One of the benefits of having Andrew Ager back in Toronto and back at St James Cathedral is also having more of his music around, like at a concert starting there today at 6 p.m.
On the programme are two of Ager’s works, with the composer at the piano: Divertimento for Cello and Piano, written in memory of Bruce Kirkpatrick Hill, with Mary-Katherine Finch as soloist; and four Goethe Lieder, with mezzo Vicki St Pierre.
I’m a huge fan of Ager’s aesthetic, which mixes old classical forms with his own tonally slippery idiom — an aesthetic that would have made César Franck and the old masters of the 19th century Schola Cantorum in Paris beam with pride.
For more info about Ager, click here. If you need a taste of Ager’s sensibility, here is Prelude & Fugue, Op. 30, No. 1:
John Terauds