{"id":27306,"date":"2015-04-14T10:15:23","date_gmt":"2015-04-14T14:15:23","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.ludwig-van.com\/?p=27306"},"modified":"2015-04-18T09:36:35","modified_gmt":"2015-04-18T13:36:35","slug":"the-morning-after-christianne-stotijn-and-julius-drake-evoke-of-the-sounds-of-spring","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.ludwig-van.com\/toronto\/2015\/04\/14\/the-morning-after-christianne-stotijn-and-julius-drake-evoke-of-the-sounds-of-spring\/","title":{"rendered":"THE MORNING AFTER | Christianne Stotijn and Julius Drake Evoke of the Sounds of Spring"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"mezzo
mezzo Christianne Stotijn and pianist Julius Drake<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Ladies Morning Musical Club, Mezzo-soprano Christianne Stotijn and pianist Julius Drake at Pollack Hall, April 12, 2015.<\/h3>\n

MONTREAL \u2013 Sunday afternoon began with the usual apologies to the barman who woke me up. Then I made my way to a club sportif in Outremont where juice boxes were served to a roomful of toddlers. This was a fundraiser for\u00a0Bach Before Bedtime<\/span><\/a>, an organization that introduces kids to classical instruments and the people who play them. I watched a little boy carry his baby brother closer to the stage. It\u2019s an easy thing to like even when the room smells faintly of swimming pool.<\/p>\n

The pink-cheeked wave smashed against the rocks of my main destination, McGill\u2019s Pollack Hall, which recently turned 40 and where a man slowly walked down the aisle wearing a fleece emblazoned with \u201cMANNERS OF DYING\u201d.<\/p>\n

As far as I know he survived what followed,\u00a0a recital by Christianne Stotijn<\/span><\/a>, who\u00a0began with songs by Tchaikovsky that she has recorded with the pianist, Julius Drake, and for which they seem to have a special talent. Her Russian is excellent and her voice\u00a0roams widely; it can narrow to a sorrowful point and as suddenly bloom in throaty contralto range. In high range it is exceptionally clear and calm, and though there were hints of fatigue by the end of the afternoon, she never lost her warmth.<\/p>\n

I haven\u2019t heard Tchaivkosky songs in a long time. They remind me of hot summers on the estate sipping fermented bread below the swaying birches. The fields rippled in the wind and the peasants sang pretty songs to the beat of the whip. They seemed so happy then. And yet we had to flee.<\/p>\n

Stotijn sang them almost casually, with weight but not too much emphasis. Like something you\u2019d hear out a window. It’s the only way to sing this hysterical man. Some of them, like \u201cMy Genius, My Angel, My Friend\u201d, were written while he was still a teenager. \u201cIf I had known\u201d is my favourite, it\u2019s light fingered piano introduction and exit bizarrely sandwich a tragic, folksy song.<\/p>\n

At her best, Stotijn adds interior movements to her phrasing, like a dance inside a single syllable, and it\u2019s wonderfully suited to these lines. And the Shostakovich that followed, six mysterious, beautiful and angry settings of Tsvetaeva poems. These are an incredible cocktail, written at the beginning of the 20th century by a woman who would be driven to suicide by poverty and oppression, and set to music sixty years later by a composer who was both a party member and a target himself. The settings give the poems a darkly prophetic quality. Tsvetaeva died in 1941 and you could say\u00a0Shostakovich completed them.<\/p>\n

Stotijn\u2019s intimate introduction was a good example for talkative musicians in the audience: speak only if you have real enthusiasm for the subject, otherwise it\u2019s awkward for everybody. Then she sang, and all six were captivating, but \u201cAnna Akhmatova\u201d was the best in its balance of respect and envious indignation.<\/p>\n

The second half had four Korngold settings of Shakespeare, more than enough of him for the rest of the year. He certainly found an appropriate haven in 1930s Hollywood. The contrived and sentimental songs brought out unflattering exaggeration in both singer and accompanist, but a handful of Strauss leider set things right: Heine\u2019s \u201cSchlechtes Wetter\u201d managed tender playfulness without being cloying and von Gilm\u2019s \u201cZueignung\u201d ended on a nicely ambiguous note, earnest and sardonic. I left looking forward to my shelf of poems and a warm evening.<\/p>\n

The\u00a0Women\u2019s Musical Club of Toronto will present Mezzo-soprano Christianne Stotijn and pianist Julius Drake\u00a0at Walter Hall, on Thursday, April 16. Details here<\/a>.<\/p>\n

#LUDWIGVAN<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

Want more updates on Toronto centric classical music news and review\u00a0before your anyone else finds out? Get our exclusive newsletter\u00a0here<\/a><\/span>\u00a0and follow us on\u00a0Twitter<\/a><\/span>\u00a0for all the latest.<\/em><\/p>\n

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

Mezzo-soprano Christianne Stotijn and pianist Julius Drake perform a spring-like program of song at Pollack Hall.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":12,"featured_media":27310,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[118,76,19,52,4936],"tags":[5388,1803,5352],"yst_prominent_words":[],"acf":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.ludwig-van.com\/toronto\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2\/2015\/04\/JD-Christianne-Stotijn-Marco-Borggreve1.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p9bakr-76q","amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ludwig-van.com\/toronto\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27306"}],"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\/12"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ludwig-van.com\/toronto\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=27306"}],"version-history":[{"count":9,"href":"https:\/\/www.ludwig-van.com\/toronto\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27306\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":27464,"href":"https:\/\/www.ludwig-van.com\/toronto\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27306\/revisions\/27464"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ludwig-van.com\/toronto\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/27310"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ludwig-van.com\/toronto\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=27306"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ludwig-van.com\/toronto\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=27306"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ludwig-van.com\/toronto\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=27306"},{"taxonomy":"yst_prominent_words","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ludwig-van.com\/toronto\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/yst_prominent_words?post=27306"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}