Classical music: 2019 an eventful and memorable year
Credit to Author: Tracey Tufnail| Date: Tue, 24 Dec 2019 19:00:59 +0000
The last fa la la hasn’t quite sounded yet, but it’s already time to start thinking about the old year passing and the memorable performances that filled 2019.
However, before we considerable individual events, it’s important to note two important administrative changes in major “home team” classical groups, Vancouver Opera and the Vancouver Symphony Orchestra.
With the loss of general director Kim Gaynor at the opera and VSO president Kelly Tweeddale, both operations have room at the very top and new appointments in 2020 will inevitably result in change.
Change of another sort came to the Vancouver Chamber Choir, with a smooth transition from the Jon Washburn era to that of new artistic director Kari Turunen. This year also saw many anniversaries, notably 40 years for the Vancouver Recital Society, and 50 years for both Early Music Vancouver and the Langley Community Music School.
Young Filippo Gorini is a name to watch for.
The year 2019 was also rich in notable performances, starting out in February with a remarkable solo piano recital by Filippo Gorini. The young Italian is fantastically talented and fiercely intelligent. His confident pairing of Stockhausen and late Beethoven in his recital for the VRS was astonishing and apt. Watch his name: this guy is going places.
Many of the Vancouver Opera productions of the brief Gaynor era were full of glitz and grandeur. VO’s “festival” run of Rossini’s La Cenerentola in the Vancouver Playhouse last spring was intimate and exquisite comic opera. The production was enchanting, very funny, and beautifully sung. Too bad the opera-at-the-Playhouse project has been put on hold for the coming season; I’d argue it’s the most impressive initiative local opera has seen in many a year.
Soloist and chamber player James Ehnes.
The Vancouver Symphony Orchestra turned 100 in 2019, or rather, more correctly, it’s 100 years since the VSO gave its first concerts (a discreet veil can be drawn over an extended hiatus in the 1920s). Commemorative galas can be uninspiring, even tedious propositions, but the VSO got it just right in June: a warm telling of the VSO saga by Ben Heppner, plus lots of music with genuine VSO connections, works by three Vancouver composers, and a performance by VSO favourite violinist James Ehnes.
A few weeks later the VSO’s Summer Orchestral Institute saw a spectacular success as the young participants delivered electrifying performances of Mussorgsky, adapted by orchestral wizard Maurice Ravel and Shostakovich. Otto Tausk got his group of instrumentalists in their teens and early 20s to play with a sort of incandescent zeal and utter commitment.
The steady artistic growth of the Vancouver Cantata Singers isn’t a matter of a single performance, but it was very satisfying to see the group’s work recognized by the rest of the country as it cleaned up at the National Competition of Canadian Amateur Choirs. Particularly heartening was their win for the best performance of a Canadian work — in this instance a striking piece by VCS composer-in-residence Craig Galbraith.
Soprano Amanda Forsythe.
The highlight of Early Music Vancouver’s summertime Vancouver Bach Festival was a return visit by North America’s reigning early music diva, the splendiferous Amanda Forsythe singing early Handel. Her backup ensemble (Seattle’s Pacific Music Works) demonstrated it’s no longer necessary to import period players from the great beyond; our own Cascadian complement of instrumentalists can hold their own.
Finally, new music is quite rightly an important part of a Vancouver classical year, providing lots of different works in diverse idioms to be sampled. Extra special this year was the North American premiere of Michel van der Aa’s new double concerto with VSO concertmaster Nicholas Wright on violin and cellist Pieter Wispelwey. Definitely not contemporary easy listening, but a work of real stature by a composer at the top of his game.
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