Toronto Summer Music Festival: Karita Mattila (soprano) with Bryan Wagorn (piano) at Koerner Hall. Friday, August 7, 2015.
The likes of a classic diva like Karita Mattila during the off-hours of Toronto’s summer music season is a musical mirage bar none. Last night she materialized like a wobbly blur rising from the Pearson International Airport tarmac, with a hearty collection of lieder by five composers in three different languages.
Toronto is more than a little thirsty for classical music in the summer, and it’s not hard to understand why. The Toronto Summer Music Festival is really the only flavour to taste within our city limits, and tonight was the last round. Luckily, they mix a decent cocktail.
Providing a bookend to Measha Brueggergosman, who opened the festival a few weeks back, superstar soprano Karita Mattila closed the last stretch with Finnish grand style. Accompanied by Canadian pianist and Assistant Conductor at the Met Bryan Wagnorn – and a rather terrified looking page turner who deserves some kind of award for having the grit to keep up with such musical flair – they made their way through the first of four lovesick tunes by Brahms.
Mattila’s dramatic voice seems to have only improved with age. At 54, and dressed in scarlet with shimmering diamonds, her voice was surprisingly big and had no trouble reaching for the heights of “Von ewiger Liebe.”
The standouts were many and included some choice works by French composer Henri Duparc. He had a tough time in life, and left only forty pieces after destroying most of them in a fit of self-doubt. At the age of 37 he stopped composing, and spent the rest of his life living in seclusion in the mountains of Switzerland, blind and broke. Mattila shared bon mots about how the Fins enjoy being “miserable,” but agreed that the energy could be a positive one. “Welcome to my Daemons,” she said, “I bring them to my all concerts.”
Her delivery was fluid and displayed a remarkable high-register that was unusually rich with the ghosts of a mezzo voice. She embodied each character, allowing for the subtext of the songs to ooze forth. “Someone is climbing the stairs with big strides… And all alone in my tower, I still await his return.” The audience gasped in the atmosphere.
After some spicy works by Jean Sibelius, and a few creepy pieces by Aulis Sallinen, Mattila discharged four closing songs by Richard Strauss.
With much wider leaps, Strauss’ modulations need to be taken with stride, and Mattila, Wagorn (and the page turner) breezed through them with a seasoned charisma. Despite the sometimes-mawkish text, the journey from pen to Mattila’s lips made them entirely believable. By the end of the final “Frühlingsfeier,” she cried with woe, “plaintive sound fills the air: Adonis! Adonis!” A little piece of heaven opened up just then, followed by the predictable encores. First was Strauss’ well-known “Zueignung”, shadowed by a charming Finnish tune “Kun päivä paistaa” roughly translated as “When the Day Shines”, by Oscar Merikanto.
During the lazy summer haze, music can be a powerful attraction towards that which we conceive or hope beyond ourselves. And when Karita Mattila emerges on the stage to fill the void, Toronto takes notice if only to scurry onto the streets after the show like mice back into the woodpile. Now, if only we could somehow find a way to make it through to September.
#LUDWIGVAN
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