Toronto. Details here.

  • Organist Jane Parker Smith at Metropolitan United Church, 7:30 p.m.

The great British concert organist Jane Parker Smith mines gems out of the rich lode of 19th century repertoire for symphonic organ — to be played on an instrument tailor-made for it. Details here.

WEDNESDAY & THURSDAY

Ingrid Fliter (Dan Porges photo).
Ingrid Fliter (Dan Porges photo).
  • Pianist Ingrid Fliter with the Toronto Symphony Orchestra at Roy Thomson Hall, 8 p.m.

The wonderful Argentinean pianist returns to Toronto to play Beethoven’s Piano Concerto No. 4 with German guest Christoph König, one of Europe’s highly respected younger conductors. Also on the bill is the Symphony No. 1 by Johannes Brahms and the Prelude to the 1893 opera Hansel and Gretel by Engelbert Humperdinck. Details here.

THURSDAY

  • Pianist Mauro Bertoli at the Richard Bradshaw Amphitheatre, noon. Free admission.

Since relocating from his native Italy to teach at Carleton University in Ottawa, talented young Italian pianist Mauro Bartoli has been visiting Toronto about once a year. This visit features an all-Romantic programme. Details here. (He returns next Monday for a recital with Toronto Symphony cellist Winona Zelenka at Gallery 345.)

  • Opening night of Michael O’Brien and John Millard’s adaptation of The Barber of Seville at the Young Centre, 8 p.m.

Theatre Columbus’s original production of this re-imagining of Rossini’s screwball opera was a Toronto sensation back in 1996, earning all sorts of Dora nominations and awards. Now it’s back at Soulpepper, with Dan Chameroy as Figaro. Leah Cherniak — the original director — returns, but the design team is new. Performances run until June 8. Details here.

FRIDAY

  • Eybler Quartet with actor R.H. Thomson at Heliconian Hall, 8 p.m.

This period-instrument quartet made up of four of Toronto’s finest — violinists Aisslinn Nosky and Julia Wedman, violist Patrick Jordan and cellist Margaret Gay — take us to a Viennese salon in June, 1784, where a young Irish tenor by the name of Michael Kelly is witnessing four greats at work in front of his eyes and ears: Joseph Haydn, the young Wolfgang Mozart, Karl Ditters von Dittersdorf and Johann Baptist Wanhal. I’ll have more on this later in the week. Details here.

FRIDAY, SATURDAY & SUNDAY

  • Lessons of Love: A Double Bill of Passion, by Toronto Masque Theatre at the Al Green Theatre, 8 p.m. (3 p.m. on Sun.)

Continuing his desire to recreate the glories of Baroque-era masque alongside new variations on the artform, artistic director Larry Beckwith has commissioned composer Alice Ping Yee Ho and writer Marjorie Chan to create a new, hour-long opera to be performed alongside John Blow’s ever-loved 1683 masque, Venus and Adonis. I’ll have more on this later in the week. Details here.

SATURDAY

  • Classical guitarist Michael Kolk at Westminster Presbyterian Church (154 Floyd Ave.), 3 p.m.

Vancouver native Michael Kolk, who lives in Toronto now, has a remarkable way with classical guitar, which he is going to show off in a programme of pieces ranging from Scarlatti to Arvo Pärt at this cozy little church tucked away on a side street in Pape Village (Pape north of Mortimer Ave.). You can find out more here.

This is Kolk at a Vancouver Classical Guitar Soceity concert in Vancouver last fall, with a Bach Prelude originally intended for lute:

END-OF-SEASON CONCERTS

As Victoria Day begins to loom on the horizon, choirs, orchestras and ensembles of all sorts, not to mention music students’ graduating recitals, offer a long long list of concert options that I couldn’t even begin to choose from.

Most of these efforts survive on all sorts of community connections, and can be wonderful places to meet like-minded people. The music is often of high quality, and tickets cost a fraction of what they would at the city’s major venues.

The best source for comprehensive information about all the live performances happening in Toronto and the wider metropolitan area is Whole Note magazine, available for free in print and online. Check out the details here.

John Terauds

 

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