About that last one: Metric’s once-in-a-lifetime, top-to-bottom performance of Fantasies last June also stealthily worked in another rare opportunity: opening act Sam Roberts Band, playing their own We Were Born in a Flame (2003) from start to finish.

While merely an opener then, it’s now Sam Roberts and friends’ chance to get in on the act, with their own headlining anniversary tour, showcasing the band’s stellar 2006 album Chemical City. We had a chance to check it out this past weekend at Massey Hall, where a visibly moved Roberts waxed poetic about the passage of time, about his ever-faithful fan base, and about looking ahead (to his next, as-yet unannounced, album).

Chemical City, inspired by the not-exactly-flattering nickname of Sarnia in southern Ontario, grew out of Sam Roberts’s interest in telling a story across a single, ten-track album.

Highlights include Canadian chart-topping singles “The Gate” and “Bridge to Nowhere”, though we’re partial to the expertly-named “An American Draft Dodger in Thunder Bay”, with its tale of a Vietnam War draft dodger. Surprise guests – Dartmouth, Nova Scotia’s own Matt Mays, who (fun fact) actually appeared on a single track on the original Chemical City album; indie rocker Danielle Duval – made for a thrilling and unpredictable evening. The album’s final track, the forlorn ballad “A Stone Would Cry Out”, featured Roberts alone at the keyboard under the spotlight, with gusts of smoke billowing behind him. The audience lapped it up.

Much like Metric’s Fantasies program, Roberts, recognizing the forty-seven minute Chemical City was hardly enough to fill an entire concert, leveraged the moment to launch into a greatest hits assembly of tracks covering nearly a quarter-century of music-making.

Highlights of the concert’s back half included We Were Born in the Flame stalwarts “Where Have All the Good People Gone?”, “Don’t Walk Away Eileen”, and “Brother Down”, alongside “Them Kids” and “Detroit ’67” (the two biggest hits off Love at the End of the World, 2008).

Probably the most exciting moment, however, was Robert’s second-ever performance of a track which just missed the cut on the original Chemical City, and which Roberts has lately introduced into his touring repertoire: the lovely, lyrical, “Fall Before You Finish”.

According to Roberts, the first run at Chemical City’s story generated slightly too many songs to include in the final pressing, and it was with some regret that “Fall” was left out. Here, at Massey Hall, it felt right at home – as did we all.

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Tickets for the Chemical City Anniversary tour are available here.

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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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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.

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While (understandably) taking its name from its most famous member, it helps to understand the Ehnes Quartet is not merely the James Ehnes show: quartetmates Amy Schwartz Moretti (violin), Che-Yen Chen (viola), and Edward Arron (cello) are all stars in their own right, whether as solo, ensemble, or orchestral musicians. Brandon, Manitoba’s own James Ehnes may be the best known – he has a Grammy, a bookcase’s worth of Junos, and is widely reputed as one of the great working violinists today – but the opportunity to get these four musicians in one room, making music together, is a treat not to be missed.

Tuesday’s Music Toronto season launch concert featuring the Ehnes Quartet at the St. Lawrence Centre for the Performing Arts is case in point.

Founded a half-century ago, Music Toronto, now headed by renowned Canadian cellist Roman Borys, presents a highly acclaimed fall-winter series of traditional and contemporary chamber music concerts and recitals. This year’s concerts include the celebrated Tetzlaff / Tetzlaff / Doerken Trio (Oct. 21, 2025), pianist Michelle Cann (Nov. 11, 2025), and, probably the biggest event of the season, superstar cellist Steven Isserlis in recital with Canadian pianist Connie Shih (Apr. 23, 2026).

Though founded nearly twenty years ago, this week’s concert was in fact the first time the Ehnes Quartet has performed in the city which Ehnes calls home. The supersized programme – three quartets plus an encore – almost feeling like an apology for having taken so long to come here.

First up was Mendelssohn’s final quartet, the String Quartet No. 6 in F minor, Op. 80, composed shortly before his premature death in 1847 at the age of 38. Brimming with passion, anger, even fury, the quartet is an extraordinary work, full of the raw emotion of Mendelssohn’s final days (he was grieving the recent death of his beloved sister Fanny at the time). Inevitably tinged with our knowledge of Mendelssohn’s health and what was to come, any performance of the String Quartet No. 6 is going to be a standout, and the Ehnes Quartet’s was no exception.

The first half of the programme closed out with Leoš Janáček’s equally fraught Quartet No. 2, JW VII/13, aka the Intimate Letters quartet. Serving as a showcase for violist Che-Yen Chen – the viola part was intended by Janáček to represent the married woman with whom he had fallen into passionate, unrequited love – Intimate Letters is also, like the Mendelssohn, a final work. Composed in 1928 shortly before Janáček’s death, it followed on multiple operas, concertos, and other works dedicated to the much younger Kamila Stösslová, who Janáček had met nearly a decade earlier. The highlight of the quartet is the Moderato, with its achingly beautiful expressions of longing, as embodied by the viola part.

The second half of the programme was Beethoven all the way.

The String Quartet No. 7 in F, O. 59, No. 1, one of the three “Razumovsky” quartets dedicated in 1806 to the Russian ambassador to Vienna, is an audience favourite. Representing a major evolution in Beethoven’s style, the quartet isn’t easy, necessarily – it’s quite lengthy, there are complicated progressions across multiple keys – but it’s deeply rewarding for the engaged listener. The highlight, again, is its mournful slow movement, which gave Mr. Ehnes himself an opportunity to shine in its cadenza-like passages.

Officially the end of the formal programme, rapturous applause earned the audience a brief, delightful encore, in the form of the final movement of Beethoven’s String Quartet No. 4 in C minor, Op. 18, No. 4. A prestissimo rondo, it was an energetic way to round out the evening, as we headed out into the unseasonably warm Toronto evening.

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Tickets for Music Toronto’s 2025-26 season are on sale now.

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