Since taking the reins in 2009, Mehta (the son of conductor Zubin Mehta and soprano Carmen (Lasky) Mehta) has overseen a period of remarkable growth, expanding the RCM’s reach into the jazz and world music spheres, while also drawing in top-level talent from across classical music. Mehta was the one to oversee the successful launch of Koerner Hall, now one of Canada’s preeminent arts venues, alongside a notable series of “Big Get” concerts featuring the likes of the Budapest Festival Orchestra, Chicago Symphony Orchestra, and superstar soloists Joshua Bell and Yuja Wang (among many, many others), heralding a new era not only for the Conservatory but for the classical world of Toronto.

All of which is to say that this Saturday’s Danish String Quartet was a fine example of Mehta’s deft touch.

The Quartet, internationally acclaimed for their brilliant interpretations of a range of classical music, both capital-C Classical and modern, concluded their recent North American tour with a well-received concert at Koerner Hall on Saturday, February 28, 2026.

The evening began with Schnittke’s difficult – both technically, and, frankly, acoustically – String Quartet No. 2 (1980), a borderline experimental work dedicated to his late friend, the film director Larissa Schepitko, killed in a car accident in 1979. Interweaving ancient Russian choral themes with harsh (often fortissimo) modern tones, it is a bleak, but nevertheless edifying work of art, even if it’s a lot to process for the opening of an evening at the concert hall.

Closing out the first half, the Quartet performed Jonny Greenwood (of Radiohead fame)’s own quartet reduction of his Suite from There Will Be Blood. That Paul Thomas Anderson film, which earned Daniel Day-Lewis a well-deserved Oscar in 2008 for the role of Daniel Plainview, marked the beginning of a longstanding collaboration between the rock star and director, culminating in last year’s One Battle After Another (for which Greenwood stands a good chance of winning his first Oscar later this month). As a standalone work of classical music, the Blood Suite (let’s just call it that) is a riveting experience, successfully mirroring the tensions underlying the film.

The program capped off with Maurice Ravel’s beloved String Quartet in F major (1903), easily one of the most performed twentieth-century chamber pieces. Heavily indebted to Ravel’s contemporaries Fauré and Debussy, the Quartet in F is a lovely work, effortlessly moving back and forth between its gentler themes (the first movement is labelled très doux, literally, “very sweet”) and more propulsive elements, including its widely celebrated second, pizzicato-heavy, movement.

Unable to resist the opportunity for an encore, the Quartet closed out with a traditional song – “Goodnight & Farewell” from Denmark’s Faroe Islands – a lyrical, simple, and quite beautiful tune to send the audience on its way.

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The RCM’s performance season continues this March/April; tickets available here.

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Hungarian conductor Iván Fischer is almost in a class of his own. Founder of the Budapest Festival Orchestra, and with long-running associations with essentially all the major orchestras (Los Angeles Philharmonic, London Symphony Orchestra, Vienna State Opera, etc.), any performance under the Fischer baton is guaranteed to be a success.

Thursday’s performance of Mahler’s Third was no exception. While the Koerner hall is perhaps a tad too small for the oversized symphony – and oversized orchestra, augmented with a children’s choir, adult choir, and soprano soloist – it was still a mesmerizing performance.

Everything about the Third is a marvel, beginning with its structure: two halves, in which the first half is a single movement (Kräftig. Entschieden, “Strong and decisive”) which is essentially a symphony unto itself. Following that incredible opening – the audience burst spontaneously into applause at its conclusion on Thursday night – the Symphony then moves into its second half, a full five additional movements.

Of the remaining movements, the fourth movement Sehr langsam—Misterioso (“Very slowly, mysteriously”) is probably the most fascinating, not only for its literary connections – it’s adapted from a portion of Nietschze’s Also sprach zarathustra, the same work which would later go on to inspire R. Strauss’s famed work – but for the introduction, after already more than an hour of music, of a solo voice. Here, mezzo-soprano Gerhild Romberger sings the lyrics of Nietzsche’s “O Mensch! Gib Acht!” (“O Man! Take heed!”) as select themes from the first half are woven throughout.

The highlight, however, is undoubtedly the majestic finale, the incredibly moving Langsam-Ruhevoll-Empfunden (“What Love Tells Me”). The experience of listening to this finale, coming not only after nearly an hour-and-a-half of music, but after an hour-and-a-half of already extraordinary music, is hard to put into words. I will say this, however: the soprano Romberger (who has no singing role during this movement) could be seen weeping, overwhelmed by the emotion and the power of Mahler’s music.

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The Royal Conservatory of Music’s season continues throughout February – June 2026.

The post Budapest Festival Orchestra at Koerner Hall (Review): Mahler Third appeared first on Toronto Guardian.

With upcoming recitals at the Royal Festival Hall (London), Philharmonie de Paris, and Carnegie Hall – and that’s just in the first three months of 2026 – Ólafsson’s busy schedule has been a boon to classical markets across the world, drawing in audiences excited to see the man dubbed the “new superstar of classical piano”.

The recently-anointed Grammy Winner (2025, “Best Classical Instrumental Solo”, for his recording of the Goldberg Variations) has a strong association with Toronto’s Koerner Hall, having already performed here five previous times since his “post-COVID” debut in 2022.

And on an exciting note, his program is more or less the exact album he recently released to great critical acclaim: the Opus No. 109 release, gathering together Beethoven’s fabled Piano Sonata No. 30 in E major, Op. 109 alongside a host of related works by Beethoven and other composers.

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While there’s no denying the power of the works on display – and Ólafsson’s interpretation thereof – we were a bit bewildered by his decision to perform the entire program uninterrupted.

It’s one thing to request that audiences refrain from applause between pieces; that much we can understand. But performing a succession of pieces, back to back, with barely a pause between each, turned the matinée performance into a sort of mega-sonata, composed jointly by Beethoven, Bach, and Schubert. At times, it was difficult to tell where one piece ended and the other began, so swiftly did Ólafsson move between them.

As for the individual performances themselves – to the extent we could even distinguish them – highlights included Bach’s Prelude No. 9 in E Major, BWV 854, Schubert’s Piano Sonata in E Minor, D. 566, and the aforementioned Beethoven masterpiece of Opus 109. Rounding out the program was Beethoven’s Piano Sonata No. 27 in E Minor, Op. 90, Bach’s Partita No. 6 in E Minor, BWV 830, and a wealth of encores, including some lovely Rameau.

Ólafsson is, of course, rightly heralded for his interpretative skill, nearly unmatched amongst his class of pianists. While we’re ever-so-slightly more partial to Yuja Wang (who, incidentally, Ólafsson collaborated with barely a year ago in a highly acclaimed Carnegie Hall recital), there’s no denying his sheer musicality, light touch on the keys, and impeccable instincts. His ability to conjure raw emotion from the mix (or shall we say, medley) of Bach, Beethoven, and Schubert was impressive, and earned a well-deserved standing ovation (and all those encores).

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Next up on the RCM Season Calendar is a hotly anticipated visit from the Budapest Festival Orchestra under the baton of Iván Fischer. Stay tuned for our thoughts on that concert soon.

Check out the RCM’s 2026 Season Calendar here.

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Was it recency bias? Sure. Are there other, better violinists who probably deserved the top spot? Well, Heifitz (#9 on the list) and Kreisler (#11) tend to be critics’ favourites, though if you’re going to go with a living violinist, I’d say Itzhak Perlman (#19) is the overall superior musician.

But the fact that Bell, now 57 years old and probably most famous to the non-musicgoing public for that one time he went incognito as a Washington Metro busker, earned the top spot is absolutely, justifiably, a testament to his prodigious talent and, perhaps as importantly, his ability to appeal to mass audiences in an era of declining interest in classical music.

Thursday’s performance with the TSO at Roy Thomson Hall is case in point.

Thursday’s show got off to a confusing start, the orchestra unexpectedly launching into the opening bars of the Magic Flute’s “Priest’s March” – until I realized it was just a misguided display of patriotism, the TSO starting the evening with our national anthem. Yes, we’re all still reeling from that Blue Jays loss. No, I don’t think our arts events need to be burdened with the same fervent displays of national pride found at sporting events. Let’s hope it doesn’t become a pattern.

The piece that immediately followed, and the first item on the program proper, suggests why “O, Canada” needn’t have been there. Joined by members of the Toronto Symphony Youth Orchestra, the TSO performed Sibelius’s wonderful Finlandia (1900). The unofficial national anthem of Finland and the one Sibelius piece which every amateur orchestra must, by unwritten law, perform at least once in every five-year concert rotation, Finlandia is one of the great works of patriotic fervour. Written at a time of Russian control over Finland, its weaving of Finnish folk themes and brassy marches makes it a perennial favourite, in Scandinavia and beyond.

Bell’s contribution to the program – and the reason why everyone was there – was the Canadian premiere of the newly rediscovered (by Bell himself) 1943 Violin Concerto by little-known Ukrainian composer Thomas de Hartmann. Bell’s championing in 2025 of the Ukrainian de Hartmann, who composed his work at the height of the Nazi occupation of his native Finland, is no coincidence. Last year, Bell released the album Thomas de Hartmann Rediscovered with Ukrainian conductor Dalia Stasevska, who was also on hand for the Toronto performance.

Politics aside, the de Hartmann is a marvellous work, surprising, I think, many (your Toronto Guardian included) with its beautiful, enthralling nature. From its opening Largo – Allegro through its rousing Finale, Thursday’s performance was a strong argument for its entry into the repertoire. (Stranger things have happened.) Influences of Stravinsky, Vaughan Williams, and R. Strauss abound.

The latter part of the evening was given over to Dvořák’s extraordinary Symphony No. 7 (1885). While less popular than the “New World” Symphony (No. 9), Dvořák’s seventh is a powerful, monumental work. History tells us that Dvořák, upon hearing Brahms’s third, set out to compose a masterpiece for himself, and he certainly delivered. (If only it were that easy for the rest of us.)

We’re particularly partial to its second, poco adagio, movement, which hints at serenity even as it overwhelms with sweeping, breathtaking crescendos. The allegro finale is so propulsive it practically had audience members falling out of their seats.

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Upcoming Roy Thomson Hall performances include a live recording of Prokofiev’s Romeo & Juliet (Nov. 20-22, 2025), the Toronto Symphony Youth Orchestra with Mendelssohn’s “Reformation” Symphony (Nov. 29, 2025, in a program which also contains, you guessed it, Finlandia), and a whole host of seasonal favourites including the Swan Lake suite, Home Alone in Concert, and Handel’s Messiah.

The post Joshua Bell Returns (Concert Review) appeared first on Toronto Guardian.

With Opera Atelier, Fallis has conducted major works by Monteverdi, Mozart, Handel, Purcell, and others, performing in Toronto and at prestigious venues in Europe, Asia, and the U.S. His leadership helped bring historically informed performance to international prominence.

A passionate advocate for new music, Fallis has conducted numerous world premieres and collaborates frequently with contemporary composers and ensembles. His direction of Choir 21 emphasizes innovative choral works that push stylistic boundaries.

Beyond the concert stage, he has contributed to film and television, serving as historical music advisor for series like The Tudors and The Borgias. He is also a sought-after guest conductor with orchestras and choirs across Canada.

David Fallis is widely respected for his interpretive depth, stylistic versatility, and ability to connect historical insight with vibrant, modern performance.

Name:

David Fallis

Genre:

Classical

Founded:

Music Director with Opera Atelier for 40 years

Favourite musician growing up:

Blood, Sweat and Tears

Favourite musician now:

Claudio Abbado

Guilty pleasure song:

Eli’s comin’ by Laura Nyro

Live show ritual:

Decent meal about two hours ahead, then some quiet time.

Favourite local musician:

Marco Cera

EP or LP?

Apocalypsis by Murray Schafer. This was quite the show, with almost 1,000 players, singers, dancers, actors involved!

Early bird or night owl?

Night owl

Road or studio?

Road. How else would I get to go to the places I’ve been?

Any shows or albums coming up?

Conducting a favourite opera: Mozart’s Magic Flute with Opera Atelier and Tafelmusik, and a great cast.

Where can we follow you?

On the street where I live.

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Rapid Fire Local Questions:

What is your favourite local restaurant?

Chop chop on Dundas

What is your favourite street in your city and why?

Baldwin Street for the combo of Kensington Market vibe, plus some nice restaurants near Beverley.

What is your favourite park in your city and why?

Colonel Sam Smith. Great walks by the lake, and lots of waterbirds.

What is your favourite music venue in your city?

Koerner Hall

What is your favourite music store in your city?

Steve’s on Queen

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