Each the Toronto Symphony Orchestra and Nationwide Arts Centre Orchestra have new recordings to supply for the brand new yr. The Toronto Symphony Orchestra’s album on the Harmonia Mundi label focuses on Stravinsky, and consists of the composer’s full Pulcinella ballet and the Divertimento from Le Baiser de la Fée (The Fairy’s Kiss). It’s obtainable on February 14, 2025.
The Nationwide Arts Centre Orchestra’s Poema: Advert Astra is the primary in a deliberate four-part sequence of recordings delving into the tone poems of Richard Strauss. The album is obtainable now on the Analekta label.
TSO: Pulcinella
You possibly can take a look at the primary single, Tarantella, right here.
The TSO and Igor Stravinsky have a real connection that goes again to 1967. The composer/conductor made his ultimate public look as a conductor with the TSO, main the orchestra in a efficiency of the Pulcinella Suite. Music Director Gustavo Gimeno conducts the total ballet to honour that legacy.
The TSO first carried out Stravinsky’s Petrouchky in 1934, with Sir Ernest MacMillan conducting. Stravinsky got here to Toronto to conduct the orchestra in The Firebird and Petrouchka a couple of years later in 1937.
“Pulcinella holds a particular place within the TSO’s historical past: Stravinsky himself carried out the orchestra in a efficiency of the ballet suite in 1967, marking his ultimate public conducting look. It feels extraordinary to return to this work—this time in its full kind—whereas celebrating Stravinsky’s musical ingenuity and the orchestra’s legacy,” says Music Director Gustavo Gimeno.
Ballet impresario Serge Diaghilev commissioned Stravinsky’s Pulcinella in 1919. Utilizing music of the Baroque period attributed to Pergolesi, Stravinsky reinvents and reimagines with a contemporary sensibility. He makes use of the identical spirit of reinvention within the Divertimento from Le Baiser de la Fée, utilizing early piano items of Tchaikovsky’s as some extent of departure in creating his work.
Together with Strauss, the album options Curiosity, Genius, and the Seek for Petula Clark by Kelly-Marie Murphy.
Curiosity, Genius, and the Seek for Petula Clark was commissioned by the TSO from Canadian composer Kelly-Marie Murphy. The observe was recorded in February 2024, with soloists Isabel Leonard (mezzo-soprano), Paul Appleby (tenor), and Derek Welton (bass-baritone). The piece was impressed by Glenn Gould’s fascination with the British pop star.
Nationwide Arts Centre Orchestra: Poema: Advert Astra
Stream It On Apple Music
The present launch additionally options works by Canadian composers Kelly-Marie Murphy and Kevin Lau, commissioned by the NAC as companion items to Strauss’ music. The album pairs Strauss’s Don Juan with Kelly-Marie Murphy’s Darkish Nights, Shiny Stars, Huge Universe, and Dying and Transfiguration with Kevin Lau’s The Infinite Reaches.
Don Juan was on this system when Alexander Shelley made his debut as visitor conductor of the Nationwide Artwork Centre Orchestra again in 2009. As its now Music Director, he introduced the multi-disc venture in 2023. Alongside Strauss, Shelley needed to showcase Canadian creative excellence.
“I gave the composers free rein in how they responded to a selected tone poem. It’s been fascinating to see how they’ve approached the duty and the great particular person views they’ve dropped at it,” Alexander Shelley says in an announcement. “The brand new items on this primary album are contrasting and communicate to the truth that we stay in an age the place composers can go in no matter route they select.”
Kelly-Marie Murphy‘s piece In Darkish Nights, Shiny Stars, Huge Universe, considers what was occurring in Strauss’s world as he composed Don Juan.
“One important occasion for me was Vincent van Gogh’s portray The Starry Evening in 1889,” Murphy recollects. “One other was the invention of the Horsehead Nebula by Williamina Fleming in 1888. Fleming was considered one of a bunch of ladies who had been taught to research stellar spectra and catalogue stars for astronomers on the Harvard School Observatory. Her extraordinary life grew to become the topic of my tone poem.” Murphy provides that her piece engages with a number of themes: “questioning, looking out and curiosity, perseverance and dedication, and the great thing about the starry sky.”
Composer and pianist Kevin Lau’s method concerned a up to date interpretation of Strauss’s Dying and Transfiguration.
“I gravitated instantly towards it,” Lau says. “Its gripping, transcendent musical narrative resonated powerfully with my very own inventive sensibilities. On the similar time, its central, existential query – what lies past demise – had begun to occupy my very own ideas with rising regularity.”
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Anya Wassenberg is a Toronto Metropolis Editor at Ludwig Van. She is an skilled freelance author, blogger and writing teacher.
