{"id":51551,"date":"2018-03-10T12:13:57","date_gmt":"2018-03-10T17:13:57","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.ludwig-van.com\/toronto\/?p=51551"},"modified":"2018-03-11T18:24:37","modified_gmt":"2018-03-11T22:24:37","slug":"the-scoop-toronto-summer-music-festival-2018-season-inspired-by-the-great-war","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.ludwig-van.com\/toronto\/2018\/03\/10\/the-scoop-toronto-summer-music-festival-2018-season-inspired-by-the-great-war\/","title":{"rendered":"THE SCOOP | Toronto Summer Music Festival Season To Be Inspired By The Great War"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"The
TSMF 2018 will explore a breadth of musical perspectives, past and present, through works by Brahms, Messiaen, Ravel, Shostakovich, as well as music from today\u2019s composers including Chan Ka Nin, Steve Reich, Kinan Azmeh, Abigail Richardson Schulte, and Tim Corlis. (Photo courtesy of the TSMF)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The Toronto Summer Music Festival<\/a> often takes its theme from a major milestone or anniversary in the world at large. In 2017, the Festival\u2019s programming focused on Canada 150<\/a>.\u00a0 In 2015 events were tied to the Pan American Games with the theme of Music of the Americas. This year, to commemorate the centenary of the end of World War I, the Festival\u2019s theme is Reflections of Wartime.\u00a0 From July 12 to August 4, The Toronto Summer Music Festival will showcase masterworks created in response to armed conflict.<\/p>\n

Not that the Festival will be a total descent into lamentation and despair. \u201cIt won\u2019t all be grim and dour, \u201d states Artistic Director Jonathan Crow. \u201cSome of the most beautiful, emotional and challenging music has been written during times of war and conflict as artists struggled to find meaning and give expression to the horrors gripping the world.\u201d<\/p>\n

A glance at the concerts lined up for this summer shows how musically rich this theme is.<\/p>\n

Many of the pieces that will be performed this summer have significant meaning for their performers who still have personal connections with the turmoil of the last century. The Opening Night concert, when The Borodin Quartet will perform\u00a0\u00a0 Shostakovich\u2019s String Quartet No 8 in C minor, Op. 110, dedicated \u201cto the memory of the victims of fascism and war\u201d will make this powerfully clear. Now in its third generation, The Quartet, which was founded during the last year of World War Two, has had a unique relationship with Shostakovich since the original musicians played each quartet for the composer before their premieres. The Quartet will join Russian pianist Lukas Geniu\u0161<\/em>as the next evening to perform the Shostakovich Piano Quintet in G Minor, Opus 57.\u00a0 Geniu\u0161<\/em>as will also play Prokofiev\u2019s Sonata No 7 in B flat major, composed during the Second World War, renowned for the superhuman intensity of its final \u201cprecipitato\u201d Toccata.<\/p>\n

A wealth of brilliant pieces generated by the strife of the 20th-century will be performed during the Festival.\u00a0 At a late night concert at Koerner Hall Jonathan Crow, Julie Albers, Miles Jacques and Natasha Paremski will perform Olivier Messiaen\u2019s Quartet For the End of Time, which was composed and premiered while Messiaen was interned in a Nazi prisoner of war camp.\u00a0 The New Orford Quartet will bring Steve Reich\u2019s\u00a0 \u00a0<\/em>Different Trains to the Lula Lounge.\u00a0 Reich\u2019s piece contrasts his experience of happy train rides taken as an American child during World Two with the simultaneous horrific train transports to death camps forced upon European Jews.<\/p>\n

Music from other eras and zones of conflict includes the Lamentations of Jeremiah, three 16th-century polyphonic compositions that will be performed by Studio de musique ancienne de Montreal.\u00a0 From the year 1673, Jonathan Crow and the TSM Academy Fellows will perform Heinrich Biber\u2019s Battaglia, a sound painting of a battle scene with a lament for the wounded.<\/p>\n

Beloved music that has kept peoples\u2019 sprits up in times of adversity will also be part of the program. O Happy Day with Ben Heppner and the Toronto Mass Choir, an entire evening of Gospel Music, will no doubt blow the top off of Koerner Hall.\u00a0 A Big Band Celebration featuring the music of Benny Goodman, Count Basie, and Glenn Miller, lead by Gordon Foote with JUNO award-winning singer Renee Lee will be an uplifting evening of the sounds that kept the home front and the troops going during World War II.\u00a0 Another legendary figure who devoted himself to performing for troops as well as concentration camp survivors, Yehudi Menuhin, will be the subject of a Tribute concert that will include Beethoven\u2019s Kreutzer Sonata as well as works by Ravel, Kreisler and Corelli, performed by Jonathan Crow and Philip Chiu.<\/p>\n

Many of the big-name performers at the Festival are also teaching in the Toronto Summer Music Festival Academy for elite emerging musicians.\u00a0 The concerts these Fellows give with their Mentors known as the reGeneration series include a wide selection of Art Song and Chamber Music.\u00a0 This includes afternoon and evening concerts as well as master classes open to the public.\u00a0 Mentors this year include lyric tenor Christoph Pr\u00e9gardien, who will make his recital debut with one of the world\u2019s leading collaborative pianists, Julius Drake.<\/p>\n

The gravitas of this year\u2019s theme is balanced by the new name of the Festival\u2019s weekday PWYC concerts:\u00a0 TSM Happy Hour, at the Heliconian Hall.\u00a0 Other free events include TSM Connect and free noon concerts at the Heliconian.\u00a0 On Wednesdays at 11, TSM Kids Concerts will take place at Walter Hall.\u00a0 Introduced last year by Crow, these events were enthusiastically attended by flocks of kids gathered from summer programs taking place around Philosopher\u2019s Walk and the University of Toronto.\u00a0 One event that is bound to be sensational will be the program given in English and Arabic by Syrian clarinetist Kinan Azmeh.\u00a0 There are three other musical centenaries being recognized in the programming: works by Leonard Bernstein and Claude Debussy will be performed, as will Stravinsky\u2019s L\u2019Histoire de Soldat.<\/p>\n

Though not mentioned at the Season Launch, 2018 is the fourth year of the Festival\u2019s Community Academy, a week for committed amateur musicians to learn from and perform with musicians from the Toronto Symphony Orchestra, Chamber Choir Conductor Mattias Maute, and piano virtuosi such as this year\u2019s faculty, Angela Cheng and Philip Chiu.\u00a0 It culminates in an entire day of celebration and performance that concludes with the TSM finale at Walter Hall on Saturday, August 4.<\/p>\n

Contemplating the wonderfully rich line up for this year\u2019s Festival leaves me in a state of eager anticipation, not only for the 2018 exploration of Reflections of Wartime but also for the 2019 Festival, which I hope will be called Reflections of Peace, a theme to which I\u2019m sure the Festival could do justice.<\/p>\n

To purchase your Festival Pass and for further information go to torontosummermusic.com<\/a><\/p>\n

LUDWIG VAN TORONTO<\/i><\/b><\/h3>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

TSMF 2018 will explore a breadth of musical perspectives, past and present, through works by Brahms, Messiaen, Ravel, Shostakovich, as well as music from today\u2019s composers including Chan Ka Nin, Steve Reich, Kinan Azmeh, Abigail Richardson Schulte, and Tim Corlis. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":21,"featured_media":51554,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[14761,36,39,59,63],"tags":[3357],"yst_prominent_words":[17636,7412,17638,7680,17614,6606,6616,7410,10348,14119,17609,7432,7430,6741,15153,15149,17606,9299,12932,17608],"acf":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.ludwig-van.com\/toronto\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2\/2018\/03\/TSMF-2.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p9bakr-dpt","amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ludwig-van.com\/toronto\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/51551"}],"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=51551"}],"version-history":[{"count":13,"href":"https:\/\/www.ludwig-van.com\/toronto\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/51551\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":51581,"href":"https:\/\/www.ludwig-van.com\/toronto\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/51551\/revisions\/51581"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ludwig-van.com\/toronto\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/51554"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ludwig-van.com\/toronto\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=51551"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ludwig-van.com\/toronto\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=51551"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ludwig-van.com\/toronto\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=51551"},{"taxonomy":"yst_prominent_words","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ludwig-van.com\/toronto\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/yst_prominent_words?post=51551"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}