{"id":92929,"date":"2023-01-23T13:54:08","date_gmt":"2023-01-23T18:54:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.ludwig-van.com\/toronto\/?p=92929"},"modified":"2023-01-23T14:43:02","modified_gmt":"2023-01-23T19:43:02","slug":"scrutiny-21c-offers-mixed-bag-new-works","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.ludwig-van.com\/toronto\/2023\/01\/23\/scrutiny-21c-offers-mixed-bag-new-works\/","title":{"rendered":"SCRUTINY | 21C Offers Mixed Bag Of New Works"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"L-R,
L-R, composers Alice Ho (Photo: Bo Huang); Eliot Britton (Photo courtesy of the artist); Ian Cusson (Photo: John Arano); Stewart Goodyear (Photo courtesy of the RCM); Lembit Beecher (Photo: Jamie Jung); Christos Hatzis (Photo: Bo Huang)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

21C Cinq \u00e0 Sept: After the Fires. January 21, 2023, Temerty Theatre, Toronto. \/ Ian Cusson and Stewart Goodyear: New Works. January 22, 2023, Koerner Hall, Toronto.<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

The Royal Conservatory\u2019s annual 21C Music Festival is in full swing, with four concerts this past weekend. Two of them featured a total of six works, composed by five Canadians and one American, three pieces receiving their world premieres.<\/p>\n

21 Cinq \u00e0 Sept: After the Fires<\/em>, the title of Saturday\u2019s concert before a capacity audience in Temerty Theatre, refers to its timing \u2014 5 p.m. to 7 p.m. \u2014 and the title of its opening work, a 30-minute song cycle by American composer Lembit Beecher in its first Canadian performance.<\/p>\n

Beecher and Canadian librettist Liza Balkan were on hand to explain how Balkan derived her texts from interviews she conducted with people from Beecher\u2019s hometown, Bonny Doon, California, after a devastating wildfire destroyed many houses in August 2020. The words of the seven songs poignantly describe the residents\u2019 panicked decisions about what to take with them, the precious things lost along with their homes and, finally, their hopes for renewal and fears of recurrence.<\/p>\n

Soprano Kim Wang, mezzo-soprano Andrea Ludwig, baritone Korin Thomas-Smith, clarinetist Zachary Gassenheimer and pianist Henry From did their best with the non-tonal, irregularly shaped melodic lines and halting rhythms, which diminished the emotional impact of the townspeople\u2019s distressed words.<\/p>\n

Three works about the frozen North followed the intermission, their composers providing spoken introductions. In the first two, flutist Susan Hoeppner was joined by percussionist Beverley Johnston on vibraphone.<\/p>\n

Arctic Dreams (1)<\/em> by Johnston\u2019s husband, Christos Hatzis, is based on his earlier work, Voices of the Land<\/em>, composed in 1995 for a CBC Radio documentary about Inuit culture. The six-minute piece adds electronic suggestions of chanting, winds and birdcalls to the shimmering, sometimes jazzy, instrumental textures.<\/p>\n

Alice Ho said her ten-minute Ice Woman<\/em>, receiving its world premiere, was inspired by the perilous, solitary journey of 23-year-old Inupiat Ada Blackjack, the only survivor of a 1921 Siberian expedition. However, I failed to detect a clear structure or dramatic trajectory in Ho\u2019s score.<\/p>\n

Septentrion<\/em>, said its composer Eliot Britton, is an archaic Latin word for \u201cnorth.\u201d Here, Hoeppner was accompanied by a soundtrack containing transposed flute clicks and pops \u2014 suggesting, said Britton, wind-blown ice pellets \u2014 plus percussive Inuk vocal beatboxing and pulsating electronic dance music, the eight-minute piece providing the concert\u2019s most entertaining music.<\/p>\n

Yesterday afternoon\u2019s concert in Koerner Hall began with the first complete performance of Ian Cusson\u2019s Bosch Works<\/em>, a three-part suite inspired by paintings by Hieronymus Bosch. In an interview with Ludwig Van<\/a>, Cusson said, \u201cI don\u2019t so much try to capture a music narrative of the paintings [\u2026] I try to translate the emotions I feel when experiencing the paintings into music.\u201d<\/p>\n

All the specific emotion-evoking paintings were projected on a screen over the stage during the related musical performances; unfortunately, without any closeups of small sections of the paintings, it was impossible to see the many intricate details of Bosch\u2019s often scathing, even phantasmagorical imagery.<\/p>\n

The first two movements were devoted to painted triptychs: the nine minutes of The Garden of Earthly Delights<\/em> (Bosch\u2019s most famous work) were performed by Duo Concertante (violinist Nancy Dahn and pianist Timothy Steeves); the 14-minute Sonata for Oboe and Piano \u2014 The Haywain<\/em> was played by Charles Hamann and Fr\u00e9d\u00e9ric Lacroix.<\/p>\n

Then came The Cure of Madness<\/em>, the newest of the three sections in this, its world premiere. Lasting 16 minutes, the four movements, each associated with a different satiric painting, introduced a totally fresh sound world. Conveying an unexpected sense of profound personal involvement, its warm lyricism, complex sonorities and challenging harmonies were stirringly performed by Trio Arkel (violinist Marie B\u00e9dard, violist R\u00e9mi Pelletier and cellist Winona Zelenka). I\u2019d enjoy hearing it again.<\/p>\n

The concert\u2019s second half presented the world premiere of Stewart Goodyear\u2019s seven-movement Specially Mixed,<\/em> commissioned by the 21C Music Festival. Goodyear, renowned for his marathon one-day performances of all 32 Beethoven piano sonatas, told Ludwig Van<\/a>\u00a0that the 46-minute work \u201cincorporates rock, calypso, classical, improvisation\u2026those elements have inspired all that I have written so far.\u201d<\/p>\n

It started with Goodyear, alone on stage, performing on piano and synthesizer for nearly ten minutes. He was replaced by Michael Occhipinti on electric guitar, who, for the next 11 minutes, explored amplified improvisations.<\/p>\n

Occhipinti was then joined by Goodyear, Roberto Occhipinti on bass guitar, Joy Lapps-Lewis on steel pan and drummer Larnell Lewis for the calypso-jazz fusion that dominated the rest of the piece, interrupted by two movements for Goodyear alone marked Cadenza. In the second of these, rippling, minimalist arpeggios offered gentle, lyrical moments.<\/p>\n

Instead of the usual de rigueur standing ovation, only a minority of the audience cheered and stood for Goodyear\u2019s stylistic pastiche. I expect that the remaining four concerts of the 21C festival, on January 25, 28 and 29, will generate much greater listening satisfaction.<\/p>\n

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The Royal Conservatory\u2019s annual 21C Music Festival is in full swing, with four concerts this past weekend featuring three world premieres.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":106,"featured_media":92933,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[40430,18,19,38,52,63],"tags":[4498,784],"yst_prominent_words":[19831,14282,18219,11743,27282,6606,9875,11862,11858,12857,8469,12752,13717],"acf":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.ludwig-van.com\/toronto\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2\/2023\/01\/21C-Reviews-2023.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p9bakr-oaR","amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ludwig-van.com\/toronto\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/92929"}],"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\/106"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ludwig-van.com\/toronto\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=92929"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/www.ludwig-van.com\/toronto\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/92929\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":92942,"href":"https:\/\/www.ludwig-van.com\/toronto\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/92929\/revisions\/92942"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ludwig-van.com\/toronto\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/92933"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ludwig-van.com\/toronto\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=92929"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ludwig-van.com\/toronto\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=92929"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ludwig-van.com\/toronto\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=92929"},{"taxonomy":"yst_prominent_words","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ludwig-van.com\/toronto\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/yst_prominent_words?post=92929"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}