{"id":14262,"date":"2013-08-04T07:24:12","date_gmt":"2013-08-04T12:24:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.ludwig-van.com\/?p=14262"},"modified":"2013-08-04T11:47:08","modified_gmt":"2013-08-04T16:47:08","slug":"sarah-connolly-phaedra-and-the-proms-programming-unventured-in-canada","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.ludwig-van.com\/toronto\/2013\/08\/04\/sarah-connolly-phaedra-and-the-proms-programming-unventured-in-canada\/","title":{"rendered":"Sarah Connolly, Phaedra, and the Proms: Programming unventured in Canada"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Sarah<\/a>
Sarah Connolly as Phaedra at Glyndebourne last month (Bill Cooper photo).<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Yesterday, the summer-long BBC Proms concerts presented a gripping, all-English programme of the sort that wouldn’t sell enough tickets here to ever get on a playbill. So let’s celebrate the fact that we can listen from afar.<\/p>\n

The vocal highlight was mezzo soprano Sarah Connolly, wearing the red gown from her Glyndebourne turn as Phaedra in Jean-Philippe Rameau’s baroque opera Hippolyte et Aricie<\/em>, singing Benjamin Britten’s final, searing cantata, Phaedra<\/em>, which turns 40 next year.<\/p>\n

With Britten’s music, less was more. Especially in his postwar work, there is never a single superfluous note or bit of instrumentation. He has a message to get across, and he does with absolute economy.<\/p>\n

(I live in a part of Toronto where the simple postwar homes of the then-booming middle class are being demolished in favour of stone-trimmed, copper-eaved faux chateaux. I am struck by the parallels between the midcentury, middle-class economy of Britten’s music, or even the film scores of Bernard Herrmann, and middle class homes of the time — but I may also be pushing an unfair analogy here.)<\/p>\n

Yesterday’s Proms concert programme ended with Phaedra<\/em>, =opened with Britten’s Prelude and Fugue<\/em> for string orchestra and also included three other works, representing a sort of aesthetic continuum between the Edwardian and midcentury modern.<\/p>\n

The Britten Sinfonia under Sian Edwards performed Gustav Holst’s St Paul’s Suite<\/em>, Lennox Berkeley’s Four Poems of St Teresa of Avila<\/em> (with Connolly singing) and Michael Tippett’s rich and virtuosic Fantasia Concertante on a Theme of Corelli<\/em>.<\/p>\n

The strings of the Britten Sinfonia sounded like pure gold at Cadogan Hall, and Connolly, Britain’s favourite mezzo these days, was riveting as Phaedra.<\/p>\n

You can listen to it all here<\/a>. In case you want to fast-forward, the Tippett, which is very much worth hearing, starts at the 49-minute mark, and Phaedra<\/em> starts right after the 75-minute mark.<\/p>\n

This concert is but one of a daily stream being generated by the BBC Proms, and available online either live or in on-demand streaming for a week after each performance.<\/p>\n

Since their founding by Henry Wood in 1895, the summer Promenade Concerts in London have celebrated British music alongside the Western canon. Canada’s music history can’t be compared for depth or breadth, but wouldn’t it be nice if we could celebrate what we have in the same splashy way?<\/p>\n

Now that Toronto has gone quiet art-musically speaking for a month, the BBC’s contributions as well as new concerts being added daily by medici.tv<\/a> provide plenty of online stimulation for the art music lover’s ear.<\/p>\n

John Terauds\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Yesterday, the summer-long BBC Proms concerts presented a gripping, all-English programme of the sort that wouldn’t sell enough tickets here to ever get on a playbill. So let’s celebrate the fact that we can listen from afar.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":14263,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[3,19,36,39,59,1],"tags":[6451,474,497,612,3792,3793],"yst_prominent_words":[],"acf":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.ludwig-van.com\/toronto\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2\/2013\/08\/phaedre.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p9bakr-3I2","amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ludwig-van.com\/toronto\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14262"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ludwig-van.com\/toronto\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ludwig-van.com\/toronto\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ludwig-van.com\/toronto\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ludwig-van.com\/toronto\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=14262"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/www.ludwig-van.com\/toronto\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14262\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":14270,"href":"https:\/\/www.ludwig-van.com\/toronto\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14262\/revisions\/14270"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ludwig-van.com\/toronto\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/14263"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ludwig-van.com\/toronto\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=14262"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ludwig-van.com\/toronto\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=14262"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ludwig-van.com\/toronto\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=14262"},{"taxonomy":"yst_prominent_words","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ludwig-van.com\/toronto\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/yst_prominent_words?post=14262"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}