Intimations of Heaven
Songs of love and longing, despair and redemption
Tuesday and Wednesday, November 2 and 3, 2010, at 8PM
Pre-concert talks at 7:15 pm
Trinity St. Paul's Centre
For Immediate Release - Toronto, October 5, 2010: For Immediate Release - Toronto, October 5, 2010: Toronto's inventive Talisker Players launch their 2010/2011 season at Trinity St. Paul's Centre with Intimations of Heaven, a program of gorgeous music from the great tradition of German art song. Soprano Monica Whicher and mezzo soprano Krisztina Szabó - two of Canada's most sought-after vocal stars - join the instrumentalists of Talisker Players for two evenings of words and music: Tuesday, November 2 and Wednesday, November 3, at 8PM.
Intimations of Heaven features Mahler's Lieder eines fahrenden Gesellen (Songs of a Wayfarer) in the rarely-heard arrangement by Arnold Schoenberg for 10 players (string quartet, double bass, flute, clarinet, piano, harmonium and percussion). Schoenberg wrote this arrangement for his brilliant but short-lived Verein für musikalische Privataufführungen (Society for Private Musical Performances) which was dedicated to performing the music of his contemporaries at the highest possible level. Wagner's Wesendonck Lieder will also be heard, in a rich arrangement for string quartet by the Canadian composer John Plant. The text is by Mathilde Wesendonk, with whom Wagner had a passionate friendship. This was the relationship that inspired his masterpiece, Tristan und Isolde, and indeed two of the songs in this set are studies for the opera. The piece, originally written for voice and piano, is frequently performed in Felix Mottl's orchestral arrangement, but Plant felt the string quartet is the ideal medium for its "intense intimacy". The program also includes two works by Schubert. Auf dem Strom is one of a handful of lieder in which Schubert added a second instrument with the piano – in this case French horn. Mignon Lieder is a grouping of three of the many settings Schubert composed from the poignantly romantic lyrics of Goethe's novel "Wilhelm Meisters Lehrjahre", arranged for string quartet by the German composer Aribert Reimann. Reimann's selections are transcribed as a continuous, connected mini-cantata, which follows Mignon through her longing for an absent lover, passionate secrecy and anticipation of release in death.
Talisker Players round out the program with Trakl-lied by the award-winning Canadian composer Jocelyn Morlock. It features both singers in an ethereal duet, accompanied by viola, double bass, flute and percussion. Talisker Players' concerts always include words as well as music. Readings for Intimations of Heaven will be great writers of the past and present – from John Donne to Calvin Trillin – who have faced the loss of a great love.
Style and musical elegance combined with an intuitive theatrical sense are the hallmarks of soprano Monica Whicher's performances on the concert and opera stage. In 2010-2011, Ms Whicher looks forward to the launch of the Mykola Lysenko album, part of an ongoing project to record the art song repertoire of leading Ukrainian composers. Future engagements include Bach's Weihnachtsoratorium with the Toronto Bach Consort and concerts with the Aldeburgh Connection. In the U.S., she debuts with Houston's Mercury Baroque as Asprano in Vivaldi's Montezuma (the work's premiere in North America). Talisker Players gladly welcome her back.
Talisker Players also welcome back Hungarian-Canadian mezzo-soprano Krisztina Szabó, who has become highly sought after in both North America and Europe as an artist of supreme musicianship and stagecraft. The Chicago Tribune exclaimed, "Krisztina Szabó stole her every scene with her powerful, mahogany voice and deeply poignant immersion in the empress' plight" after her performance of Ottavia in L'incoronazione di Poppea. She made her Lincoln Center debut as Dorabella in Così fan tutte at the Mostly Mozart Festival where she was praised in the New York Times for being "clear, strong, stately and an endearingly vulnerable Dorabella." This season, Ms. Szabó makes her début with Vancouver Opera as Sesto in La clemenza di Tito, sings the title role in Dido and Aeneas with Music of the Baroque and returns to Stadttheater Klagenfurt to sing Cherubino in Le nozze di Figaro. Recent successes include appearances with Soundstreams, Queen of Puddings Music Theatre and the Canadian Opera Company.
Talisker Players welcome back actor Stewart Arnott, a much respected theatre artist for almost 30 years, who has acted and directed across the country.
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Ticket information
Media Contact: Francine Labelle/flINK
416-654-4406
labellefrancine@rogers.com
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