Concerts

This page is a compendium of mostly free stuff so that I don’t have to keep sending emails to people event-by-event, and so that you, dear readers, don’t have to find those emails when you want them.

Last updated July 24, 2021 at 4:00 pm

The Metropolitan Opera has announced that its daily free opera streams will end on July 25, 2021.

The Stratford Festival will stream free Meet the Festival sessions Saturdays at 10:00 am from July 10 to September 25.

The Toronto Summer Music Festival 2021 season will be entirely online and free. Links to their programs are on the performance dates below, and concerts will remain available for one week after their broadcast. The festival runs from July 15 to August 1. Concerts from the 2020 festival are also available.

The Orcas Island Chamber Music Festival will stream five concerts free in August. Tickets are required but payment is optional.

Koerner Hall will announce new concerts for the 21/22 season at the end of August.

This Week’s Events

This Week

Notes:

  • Some URLs change after the live stream has been broadcast. For example, some Wigmore Hall concerts move into their library of past streams with a different URL. If you find a link from a recent concert does not take you to it, the likely problem is that I have not updated the URL yet.

Ongoing

Toronto Summer Music:

Stratford Festival – Meet the Festival

Music Toronto

  • Juilliard String Quartet (avl to July 24 at 7:30 pm)
    • Mozart: String Quartet in B-flat Major, K.458, Hunt
    • Dutilleux: Ainsi la nuit
    • Brahms: String Quartet in A Minor, Op. 51, No. 2

Fri July 23

  • Metropolitan Opera :
    • Donizetti’s La Fille du Régiment
      • Starring Natalie Dessay, Felicity Palmer, Juan Diego Flórez, and Alessandro Corbelli, conducted by Marco Armiliato. Production by Laurent Pelly. From April 26, 2008. 

Sat July 24

  • Stratford Festival: Meet the Festival
    • Evangelia Kambites & Thom Allison – You Can’t Stop the Beat Cabaret
  • Metropolitan Opera :
    • Verdi’s Il Trovatore
      • Starring Anna Netrebko, Dolora Zajick, Yonghoon Lee, and Dmitri Hvorostovsky, conducted by Marco Armiliato. Production by David McVicar. From October 3, 2015.
  • San Francisco Opera
    • Strauss’ Elektra with Christine Goerke (Avl to July 25)
  • Toronto Summer Music Festival

Sun July 25

  • Metropolitan Opera :
    • Verdi’s Un Ballo in Maschera
      • Starring Sondra Radvanovsky, Kathleen Kim, Stephanie Blythe, Marcelo Álvarez, and Dmitri Hvorostovsky, conducted by Fabio Luisi. Production by David Alden. From December 8, 2012.
  • Toronto Summer Music Festival
    • 2:00 pm Jonathan Crow: Beethoven Sonatas Nos. 2 & 9 (Avl to Aug 1)

Mon July 26

  • Toronto Summer Music Festival
    • 7:30 pm Jonathan Crow: Beethoven Sonatas Nos. 6 & 8 (Avl to Aug 2)

Tues July 27

  • Toronto Summer Music Festival
    • 7:30 pm New Horizons: Works by Ysaÿe, Pearce, Saint-Saëns and Ravel (Avl to Aug 3)

Wed July 28

Thurs July 29

Fri July 30

  • Toronto Summer Music Festival
    • 3:00 Master Class with members of the New Orford String Quartet
    • 7:30 Concert with artists of the festival with the Schubert Octet and a new work by Kelly-Marie Murphy

Sat July 31

Sun Aug 1

  • Toronto Summer Music

Canadian Artists/Companies/Venues

Against the Grain Theatre

TBA

Amici Chamber Ensemble

Angela Hewitt

  • Le Tombeau de Couperin by Ravel on YouTube

Arts & Letters Club of Toronto

Art of Time

There are many excerpts from past concerts on YouTube. Andrew Burashko, AOT’s Artistic DIrector, has announced that future seasons will be dedicated to joint projects with other groups rather than a return to the long-running concert series at Harbourfront.

Koerner Hall / Royal Conservatory of Music

Many 2020/21 season events have been postponed with a new date, and some are sine die. Please refer to the Royal Conservatory’s calendar page for details. They will announce new programs for the 21/22 season at the end of August/21.

There are many concerts/recitals in their library including:

Music Toronto

Music Toronto has announced a winter season, but how these concerts will be presented is still uncertain.

Upcoming online concerts:

  • Thursday August 26 at 7:30 pm to August 28 at 7:30 pm
    • From the Collingwood Summer Music Festival
    • Artists: Mayumi Seiler, Violin, Cris Derksen, Electric Cello and Composition, Angela Park, Piano
      • Mozart – Violin Sonata in B-flat, K.454
      • Derksen – Nice and Clean; Planes
      • Brahms – Violin Sonata in A Major, Op. 10
  • Thursday September 23 at 7:30 pm to September 25 at 7:30 pm
    • Marc-André Hamelin
      • Maria Szymanowska: Nocturne in B-flat Major
      • CPE Bach: Suite in E Minor, Wq 62/2
      • Schubert: Sonata in A Major, No. 29, D. 95

National Film Board

The National Film Board has a lot of free online content including their animation page. Of course this includes the ever popular Blackberry Subway Jam.

A series of shorts on recipients of the Governor General’s Performing Arts Award:

Opera Atelier

TBA

Russell Braun & Carolyn Maule

Soulpepper Theatre

Around the World in 80 Plays will present eight plays from around the world in audio drama format in collaboration with the CBC Ideas program (paid events, April 21 to June 9, available online to July 31).

Stratford Festival

The festival has a $10/month subscription ($11.30 with tax) available for access to much content both from their library and new productions on demand. To access this you have to create a Stratford online account.

The Stratford Festival has announced its 2021 Season. Read the press release with details here.

They have posted a tour of the new Tom Patterson Theatre.

Tafelmusik

Café Counterculture (Avl to Aug 6/21)

Tafelmusik has announced that its 2021/22 season will be entirely digital with an option to buy tickets for in-person attendance if and when this type of gathering is allowed.

Tapestry Opera

Toronto Consort / Early Music TV

The Toronto Consort presents its season and other content through a new site dedicated to Middle Ages, Renaissance, and Baroque music. Subscriptions and single concert purchases available.

Available now:

  • All in a Garden Green: A musical stroll through the verdant gardens of Elizabethan England
  • A Medieval Christmas: A serene and contemplative exploration of enchanting medieval chants, polyphony and carols.
  • Of Tricksters and Trolls: The musical story-telling of the medieval fables of Valhalla, with Peter Tiefenbach.

The 2021/22 season is TBA.

Toronto Symphony Orchestra

The TSO has announced its 2021/22 season. Concerts will begin in mid-November with smaller forces on stage and a socially distanced audience. Full scale concerts are planned beginning in March 2022.

Trio Arkel

The 21/22 season will be announced in the fall.

University of Toronto Faculty of Music

USA Artists/Companies/Venues

Carnegie Hall

See their website for upcoming and past concerts.

Orcas Island Chamber Music Festival

The festival is online free in 2021, but tickets are required.

  • August 7: Bach, Coleridge-Taylor and Schumann
  • August 11: Gershwin, Beach, Beethoven, Schumann, Piazzolla, Khatchachurian, Higdon and Hyman
  • August 14: Beethoven, Handel/Halverson
  • August 18: Haydn, Chopin, Schubert
  • August 21: Fanny Mendelssohn, Baker, Clarke, Weinberg and Fauré

San Francisco Opera

The San Francisco Opera is streaming past productions weekly over the summer 2021. Programs go live at 7:00 am EDT and are up for two days.

  • July 31-Aug 1: Verdi: Luisa Miller
  • Aug 7-8: Wagner: Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg
  • Aug 14-15: Donizetti: Roberto Devereux with Sondra Radvanovsky

University of Washington Meany Center

TBA

Across the Pond

Concertgebouw Orchestra

There is a large library of free concerts available from the Concertgebouw Orchestra in Amsterdam including a performance on June 19 conducted by the TSO’s incoming music director, Gustavo Gimeno. Note that you will have to first create an account on their site to access the older material, but after that it’s a big collection including the complete Mahler symphonies.

Daniel Hope

Please see this separate page for previous Hope@Home concerts. This series has completed and the videos are no longer available.

Gothenburg Symphony Orchestra

The GSO has a page with both their upcoming concerts and links to many previously archived ones.

Holland Baroque

  • Violinist Aislinn Nosky and Holland Baroque play a program of music by Telemann in the Polish style.
  • Bach: Art of Fugue arranged for string quartet and harpsichord

Israel Philharmonic

Israel Philharmonic Archive page

  • Brahms: Trio for Cello, Piano and Clarinet
  • Mozart: Dissonance Quartet No. 19 in C major
  • Beethoven: String Trio in E-Flat Major, Op. 3.

Komische Oper Berlin

TBA

London Philharmonic Orchestra

London Symphony Orchestra

There is a list of summer online performances.

Past performances:

  • Sir Simon Rattle conductor (Avl to Sept 6/21)
    • Grieg: Prelude from ‘Holberg Suite’
    • Puccini: Crisantemi
    • Herrmann: Psycho – A Narrative for String Orchestra
    • Barber: Adagio for Strings
    • Vaughan Williams: Fantasia on a Theme by Thomas Tallis
  • Sir Simon Rattle conductor (Avl to Oct 2/21)
    • Britten: Young Person’s Guide to the Orchestra
    • Fauré: Pelléas et Mélisande – Suite
    • Dvořák: Slavonic Danc

National Theatre

The National Theatre in London, UK, has announced an NT at Home program allowing subscription access to their library of plays with a choice of monthly or a discounted annual payment. Recent additions to the online library are Hamlet and Frankenstein (both casts).

Old Vic Theatre

June 30: Queers

Originally commissioned in 2017, Queers commemorated the 50th anniversary of the Sexual Offences Act from the perspective of those whose lives it affected with a poignant, funny, tragic and riotous celebration. To mark this year’s Pride Month, two new commissions with stories from the wider LGBTQ+ community will be premiered as part of Your Old Vic, available exclusively on The Old Vic’s YouTube channel from 30 Jun.

Aug 25-28: Baghdad Cafe (Paid, timed event)

Wiener Staatsoper

To view screenings from the Staatsoper, you must create an account, but then they are free. Normally they are available only for a day or so. Current listings are on their calendar page.

There are no events currently scheduled.

Wigmore Hall

Wigmore Hall has a summer series some of which will be live streamed and available for at least 30 days afterwards.

Past Concerts:

You will need to create an account to watch stuff from Wigmore Hall, but it’s free!

There is also an archive of recent live streams.

Available to August 2021:

See also their archive including: