Mendelssohn Magic
PEI Symphonyby Ivy WigmoreOn November 22, the PEI Symphony Orchestra offered up “Mendelssohn Magic,” a performance celebrating young musicians. The title is a nod to the composer’s 200th birthday, being celebrated through the musical world this year. The magic started with the overture to “Midsummer’s Night Dream,” which young Felix produced when he was just 17 (and-a-half, as his biography notes). The symphony became a sort of framework for Mendelssohn’s career: The composer completed incidental music, Opus 61, for a production of the play staged just a few years before his death in 1847. (Opus 61, by the way, includes one of the most familiar classical pieces in the Western world: the Wedding March.)
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Angèle Dubeau and La Pietàby David HelwigAs I sat waiting for the concert to begin I glanced at the Stations of the Cross, the altar, the religious statues, and reflected that they will soon be gone. The Roman Catholic diocese has announced that the William Critchlow Harris church at Indian River is to be deconsecreated. Attending one of the concerts that have become a significant feature of summer on PEI, I couldn’t help speculating on the future of the church and the Indian River Festival. Presumably there will be an attempt to purchase the church for the Festival, but the costs of purchase and upkeep will inevitably pose problems for a festival which takes place in summer in a community as small as that of the Island.
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Charlie Farquharson and Them Uddersby Ivy WigmoreA reviewer is supposed to go into a performance with an open mind but I have to admit that setting out to see Charlie Farquharson and Them Udders at Confederation Centre in Charlottetown, I didn’t. I could have started writing from the first time I saw the promotional image: Valerie Rosedale, imperious, haughty and astride a milk cow—the business end of which faces the onlooker—led by country cousin Charlie. As Charlie’s alter egos tend to be, the dowager is deadpan in whatever bizarre situation she finds herself, looking you fiercely in the eye and defying you to laugh. So, of course, you can’t help yourself.
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Report from 2009 ECMAs
by Fraser McCallum
A couple of Hobos—ECMAs (photo: Moe)
PEI PerformanceFor the recent ECMAs in Newfoundland, PEI sent more than a dozen musical acts, and a bevy of family, friends and industry supporters to Cornerbrook for the 20th annual awards. Two buses, packed with performers and gear, left PEI on February 25 buzzing with anticipation.
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Autumn Colours
PEI Symphony with Paul Bernardby Ivy WigmoreThe 42nd season of the PEI Symphony Orchestra got underway October 18th with “Autumn Colours.” The afternoon kicked off with Aleksandr Glazunov’s Autumn. Autumn is the final tableau in The Seasons, an allegorical ballet. The first movement, Bacchanal, is a wild dance celebrating the year’s end. From that perspective, the music reviews winter, spring and summer. Revisiting the seasons amid Autumn seems particularly appropriate here, where on any given October day you might wake up to frost on the pumpkins and then, throughout the day, experience precipitation running the gamut from rain to sleet to snow. All of which is blown around, along with leaves of various colours, under threatening clouds and patches of blue. But every so often, the sun peeks through with just enough warmth to remind you that there was a summer. After the other seasons have been put to bed and the revelry completed, leaves fall, the skies darken and stars appear.
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Stan Rogers—A Matter of Heart
by Fraser McCallumCanadian folk singer Stan Rogers is remembered as one of this country’s best and brightest, a big man with a bigger voice. He was a fine poet and a man of great intellect who tragically left the world too young in 1983. After a seven-year absence from the Confed Centre, the Stan musical review, Stan Rogers—A Matter of Heart, returns this summer in a smaller, more intimate production at The Mack.
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PEI Symphony Orchestra - Vivaldi 4 Beethoven 5
by Ivy WigmoreThe final performance of the PEI Symphony Orchestra started out with Vivaldi’s Four Seasons. As the first familiar notes sounded, I thought to myself: No surprises here. However, much of the power of music derives from expectation and subversion of that expectation. And in this case, my expectations were way off the mark. Although I may have heard the concertos a time or two before, the performance was positively thrilling, seeming infused with the same awesome creative force that drives the seasons themselves.
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Between Sun and Snow
by Ivy WigmoreBetween Sun and Snow, the third of the PEI Symphony Orchestra’s performances this season, offered an unusually spicy mixture, thoughtfully blended up to combat those long-winter blues, reassuring us that there’s warmth in our future. Perhaps even some heat.
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