| Ivars Taurins |
Introduction
“As on other occasions, conductor Ivars Taurins was the galvanizing force behind the excellence of the music-making, his grasp of the very speech of Baroque style evident at every turn.” Calgary Herald Positions Director, Tafelmusik Chamber Choir BiographyEqually at home conducting symphonic and choral repertoire, Ivars Taurins is founding director of the Tafelmusik Chamber Choir, which celebrates its 30th anniversary in 2011/12. He was also principal violist of the Tafelmusik Orchestra for its first 23 years. Under his direction the Tafelmusik Chamber Choir has been widely praised for its clarity, nuance and brilliance, and in 1991 was awarded the Canada Council’s Healey Willan Prize “in recognition of the consistently high level of achievement by the choir and its unique contribution to choral art in Canada.” Principal Baroque Conductor of the Calgary Philharmonic Orchestra from 2001-2010, Ivars Taurins is also active as a guest conductor with orchestras and choirs across Canada. Guest appearances include the Edmonton, Kitchener-Waterloo, Winnipeg, Victoria, Saskatoon and Windsor Symphonies, Orchestra London (Canada), Manitoba Chamber Orchestra, the Canadian Chamber Ensemble, Thirteen Strings (Ottawa), Symphony Nova Scotia, Symphony New Brunswick, Vancouver Chamber Choir, Pro Coro Canada, the Elora Festival Singers, the Toronto Mendelssohn Choir, and the Winnipeg Singers. Mr. Taurins was director of the 2000 and 2009 Ontario Youth Choir, the 2003 Nova Scotia Youth Choir and the 2004 Alberta University and College Choir. He was also guest director of the Nova Scotia, Calgary and London Youth Orchestras. Mr. Taurins will direct the 2012 National Youth Choir. A dynamic conductor, Ivars Taurins has impressed audiences with his exuberant and compelling performances. His regular appearances as conductor of the Tafelmusik Chamber Choir and Orchestra have received widespread critical acclaim and are frequently heard on CBC Radio. He has conducted the Tafelmusik Chamber Choir on recordings for the Hyperion and CBC labels. His recordings (CBC Records) with Tafelmusik of the complete choruses from Handel’s Messiah, the complete Bach motets, and a CD of French 19th- and 20th-century a capella music entitled Chants sacrés et profanes have all received critical acclaim and Juno nominations. The Tafelmusik Chamber Choir’s fifth CD, Gloria in Excelsis Deo, featuring the music of Bach, Vivaldi and Mondonville, was released on CBC Records in 2007 to celebrate the choir’s 25th anniversary. The choir was featured at the Toronto International Choral Festival in 2002, and participated in Canadian Voices (Feb. 2004), a festival celebrating 50 years of professional choral singing in Canada. Ivars Taurins and the choir have premiered works by R. Murray Schafer, Omar Daniels, Chan Ka Nin, Brian Cherney and Paul Frehner with Soundstreams Canada. The choir has also premiered works by Imant Raminsh, James Rolfe, Christos Hatzis, and Ruth Watson Henderson. A passionate lecturer and teacher, Mr. Taurins teaches conducting and baroque ensembles at the University of Toronto. He is in demand as a guest lecturer, adjudicator and clinician. He was guest lecturer at Podium 2000, the conference of the Association of Canadian Choral Conductors. He has been a guest teacher at the Université de Sherbrooke in Quebec; Queen’s University; the Universities of Western Ontario, Alberta, Calgary and Windsor; and at the Glenn Gould Professional School in Toronto. In 2007, Mr. Taurins directed a Respighi opera at the Glenn Gould School. Mr. Taurins is director of the vocal/choral programme at the annual Tafelmusik Baroque Summer Institute.
July 2011 Full RepertoireREPERTOIRE LIST
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Reviews“Conductor Ivars Taurins led the Tafelmusik Chamber Choir and four exceptional vocal soloists, with the Tafelmusik Baroque Orchestra, in Bach’s overwhelming summation of his art and testimony to his faith. The music of this supreme Mass and its performance were simply out of this world.” “As on other occasions, conductor Ivars Taurins was the galvanizing force behind the excellence of the music-making, his grasp of the very speech of Baroque style evident at every turn.” “Taurins’s reading is not merely lean and immaculate, which by now is no surprise to his many admirers, but is also sumptuous, vigorously articulate and profoundly thoughtful.” “The remarkable Ivars Taurins is both a highly disciplined musical thinker and an impassioned communicative artist, and both qualities found free rein in these vivid examples of Beethoven’s art. Beethoven’s Second Symphony is very much a known quantity, through countless performances, but Taurins brought to it a fresh, neo-Toscaninian rhythmic propulsion, sculpting its dynamic and lyrical profiles with a sure hand, clarifying its textures and perspectives, and all without distorting its proportions.” “Key to this most sparkling and dramatic rendition of the perennial favourite [Handel’s Messiah] was the leadership of Toronto conductor Ivars Taurins. More than any live performance I have heard, Taurins was able to give a palpable sense of the rush of ongoing events, that this really is a story with passion and a marked human emotional element. Finally conducted by someone who remembers that the orchestra actually exists in an oratorio performance, the CPO . . . gave the instrumental sparkle that was the hallmark of this most memorable of Messiahs. This is a Messiah not to be missed.” “…one is tempted to say that if Bach, who never heard the B Minor Mass in his lifetime, could choose a performance to listen to, this one by Tafelmusik would have been worth his while. Every aspect of the work was polished to a rare perfection. Ivars Taurins, a man who deserves more praise for his orchestral as well as his choral conducting, shaped every phrase of the two-hour work superbly, controlling his forces, allowing the many internal voices to be heard clearly, letting the music loose when Bach’s spirit called for it.” “… with Taurins' masterful shaping of the music … you have the best-possible kind of concert experience — one that is not likely to be bettered anywhere else. From the slow, almost brooding fugue of the first part of the "Kyrie," Taurins recreated Bach's fabulous architecture note by note in its full glory. The conductor extended the dynamic and rhythmic range as far as it would go without ever reducing it to cheap effect. In short, Taurins simply let the music speak — with clarity, elegance and, when necessary, ferocious passion. The combined effect was so beautiful that it was proof, in itself, that there is a higher power out there.” “Taurins is an inspirational leader, mixing exuberant and broad gesture with precision and attention to detail.” “Like a master weaver, Taurins combined the disparate orchestral elements into a seamless fabric of rich textures . . . simply a knockout!” “The music took life from a crisp, vividly coloured, strongly punctuated projection of the texts it accompanied . . . Players as well as singers seemed completely caught up in the ebullience of Taurins’ approach to the music . . . . Music pours out of him, and out of those with whom he keeps company.” “Taurins was able to extract much ripe expressivity from his charges, with carefully delineated phrasing and abundant subtle detailing and the choristers delivered with splendid conviction, exceptional vigour and a panoply of richly-textured sound.” “Ivars Taurins led a performance brimming with virtuosity. His choir maintained wonderful beauty of tone, clarity of diction, and intensity of inspiration throughout. What a standard of excellence they consistently achieve! The orchestra, too, participated in the performance’s cumulative heat.” “What this Messiah also offered, at the energetic insistence of its conductor, Ivars Taurins, was a consistently dramatic engagement with the text. . . . Filling phrases full of swells and dynamic contrasts, accenting rhythms at every opportunity and urging his colleagues to make the most of their expressive opportunities, he turned this into one of the most dramatically inflected Messiah’s in many a Toronto Christmas.” “A superlative Messiah gives Handel lovers reason to rejoice “Ivars Taurins is a true Handel evangelist . . . . (He) had put together a rare and delectable seamless continuum of arias, duets, and choruses from the oratorios, and so dovetailed these brief and beautiful excerpts that not a moment of our nearly two-and-a-half hours was wasted. It was all music, in a subtly coherent kaleidoscope, full of melody, rhythm, glorious harmony, contrasting textures and near magical musical satisfactions. . . . What a gift of Handel conductor Taurins has here devised for our delight. |