{"id":94764,"date":"2023-02-23T14:38:31","date_gmt":"2023-02-23T19:38:31","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.ludwig-van.com\/toronto\/?p=94764"},"modified":"2023-02-23T14:38:31","modified_gmt":"2023-02-23T19:38:31","slug":"scrutiny-emily-dangelo-brings-light-shadow-koerner-hall","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.ludwig-van.com\/toronto\/2023\/02\/23\/scrutiny-emily-dangelo-brings-light-shadow-koerner-hall\/","title":{"rendered":"SCRUTINY | Emily D\u2019Angelo Brings Light And Shadow To Koerner Hall"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Emily
Emily D’Angelo (Photos: Mark Pillai for DG)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Nice to see so many people in Koerner Hall for a song recital. So said RCM performing arts director Mervon Mehta Wednesday evening in his warmup address.<\/p>\n

The turnout was not altogether surprising given the rapid ascent of Emily D\u2019Angelo and the acclaim with which her recording for Deutsche Grammophon (on sale in the lobby) has been met. There were hoots of approval from the vocal-savvy crowd when the Toronto mezzo-soprano first took to the stage. She proceeded to give us a good deal more to applaud \u2014 while raising questions about what constitutes effective programming in this day and age.<\/p>\n

The first half was introspective. Two of Schoenberg\u2019s early Op. 2 songs established an atmosphere of quiet late-romantic urgency that led naturally enough to contemporary reflections on solitude by Missy Mazzoli, Cecilia Livingston (present in the audience) and Sarah Kirkland Snider.<\/p>\n

In Mazzoli\u2019s \u201cHello Lord\u201d the musical interest resided mainly in the turbulent piano part, which was played luminously by Sophia Mu\u00f1oz. Nonetheless, D\u2019Angelo could hold our interest with her focused, walnutty tone, even through the folksy parlando of Randy Newman\u2019s \u201cWandering Boy,\u201d which I suspect was heard in its Koerner Hall premiere.<\/p>\n

After intermission, the music was more outgoing, and D\u2019Angelo opened the floodgates accordingly. In Aaron Copland\u2019s \u201cWhy do They Shut me out of Heaven?\u201d the words \u201ctoo loud\u201d were both suitably ironic and striking in their own right. The same composer\u2019s \u201cI\u2019ve Heard an Organ Talk\u201d (another Emily Dickinson setting) evoked the drama of the titular instrument with an impressive range of colour and volume. Rebecca Clarke\u2019s \u201cThe Seal Man\u201d benefitted from the singer\u2019s bold projection and storytelling talent. Clara Schumann\u2019s uptempo \u201cLorelei\u201d suggested an equal aptitude for 19th-century Lieder.<\/p>\n

Perceptive readers will notice that this program reflected a preference for female over male composers. (I have not mentioned Hildegard von Bingen and Florence Price.) I felt that it would have been a good thing to hear D\u2019Angelo hit a popular standard or two out of the park. We have a right to compare her, implicitly, with other singers of her calibre.<\/p>\n

Of course, this artist has made her name partly with an exploratory approach to repertoire. It was interesting that she observed one old-timey recital convention by changing at intermission from a black pantsuit with puffy epaulettes into a dress. The heavy boots remained.<\/p>\n

Her stage deportment was confident. There was one encore, from Ruperto Chap\u00ed\u2019s zarzuela Las hijas del Zebedeo<\/em>. There could easily have been another. Oh, well. We shall be hearing Emily D\u2019Angelo again.<\/p>\n

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The turnout at Koerner Hall was not surprising, given the rapid ascent of Emily D\u2019Angelo and the acclaim with which her recording for Deutsche Grammophon.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":25,"featured_media":94767,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[40430,76,19,43,49,52],"tags":[5671,33252,1876],"yst_prominent_words":[10459,16852,8399,21600,8544,10549,9952,7515,12145,7670,6606,6616,12491,14368,10535],"acf":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.ludwig-van.com\/toronto\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2\/2023\/02\/Emily-DAngelo-review.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p9bakr-oEs","amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ludwig-van.com\/toronto\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/94764"}],"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\/25"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ludwig-van.com\/toronto\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=94764"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.ludwig-van.com\/toronto\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/94764\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":94768,"href":"https:\/\/www.ludwig-van.com\/toronto\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/94764\/revisions\/94768"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ludwig-van.com\/toronto\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/94767"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ludwig-van.com\/toronto\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=94764"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ludwig-van.com\/toronto\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=94764"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ludwig-van.com\/toronto\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=94764"},{"taxonomy":"yst_prominent_words","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ludwig-van.com\/toronto\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/yst_prominent_words?post=94764"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}