Leonard Turnevicius

Huw Williams pulls out the stops at Central Presbyterian

The op. 321 Casavant in Central Presbyterian Church has long been considered one of Hamilton’s finest organs. It was installed in 1908, yet its present console dates from 1950. This past summer, that console was refurbished to the tune of $65,000 by Robert Hiller for the Toronto based Alan T. Jackson & Co. The console now boasts of 250 memory levels, MIDI, recording playback, and is accessible through a remote wireless keyboard.

To inaugurate the revamped instrument, Paul Grimwood, Central's music director, invited Huw Williams, formerly sub-organist at St. Paul's Cathedral in London, England, and currently director of music at the Church of the Redeemer Bryn Mawr, Pennsylvania, to give a recital on Friday, October 24.

With almost 300 seated in Central’s pews, Williams opened his recital in striking fashion, with Messiaen’s L’apparition de l’Église éternelle. True, it was a nod to the French master’s centenary, which for the most part has regretfully gone unnoticed in Hamilton’s classical music scene. But the work, with its Très lent tempo, offered Williams a technically easier concert starter than if he’d shot out of the gate with, say, a Bach Prelude and Fugue. Williams's reading wasn’t overly expansive, though Messiaen’s chords did ebb and flow in an effective and natural manner. However, one expected more volume from the instrument in the bars marked quadruple and quintuple forte.

Williams followed the Messiaen with another French work, the Cortège et Litanie by Marcel Dupré. The opening movement featured the Grand Orgue’s lovely Bourdon 8’, though the Litanie didn’t quite dance off the page.

In Bach’s Präludium und Fuga in G BWV 541, Williams made use of the Grand Orgue’s principals and mixture plus the Pédale’s Trompette 8’ and Bombarde 16’, stops not dissimilar, in name at least, to what Bach would have had at his disposal in Arnstadt’s Neue Kirche (which however lacked an Trumpet 8’ in the bass), in Weimar’s Schlosskirche, and in Leipzig’s Thomaskirche. Williams carefully delineated the fugue’s subject in a detached manner (gestossen), though the succeeding sixteenth notes were rendered by and large in a continuously legato manner (geschleift).

Including Healey Willan’s brief chorale preludes on Quem pastores, and Vulpius was Williams's quaint tip of the hat to CANCON.

To conclude the first half, Williams trotted out a bonbon, Lefébure-Wély’s Sortie in E Flat. Musically speaking, the Sortie came up wanting when stacked up against the preceding works. The effect of placing it in the program was akin to serving invited guests day-old candy floss from the local circus after having previously dined at a five star restaurant. How much more brilliant and fitting would it have been to include, say, Jehan Alain’s Litanies on the program in its place?

On the other side of the interval, Williams offered up Guy Bovet’s Hamburger Totentanz. A cheeky work, it blatantly borrows from Wagner’s Der fliegende Holländer, the Barcarolle from Offenbach’s Les contes d’Hoffmann, as well as Beethoven’s Für Elise, all the while faintly recalling Stravinsky’s neo-classical period. During the performance, there was a highly audible click coming from the D pedal key. Even though that click took on an unwanted significance since the note figured frequently in Bovet’s ostinato, surprisingly, one’s ear gradually became accustomed to hearing it.

Mozart’s Adagio and Allegro K. 594 wasn’t composed for the organ, but for “an organ in a clock” (ein Orgelwerk in einer Uhr). We know that Mozart wasn’t overly fond of this machine’s “little pipes” which, for him, sounded “too high” and “too childlike.” The Casavant’s timbre, however, was a tad too weighty, even though Williams used the pedal largely as an assisting keyboard.

The program closed with Reubke’s staggering Grosse Orgel-Sonate, Der 94ste Psalm. Williams effectively captured the work’s manifold moods from its gloomy opening, to its gentleness, that thanks to an open flute stop just prior to the Larghetto, to its virtuosic passages so indebted to the writing of Franz Liszt.

Williams obliged the audience’s standing ovation with an encore, Vaughan Williams’s Prelude on Rhosymedre, a gentle setting which can easily evoke a meadow in the mind’s eye. Unfortunately, that bucolic idyll was punctured by some intermittent rumbling emanating from a colicky pipe housed in a case located in the chancel.

Pity though that Williams didn’t make use of the entire organ. Remote wireless keyboard aside, the Echo division in the rear gallery went unused. Tiny annoyances though when compared to the evening’s marvels.

Magic Flute launches "new" Opera Hamilton

It’s been a long wait for many fans of Opera Hamilton. But thanks to their patience, goodwill, and generosity, not to mention the same from local businesses, as well as a successful bid to seek protection from bankruptcy, the company has resurfaced with a new lease on musical life.

That proverbial new lease will come to fruition next Thursday, October 30 at 8 p.m. with a repeat performance on Saturday, November 1 at 8 p.m. in Hamilton Place when the company stages Mozart’s singspiel, Die Zauberflöte (The Magic Flute), directed by Michael Cavanagh with the Hamilton Philharmonic Orchestra, the Opera Hamilton Chorus, and singers from the Hamilton Children’s Choir all under the baton of Opera Hamilton’s general director, David Speers.

Flute was to have been staged last October were it not for the company’s crippling financial state which led to the board’s decision to run a severely limited season which, for all intents and purposes, ended with Popera hitting the Hamilton Place boards last November, before filing for protection from creditors in January. The productions that didn’t play last season were moved to 2008-09, Massenet’s Werther eventually being cast out of the mix into 2009-10.

Among the artists who were moved into this season was Toronto based soprano Shannon Mercer. Opera Hamilton’s subscribers will remember Mercer from her portrayal of Rosina in Rossini’s Il barbiere di Siviglia, as well as a Liederabend held with other cast members in the fall of 2003. That year, Mercer made history of sorts with The Spectator--she was on the cover of the first ever Go section.

Mercer cut her teeth with the Canadian Opera Company Ensemble Studio in Toronto from 2000-02. It was there that she first met vocal coach Margaret Singer, with whom she would eventually study in Europe on two occasions thanks to a Canada Council grant.

Singer took Mercer through the paces of seven operatic roles, one of which was Pamina in Die Zauberflöte. “Oh, it’s so perfect for you,” recalled Mercer of Singer’s words to her back in those study sessions.

However, several years would elapse before the role actually came up for Mercer. But when it did, it came up big time. In fact, this year has become Mercer’s “Pamina” year. She will sing the role twice in Hamilton, then take it to Victoria’s Pacific Opera in April for a further five performances under Tim Vernon, then appear in four concert performances with Vernon’s Orchestra London in late May and early June.

“It’s kind of funny that it all happened like that,” said Mercer, “but it makes for an easy preparation year, except for the dialogue which will change in each production.” Opera Hamilton’s production, which is using sets and costumes from the Opera Company of Philadelphia, will be sung in German, though the spoken dialogue will be in English. The cast also includes Colin Ainsworth (Tamino), Alex Dobson (Papageno), Audrey Elizabeth Luna (Queen of the Night), and Kevin Langan (Sarastro).

“I’m really happy that it all panned out for Opera Hamilton,” said Mercer. “It’s an important company for young singers. Opera Hamilton was always such a younger company that would embrace younger singers with less experience. It was always nice to have that company that would give you the chance to perform that role to get your foot in the door.” Tickets are $35, $55, $75, and $95. Call 905-527-7627.

But Opera Hamilton isn’t the only local entity with a new lease on life. So too, the organ at Central Presbyterian Church, 165 Charlton Avenue West, the console of which recently underwent a $65,000 refurbishment.

Huw Williams, formerly sub-organist at St. Paul’s Cathedral, London, England, currently music director at the Church of the Redeemer in Bryn Mawr,Pennsylvania,will inaugurate Central’s refurbished instrument with a recital tomorrow at 8 p.m. On the bill are selections from Williams’s CD, Organ Spectacular, plus some Bach and Mozart. Tickets are $15, student $10, and are available at the door or by calling 905-522-9098.

Princely role in Russian epic 'Inspired dance' in War and Peace

Landing the role of Prince Andrei Bolkonsky in Prokofiev’s monumental opera War and Peace wasn’t an epic struggle for Russell Braun.

“It’s one of those roles, before you know anything about it, people and colleagues keep mentioning it to you,” said Braun from his Glen Williams home. Colleagues such as British baritone Simon Keenlyside, who sang Andrei in Tim Albery’s production for the English National Opera in 2001. Accept the role if it ever came around was Keenlyside’s tip to Braun.

And that’s exactly what Braun did when the Canadian Opera Company’s general director Richard Bradshaw tapped him as Andrei for the 2008 season. Sadly, Bradshaw never lived to see Braun’s Andrei. He suffered a fatal heart attack in August 2007. “I’ve never thought more of Richard Bradshaw than this production,” said Braun. “He would have been so proud.”

The opera, based on Tolstoy’s novel which depicted the Russian peoples’ struggle against Napoléon’s 1812 invasion, was an epic struggle for Prokofiev. Though he’d read Tolstoy’s tome as a fourteen year old in 1905, it was only thirty years later that he began nursing the idea of basing an opera on it. Hitler’s invasion of Stalin’s U.S.S.R. in 1941, with its seeming parallels to 1812, provoked Prokofiev to begin.

Together with his paramour, Mira Mendelson, Prokofiev fashioned a libretto that largely used Tolstoy’s original text in the lyrical scenes, but borrowed from other literary sources for the epic scenes. The compositional trail was a twisted journey which resulted in five versions of the opera. Most of these came from Prokofiev’s attempts to appease ideologically manic Soviet apparatchiks, mandarins who cited the “Napoleon” and “Moscow on Fire” scenes as suspect. Prokofiev never lived to see a complete performance. He died the same day as Stalin, March 5, 1953.

With over 125 cast members (61 roles, plus chorus and dancers), and thirteen scenes running to almost four hours in length, mounting War and Peace is an epic challenge. Outside of Russia, only large cities such as London, and New York have seen the work. Bradshaw chose Albery’s ENO production since it doesn’t require a huge theatre. In Toronto, it will be sung in Russian.

Of the cast, most are Canadians with some notable exceptions from Russia including Elena Semenova (Countess Natasha Rostova), Mikhail Kit (Kutuzov), and Vassily Gerello (Napoleon), who, in February was bestowed with the honourary title of People’s Artist of Russia by then president Vladimir Putin at a ceremony in St. Petersburg’s Mariinsky Theatre.

Braun has been taken by the Russians. “Just to see a Russian singer stand on stage with this great sense of pride and nobility, I find that very inspiring,” he said.

War and Peace contains some of Prokofiev’s most inspired dance music this side of his Romeo and Juliet ballet. Not surprisingly, Braun, who took ballroom lessons as a teen in Cologne, Germany, has found great satisfaction therein. “My (stage) partner (Semenova) is a beautiful, elegant Russian woman, a very fine dancer,” said Braun. “That has really been some of the nicest parts in the rehearsal process so far.” For more info, log onto www.coc.ca.

Prokofiev's War and Peace invades Toronto

When Sergei Prokofiev began composing his opera War and Peace shortly after the German invasion of the Soviet Union in 1941, little could he have imagined what lay in store for the work.

He worked on the opera until his last days--composing, re-shaping, adding, and revising. Some of those revisions, such as the addition of what was to become Scene 2 (the St. Petersburg New Year’s Eve dance scene) came at the behest of conductor Samuil Samosud who promised Prokofiev performances of the opera at Moscow’s Bolshoi Theatre, then later at Leningrad’s Maly Theatre. And some of those changes came as a result of Soviet officials strenuously claiming that Prokofiev needed to strengthen the opera’s heroic and dramatic aspects. To this end, Prokofiev added a Choral Epigraph at the end of The Peace. (Ironically, Prokofiev never saw a complete performance of the opera in his lifetime.) The net result of these many changes is that there is no real “definitive” version of War and Peace, though the Soviet edition of Prokofiev’s collected works contains the thirteen scene version. It’s this version that is usually presented nowadays, with directors and conductors cutting out bits or swaths of music.

It’s this thirteen scene version that is currently being staged at the Four Seasons Centre by the Canadian Opera Company. The production is a revival of director Tim Albery’s staging originally done for the English National Opera in 2001.

Albery’s conception of the work mixes the years of 1809-12, as found in Tolstoy’s novel upon which Prokofiev largely based his opera, with those of Prokofiev’s day.

As seen on October 14, Albery’s staging opens with a bag lady walking across the stage in front of a scrim with a picture of a dreary, Soviet-era apartment block. The scrim is then raised to reveal the chorus, dressed in costume designer Ana Jebens’s circa 1930-40s drab, Soviet proletarian garb, with the U.S.S.R.’s hammer and sickle prominent in the background of Hildegard Bechtler’s set.

Directors often dispense with Prokofiev’s overture, and Albery is no exception to this. However, instead of launching into Scene 1 (Count Rostov’s Estate, 1809), Albery begins with the Choral Epigraph.

The result is an aesthetic faux pas. In its rightful spot, the Epigraph signals the oncoming war between the French and the Russians as depicted in Act 2. Placed at the beginning of Act 1, it results in an incongruous lead in to Scene 1 (Count Rostov’s Estate, 1809), a scene which has nothing to do with war.

Not only is this an aesthetic misstep, but a musical one as well for Prokofiev’s music in the Epigraph is hardly inspired or inspiring. Prokofiev aims for grandeur in this Soviet mass-song, but he misses by a Moscow mile. If there’s any consolation in these five minutes of music, it’s that it’s over and done with early on. Better still, why not cut out this blatant attempt at AgitProp music altogether?

The answer to that is that Albery’s proletariat forms a side show to War and Peace. Not only do some of them serve as a stage crew effecting scene changes (setting up and removing the minimal props on stage), but as they do so, they stare down the opera’s original stage characters who are outfitted in circa nineteenth century costumes, giving them the evil eye just as perhaps the cultural apparatchiks of Prokofiev’s day did upon seeing the opera.

But this odd mélange of 1812 and 1941-45 reached its apogee in Act 2 where suddenly, 1940s era Siberian shock troops with Kalashnikov-like assault rifles emerged upon the retreat of Napoleon’s French troops. To cap things off, Bechtler’s Soviet hammer and sickle returned for the opera’s final chorus, “The enemy has been put to rout”, again in prominent view on the backdrop, warming the heart of any Marxist-Leninist who may have been in attendance.

The love story between Prince Andrei Bolkonsky and Countess Natasha Rostova was similarly treated rather crudely. In the Twelfth Scene, Natasha sings of how much Andrei has meant to her, with Andrei eventually dying in her arms. Yet, in Albery’s staging, Natasha covers Andrei with a blanket to keep him warm, then walks off stage as he “expires.” All this done in clear contradiction to what is sung later (and visible in the surtitles), that Andrei died in Natasha’s arms.

Happily, the musical performance did not exhibit such aberrations. The cast of 129 (38 principal soloists, 77 chorus members, 14 dancers) were headed by Canadian baritone Russell Braun (Andrei) and Russian soprano Elena Semenova (Natasha). Both gave strong performances, and projected well. Braun, virile and handsome, effectively captured the divisions of his character, while Semenova was ravishing in some the opera’s most beguiling music.

The strong Canadian cast also included Alain Coulombe as a noteworthy Count Ilya Rostov. Lauren Segal and Norinne Burgess gave telling portrayals of Sonya and Princess Marie Bolkonskaya respectively. However, Gabrielle Prata’s voice was a let down in the albeit small role of Matryosha, the gypsy woman.

Of the other Russians in the cast, Mikhail Agafonov was a stout Count Pierre Bezukhov, and Oleg Balashov was an engaging Prince Anatole Kuragin. Vassily Gerello, who has sung the role of Napoleon in productions in and outside of Russia since 1991, avoided all clichéd mannerisms including the Napoleon-with-hand-in-waistcoat stance. His Napoleon was not arrogant, but a commander deep in worry over the outcome of his tactical decisions. Mikhail Kit, who along with Gerello is a member of St. Petersburg's Mariinsky Theatre, was a circumspect General Kutuzov, one who marshaled his vocal forces in order to bellow out the final high E in that grand aria, the opera’s hit tune, of Scene 10. Yet, why Kit wore an eye-patch over his left eye when the real Kutuzov lost the sight of his right eye in a battle in 1774 is a head-scratcher.

German conductor Johannes Debus drew out the colours of Prokofiev’s score. And certainly, the dance music of Scene 2 was quite convincing. Yet, there were many instances where Debus was an ineffective marshal of the pit and the stage. The orchestra and chorus were not together in portions of the Epigraph, and during Andrei’s death scene, the orchestra noticeably raced ahead of the offstage “pi-ti pi-ti pi-ti” chorus.

Prokofiev’s War and Peace runs in repertory with Mozart’s Don Giovanni (which includes its own staging aberrations as Masetto disguises himself as the Commendatore’s statute to scare Giovanni to death) until November 1 at the Four Seasons Centre, 145 Queen St. W., Toronto. Tickets are adults $60 - $290, young people $30 - $290. Call 1-800-250-4653.