One of the festival's smash successes was its free noon-hour series at the
Chapelle du Bon Pasteur. Usually such concerts are brownbag affairs of limited
musical weight, but these upheld high standards and created a surprisingly
concentrated and serious atmosphere for daytime listening.
Yesterday Toronto's Francine Kay added her name to the long list of Canadian
women pianists with something individual to say.
The central item was Schumann's great Kreisleriana suite. Kay played
the turbulent G Minor episodes with plenty of hot-blooded conviction; sometimes
in the slower pieces her desire to intensify simple melodic contours with rolled
chords and rhythmic highlighting got the better of her. But Oskar Morawetz's
Fantasy, Elegy and Toccata revealed a dashing technique and determined
personality.
