Home Classical Music Canadian Tenor Josh Lovell Provides Auspicious Midday Hour Recital

Canadian Tenor Josh Lovell Provides Auspicious Midday Hour Recital

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Canadian Tenor Josh Lovell Provides Auspicious Midday Hour Recital

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Josh Lovell, Canadian Opera Firm

A great tenor is difficult to seek out, you say?  Nicely, Toronto opera followers ought to depend their blessings, as the brand new opera season is especially wealthy within the tenor division.

The autumn COC season boasts 4 internationally famend tenors making their respective Firm debut.  American Heldentenor Clay Hilley is a sensational Florestan in Fidelio, whereas Samoan tenor is marvelous as Rodolfo in La Boheme.  His alternate, Chinese language tenor Kang Wang, has sung this function to nice acclaim elsewhere and his COC debut on October 22 is extremely anticipated.

Final, however not least is Canada’s personal, tenor Josh Lovell, as a clarion-voiced and dramatically participating Jacquino.  On this recital final Tuesday, we obtained to expertise one other aspect of his artistry. In a program of songs by Benjamin Britten, Gabriel Fauré, Richard Strauss and Franz Liszt, he amply demonstrated his versatility as each an opera singer and a recitalist.  Lovell possesses a voice in its prime, an instrument of rock-solid method and exquisite timbre, used with sensitivity and expressivity.

True to the theme of Love in its Many Kinds, this system opened with Britten’s Canticle 1 (“My beloved is Mine, and I’m his”). This work premiered in 1947 on the tenth anniversary of the passing of Dick Sheppard, the Vicar of St. Martin-in-the-Fields, though it’s remembered for its subtext, involving the problem of male love at a time of rampant homophobia in post-war Britain. Musically difficult given the seemingly disparate accompaniment in relation to the vocal line, however Lovell dispatched it with aplomb.

This was adopted by an early work by Fauré, Poème d’en jour, a set of three songs a few short-lived love affair that lasts a single day, from Rencontre (infatuation) to Toujours (rejection) to Adieu (acceptance). This piece is much less well-known than a few of the extra well-known Fauré songs to come back later, nevertheless it’s fascinating simply the identical. Lovell sang with fantastic thing about tone, with beautiful mezza voce within the final track, Adieu.

The third group, Richard Strauss’s justly well-known Vier Lieder, Op. 27, is my private favorite.  Strauss wrote this cycle as a marriage current to his spouse, Pauline. Lovell sang solely three of the 4 – Cäcilie, Heimliche Aufforderung, and Morgen, skipping Ruhe meine Seele, probably the most sombre of the 4. Each Cäcilie and Heimliche Aufforderung are impassioned, ectastic love songs, which Lovell delivered with power and clarion tone. In distinction, Morgen, arguably probably the most profound and sumptuous of the 4, was carried out in beautiful mezza voce and nice consideration to textual nuance. A most successful efficiency.

The ultimate group was the equally well-known Tre sonetti di Petrarca by Liszt. These are technically very demanding songs, virtually operatic in model, requiring loads of voice – in “Benedetto sia il giorno,” the vocal line goes as much as a frightening excessive C sharp.  Nicely, Mr. Lovell’s nice high vary was in a position to do it full justice.

The final track, “I vidi in terra angelici costume” will keep in my reminiscence financial institution for a particular motive. Lovell sang it fantastically, to make certain. However within the track textual content close to the tip, it tells of the sunshine, the sky, the bushes, the leaves….and out of the blue, the digital shades within the RBA went up, the lights got here in, and the attractive fall colors of the bushes on College Avenue was in full view! I assumed to myself – possibly it was intentional to resonate with the track textual content?  Maybe it was a coincidence. In that case it was a miracle, a transcendental second that probably received’t be repeated for me.

I mustn’t omit the wonderful work of the collaborative pianist Rachael Kerr, who was with the singer each second, performing as one. They took an unhurried tempo all through. I really feel it’s quite a bit more durable to maintain in gradual tempo than quick. It takes confidence, or to place it crudely, guts, to be gradual. An excellent noon-hour recital, Bravi tutti!

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Joseph So
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