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December 16, 2015
Big, fat Messiah
2015-16 Season
John Gilks, operaramblings. Sir Andrew Davis is in town conducting his own orchestration of Handel’s Messiah. In the modern world this is probably as close as it gets to Sir Malcolm Sargent and the Huddersfield Choral Society. He conducts the TSO with brass and woodwinds that Handel never saw and lots of percussion including snare drum, sleigh bells, tambourines and marimba. He also has the not inconsiderable heft of the Toronto Mendelssohn Choir.
December 11, 2015
Toronto theatres offer three unique versions of Handel’s Messiah
2015-16 Season
Robert Harris, The Globe and Mail. Davis’s Messiah will be one of three quite different versions of the perennial favourite presented in Toronto next week, a bit shy of the 20 or so in the New York metropolitan area that the unfortunate junior critic for the New York Times is routinely assigned to review every season, but quite a bouquet nonetheless. The three Messiahs show the extreme versatility and adaptability of this amazing work, which has been pushed and pulled into innumerable, sometimes unrecognizable shapes over its two-and-a-half-century existence, but which manages to escape whole and healthy every time.
December 1, 2015
New Ears Encounter the German Romantics
2015-16 Season
[T]he entire evening reminded me of the incredible power of live music. Even the slower pieces were performed with such passion that even though they were about the loss of love etc I couldn’t help but be a bit giddy with excitement. I had never heard love songs performed like this before.
December 1, 2015
A fine sampling of German Romanticism
2015-16 Season
Michael Johnson, concertonet. This program by the Toronto Mendelssohn Choir was doubly unusual in that it presented a number of short choral works that rarely get the “big choir” treatment, plus the evening’s guest soloist was a pianist, in this case André Laplante, whose deeply thoughtful performance of six pieces helped fullfil the evening’s title German Romantics.
November 24, 2015
Festival of Carols 2015 Program Notes
2015-16 Season
Noel Edison, now in his 19th season as TMC Artistic Director and Conductor, instigated the annual TMC Festival of Carols in the early years of his tenure. His goal has not wavered – to present a festive evening of celebration containing a wide variety of seasonal music from around the world, old and new, original compositions as well as arrangements.
November 3, 2015
German Romantics Program Notes
2015-16 Season
TMC Artistic Director and Conductor Noel Edison has long loved the music of the German Romantics, believing that the heart is reached through the mind. He says, “Granted that some of this music was meant for the parlour rather than the concert hall, but it is all very melodic, well-constructed and was never denigrated by performance circumstances or location.” He believes that this rich, German Romantic choral repertoire should be performed by more of today’s choral ensembles.
August 4, 2015
Toronto Mendelssohn Choir launches new Choral Composition Competition for emerging composers
2015-16 Season
The TMC is calling for choral composition submissions to its new Choral Composition Competition, an annual competition launched in August 2015. This competition focuses on works by emerging unpublished Canadian composers. Composers will be asked to submit an unpublished work for SATB or double choir, either a cappella or accompanied by piano or organ that is not more than 5 minutes in length. The deadline for submissions is November 13, 2015.
July 2, 2015
Luminato’s ‘Apocalypsis’ Offered A New View to the End of the World
2014-15 Season
Tom Beedham, Noisey. The apocalypse began before the audience could find its seats. While some still filtered in from the Toronto Sony Centre’s lobby, in an unnerving scene of delirium, actors situated throughout the audience stood and shouted proclamations for the end of the world in English, German, and Latin, silencing excited chatter about the epic sensory buffet that was about to unfold.
July 2, 2015
The Rebirth of R. Murray Schafer’s Apocalypsis
2014-15 Season
Neil Crory, Musical Toronto. “Apocalypsis,” as the 82-year-old composer so succinctly puts it in the programme notes, “is a work in two parts. Part One describes the destruction of the world and Part Two suggests the birth of the new universe.” What he doesn’t mention is that the work (based in part on the Book of Revelation and Psalm 148) runs well over 2 hours without an intermission. As this is a spatial work and meant to wrap around the audience, part of the orchestral and choral forces were placed in the balcony of the Sony Centre with the audience taking up the main floor.