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Not quite forgotten: Liszt’s Valses oubliées
The composer centennials & bicentennials may be artificial stimuli to research, but the effect is real. Knowing that everyone is suddenly focusing upon a particular period seems to inspire all...
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Lisztomania CD
Lisztomania? It was a Ken Russell film. And the name described an actual phenomenon, crazed admirers of the great pianist Franz Liszt aka Liszt Ferenc back in the 19th Century. And there’s a CD from...
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The Lost Karaoke Tapes
I’m impressed. Nicole Lizée has more reason to be pompous & full of herself than any composer or performer I know. But she seems to be totally unpretentious. Exhibit “A”: the piece we saw &...
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Leaning into the Unknowable @nationalballet
As I consider renewing my Canadian Opera Company subscription, it was worth having a look at the other company occupying the Four Seasons Centre. Watching the new program at the National Ballet of...
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Beethoven 250: 2020 vision
It’s an oxymoron of a year, this 2020 that is a little over two weeks from its conclusion. Social butterflies (those of us who self-identify as extroverts & are therefore energized by other...
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Wohin: where do we go from here? now what?
As we come to the end of 2020, we may wonder. Where do we go from here? Now what? It’s in that spirit that I invoke a Schubert song, “Wohin” from his cycle Die Schöne Müllerin. First there was a poem...
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Baudelaire Bicentennial
I must be brief. How does one speak of the bicentennial of a poet such as Charles Baudelaire, born two hundred years ago on April 9th in 1821? how to find the right words,…? Some know him for his...
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The Music of Our Time: John Williams at 90
It can be awe-inspiring to look at a composer’s lifetime of work. We know that JS Bach composed over 1,000 pieces in his 65 years, while Mozart, who lived only 35 years, composed perhaps 600 pieces....
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Competing icons at the RCM: Gould, Liszt and others
It’s a branding exercise to give a building a name. Roy Thomson has his hall. Both Rogers and Four Seasons have Centres. They already have The Glenn Gould School in the Royal Conservatory of Music. So...
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TSO Rite of Spring, making a statement
You know you’re at a special concert when you can’t identify the highlight, between pianist Jean-Yves Thibaudet’s flashy reading of the Gershwin Concerto in F before intermission, or an overwhelming...
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