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Sunday, May 6, 2012
"There is no true love, save in suffering." Sounds Russian, doesn't it?
These are actually the words of Miguel de Unamuno, a Spanish essayist,
poet, playwright and philosopher. Though Spain and Russia are
geographically and culturally very far apart , there is a virtually
identical saying about Russians who are "only happy when they are
unhappy." Considered side by side, how does the music of each country
complement the other? Soprano Joni Henson,
baritone Peter McGillivray and mezzo soprano Leigh-Anne Martin
(OFF CENTRE DEBUT) help us find out!
Senior/Student $50 | Adult $60 |
Group rates available.
For tickets & information, please call 416.466.1870, email tickets@offcentremusic.com or order online:
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Sunday, March 25, 2012
Ah! Sweet Mystery of Life - Inaugural American Salon!
> Please note the programme change for our next salon.
The mystery of life is indeed sweetened with the fascinatin' rhythms of Bernstein, Copland, Gershwin, Kern and Barber. In true Off Centre fashion we've had to re-route our musical travel plans, and though we will not make it to sunny Italy as planned, we do still mean to journey South, in the great copmany of tenors Keith Klassen (OFF CENTRE DEBUT) and Rocco Rupolo (OFF CENTRE DEBUT), baritone Giles Tomkins, soprano Ilana Zarankin, and pianists Inna Perkis and Boris Zarankin.
Special guest: Jimmy Roberts - composer, pianist, entertainer from New York, composer of the second-longest running Off Broadway musical in theater history, “I Love You, You’re Perfect, Now Change”.
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Sunday, October 30, 2011
 
Shostakovich's only Cello Sonata was composed in 1934, only two years
before Lady Macbeth of Mtensk gave Soviet censors
the opportunity to publicity denounced Shostakovich as an enemy of the
state. Twenty five years later, while he was being hounded to join the
Communist Party, Shastakovich composed the Satires song
cycle, setting five dangerously satirical poems by Sasha Cherny. Again,
the censors were up in arms. To save himself, he joined the Party - a
questionable move that ultimately allowed Shastakovich to keep pushing
the compositional "envelope". From there, our program reminds 100 years
to Tchaikovsky's 1879 opera Eugene Onegin based on Pushkin's novel in
verse. But who was Onegin? A careless, selfish cynic sacrificing the
promise of young love and loyal friendship, or a man who could not
recognize happiness because it was just too close? Uncovering the
mysteries of a character who still resonates with audiences today are
soprano Lindsay Barrett, mezzo soprano Erica
iris Huang, tenor Ryan Harper, baritone Geoffrey
Sirett (OFF CENTRE DEBUT), cellist Winona Zelenka, and our very own Inna
Perkis and Boris Zarankin at the piano.
Sunday, February 5, 2012
Robert
Schumann once described Schubert's sonatas as being of "heavenly
length" and his B flat major sonata (written in the final year of his
life) is truly a piece of heavenly contemplation. But Schubert also
wrote intensely dense and concise lieder - those one-page wonders! -
that show off a kind of 19th Century musical intensity and humour that
we've come to think of as twittering. Soprano Charlene Santoni,
baritone Vasil Garvanliev, and violinist Jacques
Israelievitch, joining Inna Perkis and Boris Zarankin in
contemplation and in twittering.
Our
Feb.5 Annual Schubertiad concert will also be launching Boris
Zarankin's exciting new recording of Schubert Sonatas on the DOREMI
label. Boris will be signinig copies of his new CD following the
concert. View new album >>
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Very shortly after Janacek's 1917 summer holiday in the Moravian
spa-town of Luhacovice, he began setting the poems of Ozef Kalda - a
railway official who had a knack for fiction writing - detailing a
young farm boy's infatuation with a gypsy girl. Janacek himself was
living a similar story - that summer in Luhacovice he had fallen in
love - or perhaps lust? - with the young wife (he was twice her age!)
of an antique dealer from Pisek. Though Kamila Stosslova did not return
his affection, there are more than 700 letters that survive to
chronicle the composer's unrequited affection. The Kalda settings
eventually came to make up the celebrated song-cycle The Diary of One
Who Disappeared, considered to be one of Janacek's most sensual - even
perverse - compositions. We leave this dramatic Czech 'glutton for
punishment' (700 letters is a LOT of letters!) for another kind of
music drama - this time, Italian "style"! We will regale you with
excerpts and operatic gems from Verdi, Donizetti, Tosti and
Rachmaninov.
The programme will include Rachmaninoff romances, Janacek's Diary of
One Who Disappeared, Italian songs by Tosti, highlights from Verdi's
Rigoletto, Donizetti's Lucia di Lamermoor and a four-hand arrangement
of the ouverture from Rossini's L'Italiana in Algieri. To convey these
tips on love, longing and lust, are tenor Colin Ainsworth,
baritone Peter
McGillivray, sopranos Rachel Cleland-Ainsworth
and Lucia
Cesaroni, together with pianists Inna Perkis and Boris Zarankin,
soprano Sarah Halmarson and mezzo soprano Leigh-Anne Martin.
The first 50 ticket orders for this special Mother's Day
concert, will receive an additional ticket, compliments of Inna and
Boris.
Bring your Mom, bring a friend, the choice is yours.
* Based on a first come, first serve basis, applicable to new sales
only, for the May performance only
> All Concerts start at 2pm at the CBC's Glenn Gould
Studio, 250 Front Street West, Toronto
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Have you ever wondered why it is that
the most exotic countries of Europe are found along the edges of the
continent? And yet, for all their richness, fullness of character and
vibrancy, they are nothing alike in their music! Our Urgo-Finnic group
- made up of Bartok, Arvo Part, Kodaly and Sibelius - is entranced by
mysterious Asia, while the Spaniards - Albeniz, Granados and Rodrigo -
embrace the Gypsy presence and the sounds of ther North African
neighbours. Inviting you on this colourful journey are sopranos Joni Henson
and Teiya
Kasahara, baritone Olivier Laquerre, accordionist
Joseph Macerollo and pianist Ricker Choi. The
concert will be hosted by Julia Zarankin, who will
introduce the Spanish, Hungarian, and Finnish cultures, what unites
them and what makes them different.
Canadian actor Fiona Byrne will be reading poems by the great
Spanish poet Garcia Lorca. Fiona recently starred as Natalya in
Soulpaper Theatre’s ‘A Month in the Country’, and is a regular at the
Shaw Festival.
This concert is sponsored by Horatio and Jackie Kemeny.
> All Concerts start at 2pm at the CBC's Glenn Gould
Studio, 250 Front Street West, Toronto
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We've uncovered a new mystery of
history! Within a three year span at the end of the first decade of the
19th Century, a "Mighty Four" was born - Mendelssohn, Chopin, Schumann
and Liszt! We promise not to overwhelm you with these Romantic composer
heavyweights - lighter fare on our teatime menu will be provided by our
winded musicians, and will include Brahms' lyrical Op. 40 Horn trio.
Creating this bearable lightness of being are sopranos Allison Angelo
and Eve-Rachel
McLeod, mezzo soprano Erica Iris Huang, violinist Marie Berard, clarinettist Katie Norman
and Joan Watson
on the French horn.
> All Concerts start at 2pm at the CBC's Glenn Gould
Studio, 250 Front Street West, Toronto
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To begin our 16th season, we travel to Russia and celebrate the music
born out of the infamous oppression and censorship of the Communist
regime. This is the Russia of composer Dmitri Shostakovich, and of the
poet Alexander Blok – creators who ultimately found salvation only in
their art. Our programme will feature the rarely performed Shostakovich
masterpiece “Seven Romances of Alexander Blok” – a late work that
exemplifies the complexity of the time: the songs are as simple and
touching melodically as they are charged with intense suffering.
Shostakovich reminds his listener that this is as much the time of
optimistic marches, of the promise of brotherhood and paradise on earth
as it is of the Gulag and of concentration camps.
To earn money and to appease the authorities, Shostakovich turned to
writing music that would appeal to the masses – and appeal, it did! One
melody found its way to the silver screen in the 1943 Hollywood film
“Thousands Cheer” and it is no wonder: even his “popular” music is
inspired. Alongside Shostakovich, we have programmed another great
Soviet confectioner of melody: Isaak Dunayevski. Virtually unknown to
the Western world, he was the most successful film composer of his time
and his prolific output is full of memorable tunes.
The scope of the Communist totalitarian regime - and the bright Red
colour that often heralded its infamous oppression and censorship -
reached far beyond the geographical borders of what we now recognize as
Russia and permeated the musical output of the entire Eastern Block. Off
Centre celebrates the music of the Red composers - Shostakovich,
Dunayevski, among others - who found salvation in their art. As we
begin our 16th season "of contrasts", who but Franz Schubert could lead
us out of this Red tyranny and subjugation into freedom and redemption?
Join tenor Ryan Harper, baritones Vasil
Garvanliev and Giles Tomkins, soprano Ilana Zarankin, violinist Jacques
Israelievitch, cellist Winona Zelenka, and our very own pianists Inna
Perkis and Boris Zarankin in a programme of tears and
laughter.
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