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In the program notes of the concert preceding the recording, Oundjian declared: “Ralph Vaughan Williams was possibly England’s most significant composer, and he is a personal favorite of mine. This [recording] presents some of his finest works, featuring soloists from the Orchestra as well as some of Canada’s most notable solo artists, and the Elmer Iseler Singers. The lyrical and engaging Oboe Concerto is rarely heard, but it is one of his most inspired works. Serenade to Music showcases his exquisite vocal writing, which also figures prominently in the ravishingly beautiful Flos Campi, so surprisingly scored for solo viola, choir, and chamber orchestra. The Piano Concerto is more dramatic, with a juggernaut opening and a brilliant fugal finale.”

Featuring

Piano Concerto in C*
Serenade to Music#
Concerto in A minor for Oboe҂
Flos Campi+

Artists

Carla Huhtanen, Soprano#
Emily D’Angelo, Mezzo-soprano#
Lawrence Wiliford, Tenor#
Tyler Duncan, Baritone#
Louis Lortie, Piano*
Teng Li, Viola+
Sarah Jeffrey, Oboe҂
Elmer Iseler Singers#+
Toronto Symphony Orchestra
Peter Oundjian

Reviews

“The solo playing by Toronto Symphony principal Teng Li offers deep weight of tone, rapturous phrasing, and a musical personality that mesmerises the ear; the choral singing is superbly focused…”

BBC Music Magazine, August 2018

Read the full TSO news release.

https://open.spotify.com/album/6l2MMoDFb9vFawYqxFzhfm

Dark Star Requiem came to be after a commission from the Luminato Festival and Tapestry New Opera. The work premiered in 2010 at the Luminato festival in Koerner Hall, Toronto, Canada. The work is an operatic oratorio with music by composer Andrew Staniland and text by poet Jill Battson. It is scored for four singers, piano trio, percussion, and chorus. The topic of all of the poems in the work used is HIV/AIDS and how it affects the lives and worlds of those who live with the disease or love someone living with the disease.

Dark Star Requiem is at once intended to be challenging and joyous, complex and beautiful. A sequence of 19 poems charting a short history of HIV AIDS unfolds over the course of 14 musical movements. The poems vary stylistically from linked haikus, to ghazals, to praise poems and back to free verse. The musical movements are unified through a haunting melody and driving rhythm derived from the numbers attributed to HIV-1 and HIV-2 by the International Committee on Taxonomy of Viruses: 00.061.1.06.009. and 00.061.1.06.010. In musical terms these numbers are interpreted in both melody and rhythm.

Reviews

“A modern Carmina Burana […] Staniland has utilized the modern orchestra and the contemporary media to produce a work of vital dramaturgy and lasting, thought-provoking power.”

The Classical Music Guide

“Striking, beautiful, and wonderfully weird. […] The score is percussive, dissonant yet lyrical and evocative; very powerful and haunting.”

La Scena Musicale

Listen at Top-10-Songs.net

Harry Freedman (1922 – 2005) was a master of orchestration, an art that was informed by his 25 years as English horn soloist in the Toronto Symphony Orchestra. He wrote for many other genres, but his orchestral works contain much of his very finest work, a cannon that is not only large, but also diverse, both in style and creative approach. This compilation of orchestral works by Freedman displays five vivid examples of Freedman’s imaginative takes on orchestral composition, all recorded in live performances for broadcast on CBC Radio.

Freedman was one of Canada’s most frequently performed composers. His output consists of some 200 compositions, including three symphonies, nine ballets, two hour-long stage works, as well as various works for orchestra, choir, chamber groups, and much incidental music for stage, TV and film.

Review

“As the liner notes for the CD assert and as my ears affirm, Freedman was a masterful orchestrator. The sound palette is ever of the most subtly brilliant sort, regardless of the stylistic variables of Freedman’s music over time. There is mystery in the music, all informed by a Modernist expression but not all of a piece. There is change, development, constant creative thrust to be heard.[…] This might be the sleeper of the year! What is clear is that Freedman was a master of the Modern Orchestral Arts! Put this one on and pay attention if you will! It is well worth your eartime.”

(Grego Applegate Edwards, Gapplegate Classical-Modern Music Review

“All the tracks are exceptional […] I feel this is one of the most significant releases from Centrediscs’ in recent years and as we enter Canada’s sesquicentennial an important reminder of our artistic heritage.”

David Olds, The WholeNote

“Make no mistake, however; while this is genuine Canadiana, it has a much wider appeal, not only because of its beauty, but also because of its power.”

Paul E. Robinson, Musical Toronto

Listen at Top-10-Songs.net

Canadian composer Harry Freedman’s contribution to choral repertoire was as substantial as it was extraordinary. His choral compositions exhibit a remarkable diversity of stylistic influences that range from rock, jazz and scat singing, to serial techniques, yet he spoke always with his own voice. This recording collects some of Freedman’s best-loved choral works spanning the years 1964-2002.

This Centrediscs recording was made possible through the financial assistance of the Fleck Family Foundation, the Julie-Jiggs Foundation, the McLean Foundation, and the George Cedric Metcalf Charitable Foundation.

Reviews

“The performances on this disc are exquisitely presented as a fitting tribute to this brilliant light [Harry Freedman] of Canadian musical heritage.”

Dianne Wells, Wholenote

Listen at Top-10-Songs.net

Hymns and chorales for brass, choir and organ. Features “Jacob’s Ladder”, “All Creatures of Our God & King”, and newly composed “People of Faith”.

Reviews

“Peter [Tiefenbach] has always shown talent, imagination and flair in the arranging field… Performances are strong – stirring…”

Rick Phillips, CBC Sound Advice, April 01, 2006

“What a combination! Each a Canadian musical institution whose work is always first-rate… Performances are impeccable, the arrangements startlingly fresh.”

Glenn Cooper, Host and Producer of the syndicated radio program The Hymn Book, August 9, 2006

A Canadian Brass Vintage Release Featuring Elmer Iseler & The Festival Singers and organist Douglas Haas.
Originally released as two LP’s: Joyful Sounds, 1973 and Canadian Brass plus Organ, 1977.

Reviews

“Moving and celebratory, it all makes for a wonderful bounty by Canadian Brass that takes the listener on a joyous musical journey. This recording will not disappoint.”

Musical Heritage Society, 2011

Listen at Top-10-Songs.net

Ruth Watson Henderson has an international reputation as one of Canada’s leading composers and as an admired pianist and organist.

Known especially as a composer of choral works, she has done much to promote the artistry of children through her wealth of compositions for treble voices, using the expertise gleaned over the 28 years she served as the accompanist of the Toronto Children’s Chorus under Jean Ashworth Bartle, until they both retired in 2007. She has at the same time written a wide spectrum of works for adult choirs – an activity started while she was accompanist of the Festival Singers under Dr. Elmer Iseler.

Her works are acclaimed, performed and recorded worldwide. Her pieces are often featured as the title track on recordings. The Elmer Iseler Singers released Sing All Ye Joyful devoted to the works of Ruth Watson Henderson. William Littler, writing in the Toronto Star, refers to this recording as “long overdue”, and states that Ruth’s “years as an accompanist for Elmer Iseler contributed to an understanding of the expressive possibilities of choral sound that has given birth to some of the most singable choral music in the Canadian literature.”

Listen at Top-10-Songs.net

The Glorious Sounds of Somers is the third in a special series of Centrediscs CDs entitled A Window on Somers celebrating and devoted to the music of one of Canada’s foremost composers. This recording brings together many of Somers’ best loved choral works given fresh, new performances by the Elmer Iseler Singers; and together with the previous Centrediscs choral music CD Sacred & Profane Somers constitutes a major body of work in the genre.

Performers

Lydia Adams (conducto), Micheal Fedeshyn & Bob Grim (trumpets), Ruth Watson Henderson (organ), Ruth Watson Henderson (piano), Lawrence Cherney (english horn), Erica Goodman (harp), Ryan Scott (percussion), Blair McKay (timpani), Lydia Adams (piano).​

Reviews

“Suffice it to say that choral enthusiasts should waste no time in acquiring this one.”

Richard Todd, Opus Pocus

Listen at Top-10-Songs.net

For this recording, these hymns are arranged for soprano, female choir, and cello accompaniment. It is no coincidence that most of the performing musical forces are women: what better way to use the collective feminine power to exalt the virtues, sorrows, beauty, and glory of Mary, the most celebrated woman of all time.

This recording includes three types of hymns from the Armenian sacred music tradition: “sharagan” (hymn), “dagh” (ode) and “megheti” (canticle). Sharagan refers to a sacred hymn sung during liturgy, having specific musical patterns and restrictions. Sharagans are distinguishable by the specific musical keys in which they’re written, referred to here as modes unique to the ancient traditional Armenian singing system. Dagh and megheti are sacred songs, which have been accepted as additions to the sung liturgical repertoire, further enriching an already-rich tradition. The long melismatic vocal lines and brevity of text characteristic of megheti further distinguishes it from dagh.

From The Story Behind “Mother of Light” by Isabel Bayrakdarian.

Reviews

“The evening really belonged to Bayrakdarian, the satin beauty, whose voice carried all before it. No, that doesn’t say it all: Her voice is one of the most engaging and congenial in the world today.”

Ottawa Citizen

“The enchanting, exotic music of Armenia is the perfect foil for Ms. Bayrakdarian’s “grown-up” voice. It’s lush, languid, opulent and absolutely remarkable. The arrangements for cello and voice shock with their purity of melodic line and meditative quality already built in. This may very well be an album to obsess about.”

Robert Tomas, The WholeNote

This recording pays tribute to one of Canada’s foremost artists, the late choral conductor Elmer Iseler. As Ken Winters says in his introduction to this CD: “The work Iseler achieved with his three main choirs…will shine on in memory and through their numerous recordings for many generations to come. Indeed, Iseler’s work already represents at the highest level a choral history of music-making in Canada from the 1950s to the turn of the century.”

Listen at Top-10-Songs.net

Tracks

SRUL IRVING GLICK
1-4. Sing unto the Lord a new song

DEREK HOLMAN
5-7. Night Music

HARRY SOMERS
8-10. Trois Chansons de la Nouvelle France

JEAN COULTHARD
11. Quebec May

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Originally released in the early 1980s on vinyl records, these three works are brought together on CD, and represent a major statement in Canadian choral music composition.

Composer Harry Somers offers three pieces, all of which exhibit a thoroughly different character and mood. From the traditional folksong lyricism of the Five Songs of the Newfoundland Outports through the atonally dramatic Kyrie to the witty and bawdy cabaret-like Three Limericks, Somers provides the listener with a rich diversity of musical expression.

Reviews

“This collection of music by Toronto’s Harry Somers remains one of the finest vocal discs in the Canadian catalogue, with the Elmer Iseler Singers in top form… Would that Somers were more prolific; his music is as good as we have in this country.”

William Littler, The Toronto Star

Listen at Top-10-Songs.net

With an international reputation as one of the most popular brass ensembles today, Canadian Brass has truly earned the distinction of “the world’s most famous brass group.

Canadian Brass is joined by the Toronto Festival Singers, Elmer Iseler Singers, Douglas Haas, Mario Bernardi & the Canadian National Arts Centre Orchestra.

Listen at Top-10-Songs.net