{"id":32134,"date":"2015-11-30T18:20:59","date_gmt":"2015-11-30T23:20:59","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.ludwig-van.com\/?p=32134"},"modified":"2015-11-30T18:20:59","modified_gmt":"2015-11-30T23:20:59","slug":"scrutiny-the-vienna-boys-choir-make-koerner-hall-debut","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.ludwig-van.com\/toronto\/2015\/11\/30\/scrutiny-the-vienna-boys-choir-make-koerner-hall-debut\/","title":{"rendered":"SCRUTINY | The Vienna Boys Choir Make Koerner Hall Debut"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"The
The Vienna Boys Choir<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The Vienna Boys Choir at Koerner Hall Sunday, Nov. 30.<\/h3>\n

[Originally published via the Toronto Star<\/a>]<\/p>\n

There is something compelling about the tone of the Vienna Boys Choir. The sound seems to fly out of them, pure and unfettered. Sung with nearly no emotion, it is this purity that becomes the beauty of it all.<\/p>\n

The Vienna Boys Choir dates back to the late Middle Ages and, after 517 years, are the modern-day descendants of the boys\u2019 choirs of the Viennese Court. Recognizable for their navy blue and white sailors\u2019 suits (which is odd, as Austria is landlocked) the red-blooded boys performed under conductor Bomi Kim for their Koerner Hall debut.<\/p>\n

They charmed a nearly sold out crowd who swooned over the angelic voices flush with endearing looks of adolescent bewilderment.<\/p>\n

The musicianship was high and kept in order by Kim, who did double duty as the pianist for the 20 or so choristers.<\/p>\n

Highlighted by Koerner Hall\u2019s ever dazzling acoustics, they included an ebb and flow mix of repertoire that started with Italians Vivaldi and Monteverdi. The pace quickened with excerpts from Briton Purcell\u2019s \u201cCome Ye Sons of Art,\u201d then slowed again with German Bach\u2019s \u201cJesus Bleibet meine Freude.\u201d Other works included Handel, Saint-Saens, Poulenc, and Viennese stylings by Mozart and Schubert.<\/p>\n

The timbre was magical and recast Koerner Hall as a church whose choirs inspired the world\u2019s most magnificent cathedrals, and made converts of all but the most cynical.<\/p>\n

The second half of the concert was dedicated to Christmas carols and had the audience humming along to many of them. After a few encores, the audience was left with the Christmas spirit in spades.<\/p>\n

We don\u2019t hear boy sopranos as much these days. Some suggest this is because boys are starting puberty much younger than they once did. But as we heard Sunday afternoon, the novelty of hearing a choir of pure treble voices is enduring and should be something to be preserved.<\/p>\n

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

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The Vienna Boys Choir light up a dreary winter’s afternoon with a balanced program that split choral chestnuts with Christmas carols from around the world.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":32135,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[118,76,19,21],"tags":[5710],"yst_prominent_words":[],"acf":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.ludwig-van.com\/toronto\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2\/2015\/11\/vbc.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p9bakr-8mi","amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ludwig-van.com\/toronto\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32134"}],"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\/7"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ludwig-van.com\/toronto\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=32134"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.ludwig-van.com\/toronto\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32134\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":32140,"href":"https:\/\/www.ludwig-van.com\/toronto\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32134\/revisions\/32140"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ludwig-van.com\/toronto\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/32135"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ludwig-van.com\/toronto\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=32134"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ludwig-van.com\/toronto\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=32134"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ludwig-van.com\/toronto\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=32134"},{"taxonomy":"yst_prominent_words","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ludwig-van.com\/toronto\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/yst_prominent_words?post=32134"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}