In October 1995, the second ever issue of this magazine (then known as Pulse), we ran a cover image, not a photograph but a kind of abcdedarius — a stylized alphabetical list consisting for the most part of presenters, performers or composers featured in the issue’s concert listings. The Penderecki Quartet came to our rescue for both P and Q. For Z we resorted to jazZ (where were you that month, Winona?), which was a bit lame, and A was as problematic as Z, but for the opposite reason — too many candidates rather than too few.

Aradia Ensemble, Academy Concert Series, Amadeus Ensemble, Autumn Leaf Performance and the Amadeus Choir (worthy candidates all) had concerts, but were the five we didn’t choose. Stephen Ralls’ and Bruce Ubukata’s Aldeburgh Connection was the one we did.

When I sat and chatted with pianists Ralls and Ubukata, in preparation for this story, it’s not surprising that they could not remember who their guests had been on October 10, 1995. After all, The Aldeburgh Connection had been going strong for 13 years before this magazine came into existence. In those 13 years prior and the 17 since, and astonishing 187 singers have appeared in their series, many of them more than once. A “starry constellation” as Ubukata describes them. Even more astonishing is that Ralls and Ubukata over and over again spotted these stars while they were still in the making.

Now on February 19, 2012, 16 “starry” Aldeburgh vocal alumnae will join Ubukata and Ralls at Koerner Hall for a gala concert celebrating the series’ 30th anniversary. It’s a bigger venue than their norm, as befits what promises to be a fittingly grand and heartfelt occasion. Don’t be surprised, though, if tickets turn out to be in short supply. No two individuals in this city have played a more important role in ensuring the place of art song in this country’s musical life, and the audience can expect the hosts for the evening, mezzo Catherine Robbin and actor/director Christopher Newton, to weave a significant and personal storyline through the event.

Robbin, for one, can trace her own Aldeburgh connection almost all the way back to the time of Ralls’ and Ubukata’s own first meeting — at Benjamin Britten’s and Peter Pears’ Aldeburgh Festival in Suffolk, England, in 1977. And Newton, best known as artistic director of the Shaw Festival, has been a long time Aldeburgh collaborator, repeatedly helping to give voice to the meticulously crafted, always evocative storylines that are one hallmark of an Aldeburgh Connection event.

The best news is that after February 19′s Koerner Hall fireworks, there will still be two, more typical Aldeburgh events this season, in the somewhat cosier confines of Walter Hall, their usual venue. March 18th’s programme is titled “Schubert and the Esterhazys”; April 29 brings “A Country House Weekend.”

The first of these carries forward what has been an Aldeburgh Connection tradition since 1997 (the 200th anniversary of Schubert’s birth) — namely some kind of Schubertiad. That first Aldeburgh Schubertiad honoured harpishordist/pianist Greta Kraus, a great champion of Schubert’s work and peerless art song collaborator and teacher. This year’s event, as always, will be rededicated to her memory.

As for the April 29 “Country House” concert, it points two ways. For one thing, it harkens back to the bucolic Suffolk surrounds of Ralls’ and Ubukata’s own first “Aldeburgh connection.” For another, it also, perhaps, gives a little nod to the future, namely Ralls’ and Ubukata’s now annual June Bayfield festival near their country home on the shores of Lake Huron. But that, as the saying goes, is a story for another day.

For now, readers interested in hearing (and viewing) more of my recent visit with Ralls and Ubukata will find the full 20 minute conversation at www.thewholenote.com.

(And, for the record, that particular concert in October 1995, almost 17 years ago, featured a couple of relative young ‘uns, Michael Schade and Norine Burgess, in a recital of songs and duets by Mendelssohn, Brahms, Schubert, Debussy and Chabrier.)

John Greer: All Around the Circle
A Canadian folksong suite for vocal quartet and two pianos

Robert Schumann: Spanische Liebeslieder,
Op. 138 Spanish Love Songs Johannes Brahms: Liebeslieder Walzer, Op. 52
Waltzes for 4 voices and piano duet ]]> http://aldeburghconnection.org/archives/202/feed 0 http://aldeburghconnection.org/archives/200 http://aldeburghconnection.org/archives/200#comments Thu, 01 Dec 2011 02:37:18 +0000 admin http://aldeburghconnection.org/wordpress/archives/200 CD includes:

Benjamin Britten:
Canticle I: My beloved is mine
(Francis Quarles) Op. 40

Canticle II: Abraham and Isaac
(Chester Miracle Play) Op. 51

Canticle III: Still falls the Rain
(Edith Sitwell) Op. 55

Canticle IV: Jouney of the Magi
(T.S. Eliot) Op. 86

Canticle V: The Death of Saint Narcissus
(T.S. Eliot) Op. 89 Henry Purcell:
Three Divine Hymns
realised by Benjamin Britten

Lord, what is man (William Fuller)

We sing to him (Nathaniel Ingelo)

Evening Hymn(William Fuller) ]]> http://aldeburghconnection.org/archives/200/feed 0 http://aldeburghconnection.org/archives/198 http://aldeburghconnection.org/archives/198#comments Thu, 01 Dec 2011 02:35:40 +0000 admin http://aldeburghconnection.org/wordpress/archives/198 Disc 1:

If music be the food of love by Henry Purcell, real. Benjamin Britten
Catherine Robbin mezzo, Bruce Ubukata piano

Der Tanz D826 by Franz Schubert
Monica Whicher soprano, Norine Burgess mezzo, Michael Schade tenor, Mark Pedrotti baritone, Bruce Ubukata piano

Wohin? D795/2 by Schubert
Michael Schade tenor, Stephen Ralls piano

Der Wanderer D493 by Schubert
Mark Pedrotti baritone, Bruce Ubukata piano

Liebhaber in allen Gestalten D558 by Schubert
Nancy Argenta soprano, Malcolm Bilson fortepiano

Das Fischermädchen D957/10 by Schubert
Russell Braun baritone, Bruce Ubukata piano

Der Jüngling an der Quelle D300 by Schubert
Michael Schade tenor, Stephen Ralls piano

Erlkönig D328 by Schubert
Monica Whicher soprano, Michael Schade tenor, Gerald Finley baritone, Stephen Ralls piano

Punschlied (im Norden zu singen) D253 by Schubert
Kathleen Brett soprano, Michael Schade and Jay Lambie tenors, Mark Pedrotti baritone, Stephen Ralls piano

Benedeit die sel’ge Mutter by Hugo Wolf
Russell Braun baritone, Bruce Ubukata piano

Du denkst mit einem Fädchen mich zu fangen by Wolf
Monica Whicher soprano, Stephen Ralls piano

Ach, des Knaben Augen by Wolf
Catherine Robbin mezzo, Bruce Ubukata piano

Epiphanias by Wolf
Monica Whicher soprano, Catherine Robbin mezzo, Russell Braun baritone, Stephen Ralls, piano

Do not believe it, my friend Op. 6/1 by Piotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky)
Adrianne Pieczonka soprano, Stephen Ralls piano

O do not leave Op. 4/1 by Sergei Rachmaninov
James Westman baritone, Stephen Ralls piano

Lilacs Op. 21/5 by Rachmaninov
Joanne Kolomyjec soprano, Stephen Ralls piano

Fleur jetée Op. 39/2 by Gabriel Fauré
Michael Schade tenor, Stephen Ralls piano

Lydia Op. 4/2 by Fauré
Russell Braun baritone, Bruce Ubukata piano

Mi-a-ou (Dolly) Op. 56/2 by Fauré
Stephen Ralls and Bruce Ubukata, piano

Dans le forêt de septembre Op. 85/1 by Fauré
Catherine Robbin mezzo, Bruce Ubukata piano

C’est l’extase (Ariettes oubliées) by Claude Debussy
Donna Brown soprano, Bruce Ubukata piano

Apparition by Debussy
Nathalie Paulin soprano, Stephen Ralls piano

Le Bal masqué — Préambule et Air de bravoure by Francis Poulenc
Brett Polegato baritone and ensemble,

C, Fêtes galantes (Deux Poèmes de Louis Aragon) by Poulenc
Rosemarie Landry, soprano, Stephen Ralls piano

Cradle Song, When you’re feeling like expressing your affection by Benjamin Britten
Gerald Finley baritone, Stephen Ralls piano Disc 2:

Begone, dull care! arrangement from Jane Austen’s music books
Kathryn Domoney soprano, Daniel Neff baritone, Stephen Ralls and Bruce Ubukata piano

Der Nussbaum Op. 25/3 by Robert Schumann
Donna Brown soprano, Bruce Ubukata piano

Zwielicht Op. 39/10 by Schumann
Brett Polegato baritone, Stephen Ralls piano

Herbstlied Op. 43/2 by Schumann
Donna Brown soprano, Catherine Robbin mezzo, Bruce Ubukata piano

Wie froh und frisch (Die schõne Magelone) Op. 33/14 by Johannes Brahms
Russell Braun baritone, Stephen Ralls piano

Rote Rosen by Richard Strauss
Susan Platts mezzo, Bruce Ubukata piano

Zueignung Op. 10/1 by Strauss
Adrianne Pieczonka soprano, Stephen Ralls piano

Nachklang Op. 30/7 by Othmar Schoeck
Nathan Berg baritone, Stephen Ralls piano

Drei Lieder nach Hildegard Jone Op. 25 by Anton Webern
Valdine Anderson soprano, Stephen Ralls piano

Arie aus Dem Spiegel von Arcadien by Arnold Schoenberg
Linda Maguire mezzo, Stephen Ralls piano

Sur l’herbe by Maurice Ravel
Nathalie Paulin soprano, Bruce Ubukata piano

Le Rossignol des lilas by Reynaldo Hahn
Nathalie Paulin soprano, Bruce Ubukata piano

La barcheta by Hahn
Michael Schade tenor, Stephen Ralls piano

Dear Lord and Father of mankind (Stacey) by John Beckwith
Monica Whicher soprano, Stephen Ralls piano

Cheerio! (I’m going to see the King and Queen) by Percy Faith
Monica Whicher soprano, Norine Burgess mezzo, Nils Brown tenor, Stephen Ralls piano

Won’t you meet me at Murray’s? by Willie Eckstein
Monica Whicher soprano, Norine Burgess mezzo, Nils Brown tenor, Stephen Ralls and Bruce Ubukata piano

Four songs from Liebesleid-Lieder by John Greer
Monica Whicher soprano, Norine Burgess mezzo, Benjamin Butterfield tenor, Mark Pedrotti baritone, Stephen Ralls and Bruce Ubukata piano

Nightmare Song (Iolanthe) by Sir Arthur Sullivan
Daniel Neff baritone, Stephen Ralls piano

Two movements from Capriol by Peter Warlock
Stephen Ralls and Bruce Ubukata piano

Soldier won’t you marry me? arr. Benjamin Britten
Catherine Robbin mezzo, Colin Ainsworth tenor, Stephen Ralls piano

Two Musical Relics of my Mother by Percy Grainger
Stephen Ralls and Bruce Ubukata piano

Come on, Algernon by Lord Berners
Mary Lou Fallis soprano, Christopher Newton baritone, Stephen Ralls and Bruce Ubukata piano ]]> http://aldeburghconnection.org/archives/198/feed 0 http://aldeburghconnection.org/archives/196 http://aldeburghconnection.org/archives/196#comments Thu, 01 Dec 2011 02:33:08 +0000 admin http://aldeburghconnection.org/wordpress/archives/196 Dithyrambe (Friedrich von Schiller), D801– Finley/Ralls
Täglich zu singen (Matthias Claudius), D533 – Schade/Ubukata
Lachen und Weinen (Friedrich Rückert), D777 – Keith/Ralls
Der Wanderer an den Mond (Johann Gabriel Seidl), D870 – Finley/Ubukata
Die Sterne (Karl Gottfried von Leitner), D939 – Keith/Ralls
An eine Quelle (Claudius), D530 – Schade/Ralls
Nachtviolen (Johann Baptist Mayrhofer), D752 – Keith/Ubukata
Der Jüngling an der Quelle (Johann Gaudenz Freiherr von Salis-Seewis), D300 – Schade/Ubukata
Am Bach im Frühlinge (Franz von Schober), D361 – Finley/Ubukata
Der Schmetterling (Friedrich von Schlegel), D633 – Keith/Ralls
Das Lied im Grünen (Friedrich Reil), D917 – Schade/Ralls
Der Hochzeitsbraten (Schober), D930 – Keith/Ainsworth/Finley/Ralls
Rondo in A, D951 – Ralls/Ubukata
Mignon und der Harfner (Johann Wolfgang von Goethe), D877/1 – Keith/Ainsworth/Ralls
Sehnsucht (Schiller), D636 – Finley/Ralls
Nähe des Geliebten (Goethe), D162 – Schade/Ubukata
Die abgeblühte Linde (Ludwig Graf von Széchényi), D514 – Keith/Ubukata
Am Tage Aller Seelen (Litanei) (Johann Georg Jacobi), D343 – Finley/Ubukata
Der Musensohn (Goethe), D764 – Schade/Ralls

Stephen Ralls, left, and Bruce Ubukata at their 1862 piano. - Colin McConnell/Toronto Star

If memory serves, heroin was the drug of choice in that Oscar-winning film The French Connection. In the Toronto concert series known as The Aldeburgh Connection it is clearly music.

The latter title is less an homage to the cinematic exploits of Gene Hackman than an acknowledgment of the fateful meeting, nearly three and a half decades ago, of two pianists in  Aldeburgh, the medieval English coastal town inescapably associated with the music of Benjamin Britten.

Stephen Ralls was already an established figure there, working as a pianist and vocal coach at the Britten-Pears School and taking part in the festivals that continue to this day to draw music lovers to the Suffolk shores of Aldeburgh Bay, when a fellow keyboardist from Ontario arrived named Bruce Ubukata.

They not only struck up a personal friendship, Ubukata subsequently introduced Ralls to James Craig, then head of the Opera Division of the University of Toronto Faculty of Music, which act led in turn to a secure university job in Toronto at a time when similar employment proved elusive in his native England

Neither man forgot Aldeburgh. Indeed, they continued to return annually to participate in its musical activities. You can even hear the younger Ralls playing the important piano part in the Decca/London world premiere recording of Britten’s last opera, Death in Venice. Meanwhile, they decided to give Toronto a taste of Suffolk by establishing a concert series focused on the kind of music-making associated with their summer destination, finding no more logical name for it than The Aldeburgh Connection.

The next concert in the series takes place a week Sunday in the University of Toronto’s Walter Hall, with soprano Joni Henson, tenor Colin Ainsworth and baritone James Westman taking part in a program featuring the songs of Franz Liszt, himself celebrating his 200th birthday this year.

At the keyboard, as usual, will be either Ralls or Ubukata, supporting singers they have either discovered, coached or championed, if not all three. Not for nothing did Opera Canada present them last year with one of its Rubies, an award recognizing their important role in the cultivation of Canadian vocal talent.

This season marks the 30th anniversary of The Aldeburgh Connection, its apex potentially a Feb. 19 gala concert at the Royal Conservatory’s Koerner Hall at which no fewer than 16 leading Canadian singers will perform solos, duets and ensembles, culminating in a collective performance of Ralph Vaughan Williams’s ecstatic Serenade to Music.

It would have been difficult to imagine such an event back in Feb. 21, 1982, when the two pianists were joined by four singers at Hart House to launch their enterprise.

“We were incredibly naive,” recalls Ralls. “We thought invitations to do more concerts would pour in. They didn’t .”

The two collaborators nevertheless persevered, with some help from the Canada-Aldebugh Foundation, the Canada Council and supporters who admired their verbally enhanced, thematic approach to concert presentation.

A glance at the current season’s brochure gives a clue to this approach. Consider, for example, the final Walter Hall concert, April 29, titled A Country House Weekend.

Inspired by Aldous Huxley’s novel Crome Yellow, a thinly disguised evocation of a house party given by Lady Ottoline Morrell, the program seeks to suggest the romance and nostalgia of English life between the two world wars, drawing on music by John Ireland, Frank Bridge, Peter Warlock, William Walton and, of course, the young Benjamin Britten.

Literary and historical research precedes each Aldeburgh Connection concert but perhaps none more dramatically than a concert given several years ago exploring the strong connection between the novelist Jane Austen and music.

As Ubukata recalls, he and his Aldeburgh co-artistic director travelled all the way to the Austen house museum in England to examine the music their subject had meticulously copied out in her own hand (buying published copies being beyond her modest budgetary means).

Discovering that the last of the Austens, descended from her brother, lived in Victoria, B.C., they travelled as well to Canada’s west coast and discovered in that hospitable elderly lady’s possession the actual lap desk at which the writer had done much of her writing.

The desk now resides in the British Museum. Its family owners are history. But with three decades of such musical adventures behind them, Stephen Ralls and Bruce Ubukata show no signs of abandoning their joint enterprise.

When they were in Aldeburgh this season they attended a performance of Britten’s Albert Herring, starring a talented young Canadian tenor previously unknown to them.

Don’t be surprised if, in the seasons ahead, they help the rest of us get to know Christopher Mayell.

The Heart Mislaid (2002), (Douglas LePan) composer: Derek Holman ~ Ainsworth/Ralls

Airs and Echoes upon a Ground (1998), composer; Derek Holman ~ Ralls/Ubukata

Stacey (1997), (Margaret Laurence) composer: John Beckwith ~ Whicher/Ralls

Liebesleid-Lieder (2001), (Dorothy Parker and others) composer: John Greer ~ Whicher/Turnbull/Ainsworth/Pedrotti/Ubukata/Ralls

The Aldeburgh Connection brought its faithful audience another singularly beguiling afternoon of song on Sunday afternoon at Walter Hall. Artistic directors and pianists Stephen Ralls and Bruce Ubukata read salient bits from the letters of Robert Schumann and, with two principal singers, cherry-picked their way through the unstemmable flood of 128 songs that flowed from Schumann’s pen in the heady months leading to his 1840 marriage to the brilliant young pianist Clara Wieck.

In the years previous, Schumann had been occupied almost exclusively with music for the piano – much of it inspired by the skills and talents of the then teenaged Clara – and had shown no interest in composing songs. But suddenly, when the implacable opposition of her father to their ever marrying (Schumann was 10 years older than Wieck) was overruled by the courts, Schumann’s need to express his feelings for his beloved led him to seek them reflected in poetry, and then to clothe the precious verses in music of his own devising.

Obsessive as he was, once he began, he could not stop, and in that single year he laid down the lavish array of songs – in garlands and cycles and smaller groupings – that established him as the pre-eminent master of the genre between Schubert and Brahms. Obviously, all 128 songs could not be contained in Sunday’s program, despite the near-miraculous brevity of some of them. But the approximately one-fifth on offer Sunday represented handsomely the whole extraordinary  achievement. And the two featured singers were well-chosen advocates for it.

Erin Wall has a lovely clear soprano, at its finest in the linear legatos so enhancing to Schumann’s distinctive melodies. The voice is less adaptable to his more dramatic manifestations and to his occasional use of ornament. Thus, the crucial turns in Waldesgespraech and Helft mir, ihr  Schwestern were unarticulated. The dire drama of Waldesgespraech was also uneasily managed. By contrast, the far more difficult rapt hush of Mondnacht was magically sustained, as was the floating languor of Die Lotosblume. Probably Wall’s finest moment of the afternoon, though, came in Sehnsucht nach der Waldgegend, in which you could feel she really was longing for the forest, ending her effusion with a lovely high pianissimo.

Seconded by the softly assisting young tenor Patrick Jang, she was also impressive in the two duets from Opus 34, in particular the bubbling first one, a setting of verse by Robbie Burns, which also inspired the best of Stephen Ralls’s many beautifully gauged accompaniments. The other principal singer, Phillip Addis, was for me something of a discovery: a fine baritone, not quite finished in every respect but memorable for the variety and genuineness of its eloquence: the real lieder-singer’s gift for conveying the specific essence of a song, distinct from each other song in his repertoire. From the enthralled simplicity of Du bist wie eine Blume to the martial swing of Die beiden Grenadiere, from the ardent confession of Wenn ich in deine Augen seh’ to the grave, portentous tragedy of that supremely exacting peroration Stille Traenen, you could feel Addis touching and conveying the essences of verse and music. He did not altogether manage Stille
Traenen vocally, but there was no doubt he understood it and helped us understand it.

There is a big gift here for the many worlds of lieder, and thanks are due once again to Ralls and Ubukata and the Aldeburgh Connection for bringing it to public attention.