Media

December 7, 2016

Messiah Follies: Inside Stories About Performing Handel’s Ultimate Masterpiece

2016-17 Season

Brian Chang, Musical Toronto. Handel’s Messiah is a masterwork of remarkable writing that has lasted centuries of performance. This work is a staple of the Holiday season, and chances are you will catch a performance of it in full or selections from it over the course of the holiday. Between the Toronto Symphony Orchestra/Toronto Mendelssohn Choir and Tafelmusik Baroque Orchestra/Tafelmusik Chamber Choir alone, 15,000 people will hear and experience the music over a two week period.

Much can be said about the love-hate relationship of Choristers, musicians, and conductors and the work. Today, we’re going to explore stories of musicians who have performed the work and when things have just gone off the rails. These are stories of Messiah Follies.

December 6, 2016

The Wholenote Discoveries: Review of Handel Messiah Chandos Recording

2016-17 Season

David Olds, The Wholenote December 2016 review of Chandos recording of Handel Messiah: this new recording does the Toronto Symphony Orchestra, Toronto Mendelssohn Choir and, indeed, Toronto itself proud.

December 3, 2016

“What Grace is Given Me”: Performance and Process for Toronto’s The Lord of the Rings

2016-17 Season

Brian Chang, The Wholenote: The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring premiered in Canada on December 19, 2001. That year I started high school and it was the first time I took a music class in a real music program. That Christmas, one of my friends gave me the soundtrack for the movie. I fell in love with it and have loved it ever since. For me, my entire musical history has been inspired and shaped by this soundtrack. With “The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring In Concert” at Roy Thomson Hall, December 1 to 3 with the Toronto Symphony Orchestra and Toronto Mendelssohn Choir, I’ve been able to perform the film’s music onstage as a chorister. It has been one of the greatest privileges of my life as a musician.

December 3, 2016

Shore’s Fellowship

2016-17 Season

Leslie Barcza, barczablog: The Toronto Symphony, the Toronto Mendelssohn Choir, The Canadian Children’s Opera Company in partnership with tiff presented a concert performance of Howard Shore’s score for The Fellowship of the Ring, the first of Peter Jackson’s Tolkien films. If you think that sounds like a lot of people, you’d be right, and that’s not even including the big-screen presentation of the film, with its cast of thousands of humans, orcs, elves, dwarves, hobbits, uruk-hai, and assorted birds. Considering that I consider the first film to be the weakest of the three, I did not expect such an overwhelming experience, and am a little gaga imagining what the other two might be like, in a live concert version.

November 30, 2016

TSO and cast of hundreds bring Howard Shore’s Lord of the Rings music to life

2016-17 Season

Trish Crawford, The Toronto Star. Frodo, Sam, Gandalf and Aragorns’ valiant mission in Tolkien’s The Fellowship of the Ring will be supported full-throttle with a large chorus and soloists performing live while the movie unspools in Roy Thomson Hall. Canadian Howard Shore, who won three Oscars for his Lord of the Rings trilogy scores, notes that this new “concert and a movie” approach has livened up many a symphony hall. “The Toronto Symphony, the Mendelssohn Choir, the Children’s Opera Chorus brings more than 200 musicians to the stage to recreate the score beautifully,” he says. “They do it as a concert first, then bring in the Tolkien dialogue.”

November 21, 2016

Understanding Audiences: Takeaways from the Intrinsic Impact Audience Project

2016-17 Season

Kelsey Menehan, Chorus America.

This August, Chorus America released the results of the first-ever systematic look at what moves and motivates the people who attend choral music concerts. In partnership with leading research and consulting firm WolfBrown, the Intrinsic Impact Audience Project worked with 23 choruses across North America to survey their audiences. We spoke with researcher Alan Brown and a number of the participating choruses about what they learned from the study and the implications the findings have for the entire choral field. (Note: Toronto Mendelssohn Choir was a participant in this research project and was interviewed for this article.)

November 14, 2016

Festival of Carols 2016 – Dec 7 at Yorkminster Park and webcast live

2016-17 Season

Toronto Mendelssohn Choir rings in the Christmas season with its annual Festival of Carols, Wednesday, December 7 at Yorkminster Park Baptist Church – and webcast live across Canada and beyond. The Choir is joined by the acclaimed Canadian Staff Band and by organist David Briggs.

November 14, 2016

CD Review: Handel’s Messiah – Sir Andrew Davis

2016-17 Season

Andrew Fletcher, NEMM.org, UK. Sir Andrew Davis claims that for this new concert edition, he wanted to do a ‘grand’ version, and sought to “keep Handel’s notes, harmonies and style intact, but to make use of all the colours available from the modern symphony orchestra”. This goal is achieved, with an overall ‘bright’ feel that is vital, fresh and exuberant, but not overcooked.

November 7, 2016

Toronto Mendelssohn Choir delivers a dramatically powerful Elijah

2016-17 Season

David Richards, Toronto Concert Reviews. The Toronto Mendelssohn Choir celebrated conductor Noel Edison’s twentieth season at the choir’s helm with a stunningly powerful performance of Felix Mendelssohn’s iconic oratorio Elijah. Edison put together a formidable cast of soloists which together with the choir and orchestra, created a performance with all the passion one could imagine.