England’s music the inspiration for festival
Toronto Summer Music Festival features concerts, lectures and free events
Marking the anniversary of Shakespeare’s death 400 years ago is just one of the inspirations behind the classical Toronto Summer Music Festival’s theme this year, “London Calling.”
Artistic director Douglas McNabney says the wealth of England’s music from the baroque era to the British pop invasion provided an opportunity for a wide variety of concert, lecture and training experiences throughout the festival. It runs from Thursday to Aug. 7.
Tenor Ben Heppner, a vigorous supporter of the festival, says Shakespeare has had a tremendous influence on composers, inspiring both Rossini and Verdi to compose operas based on Othello, plus Felix Mendelssohn’s A Midsummer’s Night Dream. A week of Shakespeare-related events includes A Shakespeare Serenade concert July 27 at Walter Hall, directed by Patrick Hansen.
Heppner will participate in some master classes offered by the festival, which hosted a gala Wednesday, titled Shakespeare’s Songbook featuring the Toronto Consort.
Numerous chamber groups tackle programs performed by British musicians centuries ago in a series that includes an all-Beethoven evening ti- tled The Beethoven Quartet Society of 1845. The Dover String Quartet will recreate the concert July 29 at Walter Hall, originally performed in London 18 years after Beethoven’s death.
Another homage to the past is The Musical Union of 1865 on Friday, when the Parker String Quartet will play one of the Schubert programs developed by London professor John Ella in that year. They were remarkable, McNabney says, as “the first anywhere to introduce program notes.”
Jonathan Crow, concertmaster for the Toronto Symphony Orchestra and the new Summer Music artistic director, taking over from McNabney this September, performs with his own chamber group, Jonathan Crow and Co., July 28, with works by Mozart, Elgar and Bridge.
He also appears with fellow TSO principals and guests Aug. 5, to perform Hanover Square 1801, a concert of Haydn and Beethoven pieces presented to London audiences in that era by German impresario Johann Peter Salomon.
Many of the young performers featured in the festival are just entering their professional careers, says Crow, and the festival is a wonderful way for them to reach new audiences.
Crow says the working world of a musician is much different than decades ago when achieving a position in an orchestra could sustain a career. Now musicians need an entrepreneurial approach to creating performing opportunities.
Someone who is doing just that is Joel Ivany, co-artistic director of Against the Grain Theatre. He is bringing Benjamin Britten’s The Rape of Lucretia to the Winter Garden Theatre July 22, after it was first performed in Banff.
This is a co-operative production with the Banff Centre, COC, Against the Grain and the Summer Music Festival.
Ivany calls this production “semistaged” as there are no sets and the orchestra is onstage with the costumed performers. The setting has been moved from ancient Rome to England in the 1940s, when Britten wrote the opera. Ivany says the topic — rape and its consequences — remains timely.
“These are deep, haunting, scary places in human nature,” says Ivany. Go to torontosummermusic.com for tickets and information.