Lively music scene spans masters to pranksters

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      Music

      Critics' Picks

      Once the Cultural Olympiad comes to a close on March 21, our fair city will return to normal—which, fortunately for us, doesn’t preclude a busy spring season in both classical and contemporary music. Not that those categories are particularly useful any more. With our local symphony orchestra programming 21st-century compositions, various modernists scanning the past for inspiration, and even early-music ensembles venturing beyond the boundaries of Europe, stylistic walls are disintegrating at a giddy pace—and there’s nothing wrong with that!

      Nixon In China
      (March 13, 16, 18, and 20 at the Queen Elizabeth Theatre)

      It’s strange—and telling—that it’s taken more than two decades for composer John Adams’s and librettist Alice Goodman’s modern masterpiece Nixon in China to receive its Canadian premiere, thanks to Vancouver Opera. In the interim, however, the decline of the American empire and the rise of the Chinese economy have brought new relevance to this poetic examination of power.
      The Draw: An artistic interpretation of an event that changed our world.
      Target Audience: Historians of geopolitics—and of art.

      Thomas Ades
      (March 14 at the Chan Centre for the Performing Arts)
      British pianist and composer Thomas Adí¨s is recognized for the erudition and complexity of his scores, but what’s less well known is that he’s also a sensitive interpreter of other people’s music. In this Vancouver Recital Society concert, Adí¨s will perform a piano reduction of his music for the chamber opera Powder Her Face, the second part of LeoÅ¡ Janácek’s rarely heard piano cycle On an Overgrown Path, and an intriguing selection of items from the classical repertoire.
      The Draw: An intimate look at a contemporary master.
      Target Audience: Those who share Adí¨s’s keen curiosity.

      Ensemble Constantinople
      (March 20 at the Kay Meek Centre)
      With its lineup of setar, percussion, viol, and theorbo, Montreal’s Ensemble Constantinople aims to link the musical traditions of Europe and Persia. But with this concert, in which the group will be joined by singer Franí§oise Atlan, its research extends to the 17th-century poems of Mexico’s Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz.
      The Draw: Old music from the New World.
      Target Audience: Lovers of scholarly virtuosity.

      The Love that Moves the Universe
      (April 2 at the Orpheum)

      The conventionally minded can rest easy, knowing that this Vancouver Chamber Choir presentation will touch on such old favourites as Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s Solemn Vespers, K.339 and Franz Schubert’s Mass in G Major. But progressives will also want to turn out for the piece that gives the program its title, which finds Canadian nature mystic and master composer R. Murray Schafer setting passages from Dante Alighieri’s The Divine Comedy to music.
      The Draw: Who better than Schafer to illuminate Dante’s “Paradisio”?
      Target Audience: Anyone with a taste for the truly profound.

      Vancouver Symphony Orchestra: Bach and Beyond
      (April 23 and 24 at the Chan Centre for the Performing Arts)

      A surprisingly adventurous program of mostly familiar music. In addition to timeless works from Johann Sebastian Bach and Joseph Haydn, expect to hear Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s majestic Masonic Funeral Music, K.477, and Igor Stravinsky’s visionary repurposing of music purportedly written by Giovanni Pergolesi, Pulcinella: Suite.
      The Draw: A Stravinsky ballet that’s not the Rite thing.
      Target Audience: Traditionalists open to a twist.

      VSO: Solos
      (April 24 at the Roundhouse Community Arts Centre)

      With most of the VSO—and maestro Bramwell Tovey—focusing on Bach and Beyond at the Chan Centre, a small group of the orchestra’s most adventurous players are free to turn their attention to scores by John Oliver, Giacinto Scelsi, and hard-working resident composer Scott Good.
      The Draw: Hearing assistant concertmaster Joan Blackman tackle the gorgeous but daunting microtones of Scelsi’s 1965 masterpiece Anahit.
      Target Audience: Connoisseurs.

      Itzhak Perlman
      (April 26 at the Orpheum Theatre)
      Completing a rather extraordinary few days for the VSO, the reigning master of the classical fiddle, Itzhak Perlman, joins the band in what we’re betting will be a deep and powerful version of Felix Mendelssohn’s Violin Concerto. The VSO will host two more great violinists this season—Nicola Benedetti from May 1 to 3, and Vadim Gluzman on June 5 and 7—but this show is a must-see.
      The Draw: That sound!
      Target Audience: Those who’ve never heard a Stradivarius in action—and those who have.

      Philip Glass
      (April 5 at the Chan Centre for the Performing Arts)
      Something odd happens when pioneering minimalist Philip Glass performs his own works for piano: this once-controversial figure reveals how his music is rooted in the fugal inventions of earlier composer-performers such as Johann Sebastian Bach and Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart.
      The Draw: Glass is a skilled pianist, though no virtuoso; still, he may well be his own best interpreter.
      Target Audience: Patient seekers after enlightenment.

      Silhouette
      (April 16 and 18 at the Chan Centre for the Performing Arts’ Telus Studio Theatre)
      What could be more natural than having the most hauntingly human of the stringed instruments join an exceptionally accomplished chamber choir? Rising-star cellist Ariel Barnes guests with musica intima in a program that also features exceptional B.C. composers Jeffrey Ryan and Jocelyn Morlock.
      The Draw: Beautiful music, beautiful singing, and beautiful playing.
      Target Audience: Refined souls.

      Last Night of the Proms
      (May 13 at the Orpheum)
      We wouldn’t normally recommend a Proms concert, but this one’s special, as it really is the last time Bruce Pullan will conduct the Vancouver Bach Choir. After this, the British-born choral specialist is off to his well-deserved retirement—and, apparently, to the golf courses of Bellingham.
      The Draw: A chance to say goodbye to someone who’s been a good friend to music in Vancouver.
      Target Audience: British expats, Bach Choir stalwarts, and friends of Bruce.

      6 Team League
      (May 15 at the Cultch)

      Musical pranksters Red Shift unveil their new house band, the Negative Zed Ensemble, and a crazy new concept: six ensembles from across Canada will play the same repertoire on the same day. The cross-country composers include Joel Miller, Gordon Fitzell, Juliet Palmer, and Red Shift sparkplug Jordan Nobles; for the B.C. edition Vancouver New Music artistic director Giorgio Magnanensi is coming onboard as guest conductor.
      The Draw: A chance to be a part of something big.
      Target Audience: Hip ears with a sense of humour.

      Comments

      1 Comments

      Mike Leven

      Aug 27, 2010 at 3:31pm

      Alex Varty seems incapable of delivering credible music critiques. Almost all of his reviews of local composers and concerts are predictably glowing. He is clearly in bed with the whole lot. I guess that is the best way to get free tickets and invites these days.
      Please retire Alex. Aren't you a bit too old for this gig?