Franck: Piano Quintet in F Minor (arr. Nurhan Arman). Wayne Toews: Mu-Qu-La (Moonlit Lake). Verdi: String Quartet (arr. Lucas Drew). Sinfonia Toronto, Nurhan Arman, conductor. Jean-Philippe Sylvestre, piano. George Weston Recital Corridor, Might 6, 2023.

Few ensembles are as devoted as Sinfonia Toronto to the artwork of the association. On Saturday the 13-strong string orchestra offered two expanded chamber classics because the pillars of its season-ending live performance in George Weston Recital Corridor.

The profitable case was Verdi’s String Quartet of 1873. Music director Nurhan Arman drew a lucid sound from the gamers. Cellos sang operatically within the trio of the scherzando third motion. Everybody was in form for the fugal finale.

Nobody listening to this piece for the primary time would have suspected its quartet origins. This system annotator was silent on how the association by Lucas Drew differs from the established Arturo Toscanini model.

Earlier than intermission, we heard Arman’s enlargement of the César Franck Piano Quintet of 1880. This held promise, given the smouldering ardour and symphonic breadth of the rating.

Oddly, the pumped-up efficiency appeared to want extra gusto quite than much less, though the solo strains of concertmaster Xiaohan Guo within the Lento had been a number of the most alluring of the night. Pianist Jean-Philippe Sylvestre managed a level of delicate expression on this motion, however total his contribution lacked urgency. Regardless of the lacklustre applause, he insisted on giving a solo encore, the finale of Prokofiev’s Sonata No. 7, tamely completed.

This system included two single-movement items in nostalgic mode by dwelling composers, Mu-Qu-La (Moonlit Lake) by Wayne Toews of Saskatchewan and Mother’s Waltz by Irina Grafova, a Ukrainian. The latter was given as an encore.

Sinfonia Toronto gamers now use tablets quite than sheet music. (Sylvestre additionally was utilizing a pill, with a digital page-turner seated beside him.) Audiences had been provided a QR code to scan quite than a paper program. I had the impression that few took the difficulty — a state of affairs that naturally inspired applause between actions. A single sheet of paper, it appears to me, is an affordable compromise that ought to fulfill environmentalists and traditionalists alike.

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Arthur Kaptainis has been the classical music critic of the Montreal Gazette since 1986 and wrote for the Nationwide Put up 2010-2016. His articles have appeared in Classical Voice North America and La Scena Musicale in addition to Ludwig Van. Arthur holds an MA in musicology from the College of Toronto.

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