{"id":37698,"date":"2016-07-15T14:41:14","date_gmt":"2016-07-15T18:41:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.ludwig-van.com\/?p=37698"},"modified":"2016-07-15T14:41:14","modified_gmt":"2016-07-15T18:41:14","slug":"scrutiny-toronto-summer-music","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.ludwig-van.com\/toronto\/2016\/07\/15\/scrutiny-toronto-summer-music\/","title":{"rendered":"SCRUTINY | Toronto Summer Music Opens With A Thrilling Nod To British Genius"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Parker
Parker String Quartet with conductor Joseph Swenson and the TSM Festival Strings. (Photo: James M. Ireland)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Toronto Summer Music Festival:\u00a0<\/strong>The\u00a0Parker String Quartet,\u00a0Nicholas Phan (tenor),\u00a0Neil Deland (french horn), Joseph Swensen (conductor),\u00a0TSM Festival Strings. Thursday, July 14 at Koerner Hall.\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

It\u2019s not accurate to say that the Opening Night concert started the Toronto Summer Music Festival<\/a> with a bang, as there was no percussion to be heard.\u00a0 Even so, it\u2019s hard to imagine a more rousing start to the three-week celebration of chamber music than this evening of English Music for Strings. Nor would it be easy to find a more timely or richer programming theme than London Calling: Music in <\/em>Great Britain.\u00a0 The italics are mine, as the preposition indicates that this is a selection not only of works by Britain\u2019s composers but of the full range of composers whose work was enthusiastically received in London.<\/p>\n

While London\u2019s stature as a cultural capital may be unknown as the Brexit process unfolds, there is no question that it was an incubator of major musical development and excellence for centuries.\u00a0 Handel\u2019s Water Music was literally launched on the Thames in 1717, Haydn\u2019s visits in the 1790s were hugely successful, and Mendelssohn was Queen Victoria\u2019s favourite composer.\u00a0 Also, London gets the credit for being the home of the democratisation of classical music, where the tradition of public concerts for the people, rather than private performances in the Courts for the aristocracy, began.\u00a0 This fascinating thread runs through the Toronto Summer Music Festival programming, as the major public venues of classical music, including the Musical Union of 1865 and The St James Hall Popular Concerts will be featured with concerts that showcase composers who were heard at these venues including Mendelssohn, Walton, Haydn, Beethoven and Schubert. \u00a0An extra layer of history enriches the experience of listening to these concerts in Koerner Hall when we become aware that we\u2019re enjoying the legacy that began in St James Hall.<\/p>\n

And of course Britain itself produced its share of great composers,\u00a0 four of whose works were on last night\u2019s program:\u00a0 Benjamin Britten\u2019s sublime Serenade for Tenor, Horn and Strings, Opus 31, Michael Tippett\u2019s Concerto for Double String Orchestra and\u00a0 Edward Elgar\u2019s \u00a0Introduction and Allegro for Strings, Opus 47\u00a0 which followed the wonderfully satisfying, though more mainstream, St Paul\u2019s Suite, by Gustav Holst.\u00a0\u00a0 The first piece delivered a reminder of the sound of English music which is so familiar to those of us who grew up in Toronto after World War II, when nearly everybody in charge was of British descent when families were fleeing Post War Austerity were arriving, and British War Brides were our friends\u2019 moms.<\/p>\n

\"Tenor
Tenor Nicholas Phan (left), conductor Joseph Swenson (centre), Neil Deland (right) with the TSM Festival Strings. (Photo: James M. Ireland)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

We sang the ancient British plainsong melody that became \u201cGod Save the Queen\u201d every morning and learned Greensleeves and In An English Country Garden in choir. Many of our music teachers hailed from England, including my beloved childhood piano teacher, Miriam Russell Smith, who was affiliated with the Trinity College of Music headquartered in London.<\/p>\n

Greensleeves is woven into Holst\u2019s suite of such British themes, which is also interestingly cosmopolitan, with the inclusion of a Middle Eastern violin solo into the Intermezzo.\u00a0 Holst\u2019s piece also gave us our first opportunity to watch Joseph Swensen conduct, leading the TSM Festival Strings through the opening Jig with an energetic grace that put the festive feeling into the Festival.<\/p>\n

Britten\u2019s Serenade for Tenor, Horn and Strings elevated this program from rewarding to unforgettable.\u00a0 Tenor Nicholas Phan\u2019s ability to produce a sound as fragile as a quivering filament combined with Neil Deland\u2019s utterly even horn created a balance of vulnerability and security that is the essence of the human condition.\u00a0 Featuring eight poems by British literary luminaries including Alfred Lord Tennyson, William Blake, and John Keats, the piece is a perfect demonstration of British genius.<\/p>\n

It isn\u2019t often that a piece for Double String Orchestra is performed, which gave us the opportunity to see the stage of Koerner Hall completely filled with strings.\u00a0 The TSM Festival Strings pulled off the extremely complex rhythms of\u00a0 Tippett\u2019s piece and then brought the concert to a close with the final, synchronised plucked note of Elgar\u2019s Introduction and Allegro, creating an effervescent feeling that combined perfectly with the champagne served in the lobby after the performance.<\/p>\n

You could say that instead of starting with a bang, the Festival started with a pop, providing a buoyancy that is sure to be sustained until the final concert on August 6<\/a>.<\/p>\n

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

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Toronto Summer Music Festival: It\u2019s hard to imagine a more rousing start to the three-week celebration of chamber music than last evening of English Music for Strings. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":21,"featured_media":37704,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[5723,76,19,52,59],"tags":[6267,3357],"yst_prominent_words":[],"acf":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.ludwig-van.com\/toronto\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2\/2016\/07\/English-Music-122.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p9bakr-9O2","amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ludwig-van.com\/toronto\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37698"}],"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\/21"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ludwig-van.com\/toronto\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=37698"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/www.ludwig-van.com\/toronto\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37698\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":37706,"href":"https:\/\/www.ludwig-van.com\/toronto\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37698\/revisions\/37706"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ludwig-van.com\/toronto\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/37704"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ludwig-van.com\/toronto\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=37698"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ludwig-van.com\/toronto\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=37698"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ludwig-van.com\/toronto\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=37698"},{"taxonomy":"yst_prominent_words","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ludwig-van.com\/toronto\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/yst_prominent_words?post=37698"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}