TIMELESS WORKS
Classical hits and misses of 2017
Vancouver’s burgeoning classical music scene had its hits and misses during 2017. There was also what seemed like an inordinate amount of administrative change, events that can’t help but shape the seasons to come.
For sheer drama, the year at Vancouver Opera was something exceptional. The idea of an intensive Opera Festival in the spring had its strengths: the chance to hear Jake Heggie’s Dead Man Walking and a rare (for Vancouver) performance of Verdi’s Otello. But various festival add-ons failed to hit the mark. An extravagant Turandot in October implied that Vancouver Opera recognizes its patrons want opera throughout the season, not just a once-a-year binge.
Still with opera, the UBC Opera Ensemble turned in a splendid spring production of Richard Strauss’s daffily wonderful Ariadne auf Naxos, a stylish and assured proposition directed by Jonathan Darlington, who also conducted both big-ticket works at the Opera Festival.
At the Vancouver Symphony, the announcement that Bramwell Tovey’s replacement would be Otto Tausk was made good and early in the year. After such a protracted search, and all those guest conductors, Tovey’s reading of Mahler’s First Symphony in June demonstrated just what he has been able to achieve with the orchestra, and how much we will miss him. Fortunately Tausk’s VSO test drive in the fall presages continued good things.
There were other big VSO changes. Nicholas Wright was elevated to the position of concertmaster, a choice that seems both natural and popular. But, alas, principal cellist Ariel Barnes left the Orchestra this year to take up a plum assignment in Europe.
2017 saw the Vancouver Chamber Choir beginning its search for a successor to founder/Artistic director Jon Washburn; choral courtship rituals are set to continue in the new year and beyond. There was another changing of the guard at Music in the Morning: Adrian Fung, a fine cellist as well as an administrator, has taken up the reins from Barry Schiffman. Fung ’s first challenge was presenting concerts in venues not traditionally associated with Vancouver’s matinee music series while its home turf, the Koerner Recital Hall, is being renovated.
2017 was quite the year for new music. The VSO’s New Music Festival in January was nothing if not diverse, and the once-in-a-lifetime proposition, the ISCM New Music Days, included a plethora of local groups, international composers, and visits by the National Arts Centre Orchestra and the Victoria Symphony, the latter premièring a short violin concerto by its 20-something composer-in-residence, Jared Miller.
Speaking of composers in residence, the most impressive new work of the year was launched by the VSO’s Jocelyn Morlock: her new cello concerto, premièred by the aforementioned Ari Barnes, challenges concerto norms, but is a piece of real stature.
Early Music Vancouver undertook two collaborations with Paula Kremer’s Vancouver Cantata Singers: Bach’s St. John Passion to end the Vancouver’s Bach Festival in August, and EMV’s first ever Messiah just a few weeks ago. The VCC also bravely partnered with the VSO in an old instruments/new music mash-up, tucked into the VSO New Music Festival.
The Vancouver Recital Society started the year as it meant to go on with a three-concert Winterlude in January, featuring superb cellist Jean- Guihen Queyras and irrepressible pianist Alexander Melnikov. The VRS 2017 selection was both rewarding and bit quirky; audience regulars had lots of contenders for highlights for the year.
For me two recitals were especially memorable. Pianist Javier Perianes evoked the spirit of the great Alicia de Larrocha, showing just how wonderful Spanish keyboard repertoire can be when delivered with flair and understanding.
The duo recital by cellist Alban Gerhardt and pianist Steven Osborn encompassed lost concert shoes and hellish travel issues, but by the time they were through a full house was mesmerized, prepared to stay all night to bask in the duo’s spectacular ensemble musicianship.