Tuesday the Royal Conservatory of Music unveiled its full roster of concerts for the 2013-14 season at the Telus Centre. This fleshed out a preliminary announcement in January to bring the total to 46 Conservatory-programmed classical music concerts.
There was big news for opera fans on Tuesday evening as executive director of performing arts Mervon Mehta announced a solo recital by Italian tenor Marcello Giordani, a veteran of the Metropolitan Opera.
That recital of favourite opera arias, Neapolitan songs and art songs by Paolo Tosti is part of a package of five Italian-themed concerts in a variety of genres being sold to ticket buyers as La Dolce Musica.
The series includes some very fine local talent, including the Vesuvius Ensemble, which made its début with Tafelmusik last season, and baritone Peter Barrett with the wonderful ARC Ensemble.
The Italian Cultural Institute in Toronto is this series’ main sponsor — and Mehta hopes that the mix of jazz, operatic pops and serious art music may bring different audiences out to the Telus Centre.
But when asked how other efforts of cross-selling music genres have gone since the opening of Koerner Hall in September 2009, Mehta admitted that the organization has had limited success.
But having come out in the black financially at the end of the 2012-13 season means that Mehta is prepared to take a few risks again.
The biggest of these experiments is an eight-concert festival Mehta is calling 21C, which includes two performances by pianist Marc-André Hamelin, premieres of new works by Torontonians Christos Hatzis and Brian Current (who is also head of new music performance at the Conservatory’s Glenn Gould School), a concert featuring Flamenco master Javier Limón, and a new collaboration between pianist Eve Egoyan and visual artist David Rokeby.
“I don’t want it to be about new music, but about newly written music,” Mehta underlines — while admitting that he consulted widely with Toronto’s most established new music presenters. “This is also not an avant-pop fiestival,” Mehta adds of programming that includes New Music Concerts and the Esprit Orchestra.
The Afiara and Pacifica string quartets are among the guests, and there will be many more musicians joining in what promises to be a very diverse musical lineup. “We’re going to have what probably amounts to a 21C Ensemble,” Mehta says of the flexible arrangements.
These include several open programme slots for these concerts, which run May 21 to 25 next year. Mehta says he is actively looking for composers with scores they would like to see performed.
“I want to get this out into public and see what people’s reactions are,” says Mehta of 21C, which was made possible with the support of Sonja and Michael Koerner.
So many of the mainstream music presenters in Toronto have been so timid with new music programming in recent seasons that new creation has become even more ghettoized than ever.
One of these days, the city’s audiences will start to see that there are new and beguiling musical crops being harvested from Canadian composers — but it takes initiatives like Mehta’s to make that possible.
Also part of Mehta’s forays into new music is the commission of a new, full-length orchestral piece from R. Murray Schafer for the Royal Conservatory Orchestra next season.
Mehta, who had opened two new halls before he came to the Royal Conservatory, explained how, typically, the first year’s box office receipts are fantastic, there are dips the following two years, and then ticket sales stabilize once the venue has an established presence.
“Here, we had a fantastic first year, a fantastic second year, then it went like this,” he says of 2011-12 as he gestures downhill with one hand.
But 2012-13, despite some notably poor houses for classical concerts earlier this spring, was profitable for performing arts programming at the Conservatory.
Like every other concert presenter, Mehta can’t predict what will sell and what won’t. Of two talented young pianists on this past season’s roster, he says, “We couldn’t give away tickets to Jonathan Biss, but could have sold two or three concerts by Daniil Trifonov.”
The important thing is that Mehta is enjoying enough success to keep trying a bit of this and a bit of that.
You can find all of the season details here.
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Here is part of my January post with the initial details of the 2013-14 season:
The season-opening headliner is Audra MacDonald, a much loved Broadway singer, on Sept. 28. She is setting the tone for a season rich in fine jazz and crossover material.
Thoroughly modern opera diva Natalie Dessay makes her Toronto début alongside composer Michel Legrand — best known for his film scores, not art music — and Les Violons du Roy, for two performances, Dec. 15 and 16.
Grand established names from the string world include cellist Mischa Maisky, accompanied by daughter Lily, on Oct. 10, and violinist Midori, on Nov. 8. Other notable violinists coming are Isabelle Faust next Jan. 24 and Leonidas Kavakos on Feb. 28, 2014.
The Conservatory has done well with great pianists during Koerner Hall’s first four seasons. That tradition continues for the fifth season, with a spectrum representing masters young and old. Chinese sensation Yuja Wang and veteran András Schiff lead off the pianistic parade on Oct. 27 and Nov. 3. Kirill Gerstein visits on Dec. 8 and Stephen Hough arrives on Mar. 2, 2014.
Georgian hotshot Khatia Buniatishvili will be 26 when she appears for her April 6, 2014, Toronto début.
There are few classical ensembles next season: The wonderful New Orford String Quartet is scheduled to perform with a 90-year-old Menahem Pressler at the piano on Nov. 24; a special treat for fans of baroque music will be a Feb. 8, 2014 concert by Fabio Biondi and Europa Galante, who helped set the current European standard for period-performance.
The Conservatory has programmed a free chamber music concert for Sept. 29 that could turn into one of the finer chamber music concerts of the season. It features the resident ARC Ensemble in a rich all-Italian programme capped by baritone Peter Barrett singing Ottorio Respighi’s Il tramonto.
None of these dates includes the many classical and art music concerts booked at Koerner Hall by other presenters. There will also be many recitals at 237-seat Mazzoleni Hall, including that of promising young violinist Luri Lee on Feb. 23, 2014.