{"id":54928,"date":"2018-07-20T09:34:28","date_gmt":"2018-07-20T13:34:28","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.ludwig-van.com\/toronto\/?p=54928"},"modified":"2018-07-20T09:34:28","modified_gmt":"2018-07-20T13:34:28","slug":"scrutiny-toronto-summer-music-festival-presents-an-inspired-histoire-du-soldat-pairing","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.ludwig-van.com\/toronto\/2018\/07\/20\/scrutiny-toronto-summer-music-festival-presents-an-inspired-histoire-du-soldat-pairing\/","title":{"rendered":"SCRUTINY | Toronto Summer Music Festival Presents An Inspired Histoire du Soldat Pairing"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"L\u2019Histoire
Despite Toronto Summer Music Festival’s impossible pairing of Appalachian Spring, and L\u2019Histoire du Soldat (The Soldier\u2019s Tale), the result was a satisfying night of music and theatre. (Photo: James Ireland)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

L\u2019Histoire du Soldat & Appalachian Spring. Toronto Summer Music Festival. Koerner Hall. July 19.<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

Concert programs that don\u2019t make sense often signal that the evening is going to be a bust on some level. But sometimes an improbable program turns out to be a satisfying and memorable experience.<\/p>\n

The latter came true on Thursday night at Koerner Hall, where the Toronto Summer Music Festival presented a double bill: Aaron Copland\u2019s 1944 ballet suite Appalachian Spring<\/em>, followed by the rough-hewn musical theatre of Igor Stravinsky\u2019s L\u2019Histoire du Soldat<\/em> (The Soldier\u2019s Tale) from 1918.<\/p>\n

Toronto Summer Music Festival artistic director Jonathan Crow led chamber-sized musical forces on stage from his violin chair. In L\u2019Histoire du Soldat<\/em>, the musicians were joined by actor Derek Boyes, dancer Jennifer Nichols and actor Suzanne Roberts Smith in a compelling, contemporized telling of the story of a soldier who trades her fiddle (and her happiness) for the key to worldly riches.<\/p>\n

The aesthetic behind each piece is completely different. And yet, in this difference, we can see a common thread: the virtue of being satisfied with what you have. Copland expresses this state when he quotes the Shaker hymn \u201cSimple Gifts.\u201d Stravinsky\u2019s librettist C.F. Ramuz expresses it when the narrator exclaims, \u201cYou can\u2019t have it all.\u201d<\/p>\n

Both composers were speaking to wrenching times, and the underlying message of asking about the keys to personal contentment is no less relevant today.<\/p>\n

The evening was a demonstration on how it doesn\u2019t take gigantic musical forces to make a strong impact on an audience: Crow was one of 13 instrumentalists on stage for the Copland \u2013 the size of orchestra the composer had in mind when he first wrote Appalachian Spring<\/em>; and Stravinsky\u2019s score asks for only seven players.<\/p>\n

Having the bare minimum of instruments meant that, in the generous acoustics at Koerner Hall, it was possible to appreciate each player as well as the clever and very different ways in which each composer enriched the colour and texture of their music by the choice of instrument pairings.<\/p>\n

The playing from both ensembles was remarkable for its precision, balance and clarity. For the Stravinsky, the players were all friends of Crowe\u2019s from the Toronto Symphony Orchestra. In the Copland, members of the TSO were joined by fellows of the Festival\u2019s academy, which runs alongside the public events.<\/p>\n

\"L\u2019Histoire
L\u2019Histoire du Soldat Photo Credit:(From left) Suzanne Roberts Smith, Jonathan Crow. (Photo: James Ireland)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The tone-poetry of Appalachian Spring<\/em>\u00a0\u2014 the second word in the title, hastily plucked by Copland from a poem by Hart Crane, is about a water source in the Adirondack Mountains \u2014 came across with particular lustre. Even though the overall approach to the music was delicate, it never lost its thematic purpose or rhythmic drive.<\/p>\n

Stravinsky\u2019s score, as spiky as his great ballets that had come immediately before, pulsed with brittle energy. The performances were compelling. Smith was charismatic as the soldier, Boyes deftly switched between characters with changes of voice tone and accent, and Nichols\u2019 light-bodied dancing was riveting. Kudos to stage director Alaina Viau for piecing it together seamlessly and with a good dose of humour.<\/p>\n

(In a fleeting moment, we witnessed what was probably the most tasteful yet fully evocative depiction of oral sex I\u2019ve ever seen.)<\/p>\n

Pairing a rural idyll with a Modernist fable may not be an obvious choice, but it made the world feel like a bigger, broader place as the performances unfolded in front of our eyes and ears. It\u2019s too bad there couldn\u2019t be multiple performances so that more people could experience this magical side of musical theatre.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Despite Toronto Summer Music Festival’s impossible pairing of Appalachian Spring, and L\u2019Histoire du Soldat (The Soldier\u2019s Tale), the result was a satisfying night of music and theatre.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":54929,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[14761,76,19,52,59,63],"tags":[1601,13601,21368,3357],"yst_prominent_words":[19708,19706,21372,21369,21375,6606,19707,19705,21370,7410,21365,21373,21371,21374,7432,7430,21355,15153,15149,17606],"acf":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.ludwig-van.com\/toronto\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2\/2018\/07\/Soldat.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p9bakr-ehW","amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ludwig-van.com\/toronto\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/54928"}],"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=54928"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.ludwig-van.com\/toronto\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/54928\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":54935,"href":"https:\/\/www.ludwig-van.com\/toronto\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/54928\/revisions\/54935"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ludwig-van.com\/toronto\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/54929"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ludwig-van.com\/toronto\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=54928"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ludwig-van.com\/toronto\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=54928"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ludwig-van.com\/toronto\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=54928"},{"taxonomy":"yst_prominent_words","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ludwig-van.com\/toronto\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/yst_prominent_words?post=54928"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}