10 Questions for Patrick Jordan

Posted on April 29, 2013 by barczablog

Patrick Jordan is a native of West Texas who is in demand across North America as a chamber and orchestral musician.  Jordan has been a member of the Boston Early Music Festival Orchestra since 1997, serving most recently as principal viola, and is the principal violist of the Carmel Bach Festival. Jordan is a violist with Tafelmusik Baroque Orchestra and Artistic Administrator of the Gallery Players of Niagara.

He is a member of the Eybler Quartet; look for their world premiere Analekta CD featuring the String Quartets, Op. 1 of Joseph Eybler; their collaboration with clarinettist Jane Booth, featuring works of Mozart and Backofen; and the complete String Quartets, Op. 33 of Joseph Haydn’s (released October 2012).

On May 10 the Eybler Quartet (Patrick Jordan, plus Julie Wedman, Aisslinn Nosky, and Margaret Gay) present a concert called “An Evening with Michael Kelly” at Heliconian Hall.  The concert aims to recreate an 18th-century jam in Vienna with none other than Haydn, Mozart, Dittersdorf and Wahnal. Actor R.H. Thomson will be providing the narrative through-line with readings from Kelly’s memoir and other source materials.

On the occasion of “An Evening with Michael Kelly” I ask Jordan ten questions: five about himself and five more about his preparation for that “Evening”.

1-Are you more like your father or your mother?

I guess we all have some narrative of our lives that informs that question. In my case, my parents each used to talk about their notion that my older sister was “my father’s kid”, my younger sister was “my mother’s kid” and I was “both of their kid”.

pat jordanPhysically, I am very like my father; there’s even a childhood story about some of his relatives visiting us from out of town, knowing basically where we lived, but they didn’t have our exact address (this is pre-cell phone days, of course). My mother asked her how she found the house and she answered, “I just drove around till I saw a kid in the front yard that looked like Don at that age!” My love of knowledge, insatiable curiosity, quick temper and a sceptical frame of mind come from my father. He also loved music and had catholic tastes, so our house was full of rock, blues, classical, all kinds of sounds. I think my strong devotion to music (and anything else) comes from my mother, who has been a teacher of learning disabled and mentally challenged children for the last forty(!) years. That’s devotion! My sometimes-too-rigid moral compass is also a gift from her.

2-What is the best thing or worst thing about being a violist, particularly in the realm of historically-informed period performance?

Undoubtedly the best part from my perspective is the imperative to collaborate. The violist is almost never going to be the star, but is an essential part of the music. In Baroque music, because of its nature, we’re often an equal, if internal part. In classical music (ca. 1750-1825) we’re very often the motor of an ensemble, and that is a fairly powerful position, even if it means playing the same pattern of eighth notes for 12 bars straight! We also change roles constantly: one moment we’re the bass line if the lower instruments drop out or play a high melody; in the next moment, we’ll be part of a new accompanying texture, with the responsibility to  set the tempo; in the next, we’ll have five little solo notes that connect two phrases.  I have a whole raft of weird little marks I use to indicate to myself those changing roles.  I think it’s no accident that many composers and conductors played the viola – you get to experience the music from the inside.

The worst thing? Having a slightly larger instrument case than a violinist and the attendant anxiety I always feel when getting on a plane that there’ll be a problem. By the way, I regard the vast collection of viola jokes as a bonus!

3-Who do you like to listen to or watch?

I have the pleasure of teaching a two-year academic course at the Glenn Gould Professional School, which covers string literature from 1600-present. A great deal of the time I spend listening is in the service of that – I probably present 5% of what I hear to the class, but I feel like I have to have that wider sense of various periods. I have a particularly soft spot for Ravel and Morton Feldman.

Beyond that, I listen to some blues, a bit of progressive rock, and I try to keep my ear tuned to the tastes of my 11 year old son, who’s big into pop music. All the radios in our house are tuned to CBC 1 and, during baseball season, anyway, to 590 AM. I love listening to a baseball game on the radio, having the field unfold in my mind through someone else’s description. What I watch is another issue – we don’t own a television, which has been a conscious and practical decision (my wife and I don’t want to squander an hour a day in front of one). I spent a huge amount of my youth watching movies, but I don’t do it that much anymore. I do watch music videos of various sorts, looking at the ways music is enjoyed. I also have been known to seek out videos of people cooking – there’s nothing like watching someone fry their 50,000th savoury South Indian doughnut, or stretch out three pounds of noodles by hand for the 20,000th time to get a sense of how to do it! 

4-What ability or skill do you wish you had, that you don’t have?

A few years ago, I started to learn to play the lute, which I love. I fairly quickly realized that I was not, at that moment of my life, about to sprout the 2-3 hours/day that it would require to play at the level I would like to. I also am less quick to anger than I was years ago, but there’s still some work to do there.

5-When you’re just relaxing and not working what is your favourite thing to do?

Without a doubt, cooking. I am a deeply ambitious and devoted amateur cook. Food was a very important part of my childhood home, and it remains so for me today. Everyone in my birth family is an excellent cook. One of my great uncles ran a butcher shop for many years outside Wichita Falls, Texas. My paternal grandmother used to run a small café in a Skellytown, Texas, population 216, and I distinctly remember sitting on a five gallon bucket of pickles (I must have been 5 or 6 years old), watching her effortlessly roll out what seemed like an endless number of perfect pie crusts in a row. I do most of the cooking in our house, and believe that sharing meals is an incredibly powerful congregating force in a family or group. In terms of what I like to cook, I grew up where barbeque and Tex-Mex were the other dominant foods, so that was the starting place for me. I had the great good fortune of spending a big part of several summers in Aix-en-Provence in my twenties, which had a huge impact on my understanding of that culture and its food. Consequently, not only do I make a mean soupe au pistou, but I was also introduced, at a very tangible and fundamental level, to a comparison of agricultural polices between North America and Europe. My tastes have widened as I’ve gone along, and I guess I have approached it serially – for a while I’ll devote a fair amount of time and energy to grasping, for example, various regional cuisines of India, or Northern Thai cuisine, or the food of Veneto or Valencia or Sichuanese food. The opportunity to travel as a working musician has been an inspiration to me in all kinds of ways – for example, I don’t think I ever would have explored the incredible fusion of flavours that the food of Macau contains, if I hadn’t spent a few days there playing a concert (and eating, and exploring the markets). My mother–in-law recently gave me the latest book by Yotam Ottolenghi and Sami Tamimi, Jerusalem, and I have been learning some wonderful things there.

Five more concerning  “An Evening with Michael Kelly”, which recreates an 18th-century jam in Vienna with the Eybler Quartet.

1-What are the challenges you face with period performance?

The baroque viola is something of a red herring. Compared to the violin or keyboard or wind instruments, there’s not a huge amount of specific instruction for the instrument until the beginning of the 19th century. The general assumption is that if you played the violin, you also played the viola. There are some potential practical problems with that. For example, many of the historic violas that have survived from the 16th and 17th centuries are (or were before they were cut down in size in later years) immense. I’m not convinced that the players of the time, with an average height 30-40 centimetres less than today, would have always played them on their shoulders, perhaps preferring, like smaller gambas, to play them on their laps. Or maybe only the tall players played them! I don’t know. For better or worse, we live in an age of relative specialization, and we now have specialist baroque viola players. Maybe that’s a neologism, maybe not. The truth is, the viola works somewhat differently from the violin: it is more physical work to play, partly because the dimensions of instruments today aren’t really sufficient to sound the necessary pitches as efficiently as the violin. That’s what gives it its distinctive tone, by the way. This is not to say that many violinists don’t play the viola wonderfully, because they do, mostly in the relatively limited solo repertoire that we have. But it is, as a specialization and played routinely in an ensemble, something a bit different.

Jeanne Lamon with her colleagues

Tafelmusik Music Director Jeanne Lamon (Photographer: Sian Richards)

I started playing in my school orchestra on the viola, at the relatively old age of 11, so I am a dyed-in-the-wool violist. I began experimenting around with the baroque viola in the early 80s, as conveniently, there was an early music department at New England Conservatory (there was also a Jazz and Third Stream department, and I did some of that, too). I had made a deal with myself that I would apply myself as a journeyman to the viola until I was thirty. On my thirtieth birthday, I played for Jeanne Lamon and some of my colleagues here in Toronto, and shortly thereafter began playing regularly with Tafelmusik.

One of the great things about the scene in Toronto is the cross-pollination of musical worlds. My colleagues in the Eybler Quartet, violinists Julia Wedman and Aisslinn Nosky and ‘cellist Margaret Gay represent a wide range of experience and an incredibly copacetic assemblage of personalities. There is an old joke about the poster up at the Conservatory that reads “Established string quartet seeks two violinists and ‘cellist for concerts and recordings,” and I’m afraid I embody that joke all too fully. I have played in at least one string quartet at a time since I was 15 years old. One of them, The Boston Quartet, once had an opportunity to play for several months on a matched set of instruments, all made on similar patterns and with wood from the same trees. I remember the scales falling from my eyes, realizing that we spend a lot of time fighting different pieces of wood. When I started playing with the Eyblers, again the scales fell, this time because the artistic sensibilities, while not uniform, are an incredibly comfortable fit, and I realized how much time most groups just spend fighting with each other at one level or another.

One of the great things is the group’s openness to different kinds of programming, and different ways of “meeting” an audience.  The programme we’ll be presenting soon, “An Evening with Michael Kelly“, with R.H. Thomson, is an excellent case in point. We’re trying to give our audience something like the experience of a quartet party, but within the context of a modern public concert. We’ll be playing music of four friends from the 18th century, and people will be able to enjoy a snack and a glass of wine during the show – why put it off till intermission or the end? What kind of party is that? We also won’t be playing any single piece from beginning to end without some sort of action from R.H. Some people may be put off by that, may feel like we’re not taking the music seriously enough, but to my mind, we’re approaching it much more in the spirit in which it was conceived.

2-What do you love about  the repertoire you’re playing?

We have performed a version of this programme in many different situations. It is engineered to accommodate a wide range of pieces by the four composers, Haydn Mozart, Dittersdorf and Vanhal. In the past, I have done the readings, which was less than ideal for a couple of reasons: first, the switch back and forth between playing and reciting is a tough switch, and I think my playing suffered more than my talking; second, the course of the evening is talk, play, talk, play, which is not super inspiring. Besides the fact that R.H is a superb actor, it also frees us to underscore some of his words, which knits the evening together in a different way. It also gives us the opportunity to do some different music – most of the underscore music is drawn from operas that Michael Kelly would have known, and songs that he sang, which also gives the show another flavour and perhaps greater depth.

3-Do you have a favourite moment in the program?

There’s a story from Dittersdorf’s autobiography, in which he tells of a spectacle that required finding a bunch of bagpipers from neighbouring villages. We’ve created an underscore of a minuet of his that features an imitation of bagpipes, and I think that moment beautifully shows how thin the line is between popular and art music.

4-How do you feel about the relevance of music & the performing arts, particularly the music you play, as a modern citizen?

I think the music we play is a remarkably strong and durable thread or bunch of threads in the fabric of our culture. I think the trend toward period performance in the last 30-40 years and the attendant resurrection of a large swath of repertoire, has strengthened it further. It also seems to me that live performance is enjoying a new life these days, as people expand their definitions of what a performance can be, outside of the standard concert experience. Ironically, the ubiquity of recorded music is an ally here – people have not forgotten that it actually requires someone who is capable of creating the experience, and there’s still a thrill and delight in being there in person.

I have observed a couple of things over the years:

  • First, a lot of people come to this music (or come back to this music) later in life. Maybe it’s a result of greater disposable income and time, maybe the nature of the music invites a kind of patience and reflection that we develop, if we’re lucky, later in life, maybe a combination of those or other things.
  • Second, no audience member who talks about their own playing experiences has ever said to me, “God I am so glad I quit piano when I did!” They all say they wish they’d continued, that they miss it, or at the very least that they knew they were never great, and saw what it took to get there. Now, that may be a self-selecting sample, but through legitimate research, we know the number one indicator for a person attending a concert today, is that they have had experience as a performer when younger –  singing in a choir, playing in band, playing in orchestra, whatever. And I’m not talking here about having gone to hear the orchestra when you were on a grade 5 field trip, this is actually doing the deed.

There is some fantastic music education going on in this country, and I am totally behind that. If young people don’t have opportunities to participate in the music, we’re robbing them of their own culture, and we’re robbing ourselves of an audience in future generations. I do despair, however, when after playing for a group of young people, I go to the subway station or some other public space and hear EXACTLY THE SAME MUSIC I JUST PLAYED being used as adolescent repellent. What kind of message does that send?

5-Is there a teacher or an influence you’d care to name that you especially admire?

Eybler Quartet’s website (click to go there)

I had three very influential teachers, Susan Schoenfeld in Texas, and Walter Trampler and Eugene Lehner in Boston. Susan really taught me how the viola in particular works, and gave me an incredible toolbox for solving technical and musical problems. Mr. Trampler, curious as it may sound, very much encouraged me to pursue period performance, after hearing me play a few times (I remember he said something like, “You really seem to have something to offer in this music, and it doesn’t sound bad, either!” – you have to take what you can get!), and Mr. Lehner  taught me how to play chamber music, and how to read a score more like a composer than a player. I was also greatly encouraged by a dear colleague in Boston, Scott Metcalfe, who on a walk one gorgeous spring day in Pittsburgh in 1991, said “I’m not much for telling people what to do, but you ought to be a baroque viola player – the world needs a good one.”

~~~~~~~

The Eybler Quartet present a concert called “An Evening with Michael Kelly”

  • Friday, May 10, 2013, 8:00 p.m.
    Heliconian Club,
    35 Hazelton Avenue, Toronto
  • Sunday, May 12, 2013, 2 p.m.
    Rodman Hall Arts Centre
    109 Saint Paul Crescent, St. Catharines

Here’s a video of the Eybler Quartet playing the Finale from Haydn’s Opus 33 #1

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Déjà Egoyan

Posted on April 28, 2013 by barczablog

The title is ambiguous, meaning several things.

  • I am writing again about an Egoyan, this time Atom, after two recent rhapsodic pieces about his sister (concert & CD review)
  • Egoyan returns again to Strauss’s Salome, a modified revival of a production we saw before at the big old theatre
  • For the second time this spring, a Canadian Opera Company production probes the psychology of the female protagonist.  How similar are Lucia and Salome? They both look good in red. Hmmm

I loved Egoyan’s work on Die Walküre and was very happy with his work on Martin Crimp’s Cruel & Tender for Canadian Stage in 2012.  Next year he’ll be back to direct Mozart’s Cosi fan tutte for the COC.  Before I get too analytical (and explain why I am not quite so thrilled with the production) I want to properly acknowledge brilliance in the COC Salome.  Vocally & musically the COC continue to soar.  Conductor Johannes Debus continues where he left off in Tristan und Isolde, leading a wonderful ensemble in the pit and on the stage, including a marvelous reading of the Dance of the Seven Veils.

Richard Margison as Herod (photo by Chris Hutcheson)

Richard Margison’s Herod surprised me even if I always hoped he’d branch out.  I suppose I never expected him to try this sort of role.  While Margison’s known for leading roles in French & Italian rep (where I didn’t think the fit was ideal) I was enthused by his interpretations of Florestan (2009), Bacchus (2011) or Vitek (a 1990 video of The Makropoulos Case directed my Lotfi Mansouri that I saw on TV long ago).  The voice is as powerful as ever, the top effortless, the pitch precise as a laser-beam.  But Margison brought a fascinating sense of irony to a role that’s often turned into a grotesque, snarled & sneered.  When Herod appeared, the stage came to life, animated not just by the voice & precise musicianship, but a relentless energy, and a curious mixture of macho posturing and playful sounds.

Erika Sunnegårdh brings a youthful presence and a wonderful voice to the title role, although she didn’t face the usual big challenge sopranos face in Salome, namely the Dance of the Seven Veils, except for a few seconds being raised into the air on a swing, her veils then supplying projection surfaces for moving images & shadow puppetry.    While there have been heavier voices in the role (for example Birgit Nilsson in the seminal Decca recording conducted by Georg Solti) I think Sunnegårdh’s sound is just what Strauss sought in the role.

Hanna Schwarz makes more of Herodias than most, not just in her powerful voice.  Salome’s mother approves of the deal her daughter has made with her husband, pulling the ring from his finger to facilitate the execution; but Schwarz jumps into the action, participating in the final tableau by delivering the executioner’s handiwork to her daughter.  And Martin Gantner is wonderful as Jochanaan,  gorgeous sounding and always fascinating to watch.

Salome is an opera that can be a freak-show, a parade of grotesque and bizarre behaviours.  I don’t understand what Egoyan’s production aims for, as it subverts the edginess that’s in the text for no clear benefit.  Let me illustrate:

  • The biblical tale of Salome and John the Baptist is updated at least in its costuming, as the soldiers, Jews & Nazarenes are in jackets & ties, Narraboth using a pistol instead of a knife when he kills himself, Herod apparently snorting coke at one point when he attempts to dissuade his step-daughter from asking for the prophet’s head.  But if you modernize the story, what do you get exactly? This past week I was looking at dead bodies on TV, and on the way home I saw slutty kids on Yonge St hanging out of their dresses.  When “normal” is edgier than anything in the production (as it seems to be anytime you turn on the TV), you modernize at your peril.
  • Narraboth as the role is written is a voyeur who’s so pathetically hooked on Salome that he’d risk his position by disobeying Herod in ordering Jochanaan brought up from the cistern where he’s imprisoned,for a mere smile and possibly a flower.  Egoyan gives us a modern Narraboth who has a woman draped all over him.  If Narraboth can get all that, why would he kill himself over Salome’s smile & flower (and while the woman’s draped all over him)? Sorry it makes no sense, except as gratuitous action that only serves to undercut and upstage Salome’s scene with Jochanaan.  And it’s rather odd that John is cursing Salome for wanting to (horrors) kiss him, when there’s a decidedly x-rated display 30 feet away.  The show upstages itself, mocking the moments that purport to be climaxes in the text & music.
  • The Dance of the Seven Veils?  In the previous production I think this was much the same, really, although this time the emphases are changed, with nice new shadow puppets and some soft-core images.  This is where I see the connection to Lucia by the way.  Just as David Alden sought to probe the psychology of the title role, so too with Egoyan.  In both cases we’re presented with images of abuse.  In Alden’s case it makes some sense, that Lucia becomes a basket case at the hands of her brother.  But what was Egoyan thinking?  However one decodes this Dance –whether it’s a flash-back to a rape or a metaphor—I would love to ask him what he thinks this means.  No rape victim gets the urge to take their clothes off and dance for someone: the way Salome does for Herod.  I always understood Salome’s dance as an exercise of power over her uncle, revenge possibly for his constant voyeurism, but mostly an opportunity she seizes, a larger scale version of what she did with Narraboth at the beginning of the opera (when she uses her beauty to get her way).  This is a child who has been brought up without proper parental authority; I regret to say that I’ve met kids like this, who are out of control because nobody ever says “no” to them.

To suggest that Salome is a victim fundamentally problematizes the opera, takes the usual freak-show into new territory.  Perhaps I should seek out a feminist reading of this text, but I don’t see where Egoyan’s reading is feminist.  Why can’t this woman be powerful? (and isn’t that what a feminist reading would normally aim for, notwithstanding her horrific actions) What is gained by making her a victim?  I don’t understand how one moment she’s on the floor, moments after we’ve seen her sexually assaulted, and the next moment she’s asking for John’s head.  Wilde (in the play that the opera is based upon) and Strauss do kill her off at the end, because she’s what Herod calls a monster.  Why undercut that?  Why direct the opera at all if you want to turn the opera on its head? Pardon me, I believe in director’s theatre, but more than a decade after the first time I saw this reading, I am still trying to make sense out of it.  In the big old theatre I was merely confused.  In the gorgeous little theatre, where it’s right under my nose? I can’t shrug it off the way I used to in the old opera house.  I want to understand this as intelligent directorial choices, not someone taking sand paper to all the edges in the work, turning it into equivocal mediocre nothing.  Yes I was delighting in Sunnegårdh’s marvellous high notes, Schwarz’s stunning sound & presence, watching Margison’s fascinating work in the last minute, and listening to the orchestra’s fabulous sound.

And yet as we came to the end I was squirming in my seat, wanting to go home.

I recall after seeing the earlier production I had a silly fantasy that I wanted to share with Egoyan, which I’ll now repeat in this public forum.  I thought that Narraboth should carry a hand-held camera as he stalks Salome.  Cute idea?  And Herod should be a movie mogul.  That’s a modern version of what he is in the biblical story, and would justify all the drugs and silliness that’s in the story.  I think that would be way more fun.

But it sounds amazing and I confess it’s fascinating viewing.  Salome continues until May 22nd.  Click the picture below for ticket information.

Richard Margison as Herod and Hanna Schwarz as Herodias in the Canadian Opera Company’s production of Salome, 2013. Photo: Chris Hutcheson. (click for more information)

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carried away on the crest of a wave

Posted on April 26, 2013 by barczablog

You may have seen the poster for carried away on the crest of a wave, David Yee’s new play that just opened at Tarragon Theatre, directed by Nina Lee Aquino..  The title hints at its subject, namely the tsunami that devastated shorelines on the far side of the world, on Boxing Day 2004, killing a quarter of a million people.

The image on the poster reminds me of that whimsical moment in The Wizard of Oz when Dorothy wakes up inside the tornado.  She sees Auntie Em, some animals, and everything seems perfectly normal, even though –oh my—we’re in the middle of a cataclysm, a natural disaster.  We see people in powerful balletic poses, and also a woman (I think it’s the director herself) carrying a child on her back.

(Photo by Cylla von Tiedemann)

I am always intrigued by approaches to story-telling.  Recently I watched the 1952 Michael Rennie version of Les Miserables on TCM, shortly after having received the DVD of the film musical as a present.  Each is wonderful in its own way.  There are some moments that work better in words, some in song, some with bodies still or moving without any words.  They say that in the best musicals, songs and music pick up where words leave off.

I was a bit fearful coming to this play, because it’s a play concerning big themes & big ideas.  I was cautioned about this, in a meeting I had once very long ago, with Elliot Hayes.  No I am not saying i am anybody to be reckoned with, perhaps because after I had that meeting I took the wrong fork in the road.  In the 1980s at least, people didn’t write plays with big ideas unless they were masters.  Durrenmatt or Shafer, yes.  But me?  No, first you learn how to write, or at least I think that’s what they were mercifully trying to get me to do.

Sorry if I seem to digress.   I am in awe of anyone undertaking major subjects or adapting big stories, especially when they get it right: as Yee surely does.  He gets the really important stuff, about the subject matter and how to put it onstage.  This play isn’t supposed to address the nuts and bolts, even if he makes a bit joke of it in the first few minutes, teasing us with a bit if pseudo-scientific talk.  Big themes and big ideas demand poetry, theatricality and symbol.  In the space he opens for us, where we contemplate big actions in places of stillness, observing people thinking and feeling, moving bodies with music, sounds of water and breath, we are thereby able to make connections.

I don’t know how much of the magic is Yee and how much is the creative mise-en-scène of Aquino and her team.  But I recently saw another play (with some of the same people) at fu-GEN (review), that showed Aquino’s sensitivity.  There’s a great deal of musicality in this production.  Sometimes there’s actual music playing, sometimes it’s speaking voices, sometimes the sounds of water dripping or being splashed, and walked through.  The cumulative visceral effect is very meditative, taking us far away from mundane life.

Yee’s play is like a series of vignettes, variations on a theme, played out in different configurations of people encountering one another.  Sometimes it’s comical, sometimes it’s more serious, sometimes it’s very emotional.  The range in this work is remarkable, calling for a few bravura moments from the cast.  Everyone has their moment playing multiple characters, although I think I was most impressed by the opportunities seized by Richard Zeppieri (first as a mouthy radio host, then as a john in a faraway brothel) and Mayko Nguyen (in that same brothel, and later bearing witness from North America).

Richard Zeppieri, Mayko Nguyen (Photo by Cylla von Tiedemann)

Richard Zeppieri, Mayko Nguyen (Photo by Cylla von Tiedemann)

In each case I thought I knew where we were going, and in each case the performer –and Yee—took us somewhere else entirely.   There are surprises in the text, as if the situations peel layers off the surface of characters, gradually exposing truths from underneath.   It’s wonderful to see these confrontations, which ultimately are a challenge to us as well.

carried away on the crest of a wave continues at Tarragon Theatre until May 26th . 

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Robert Carsen’s Dialogues des Carmelites

Posted on April 23, 2013 by barczablog

Premiered in 1997 at Nederlandse Opera, seen at the Lyric Opera of Chicago and La Scala in Milan, Robert Carsen’s production of Francis Poulenc’s Dialogues des Carmelites is better than a new production, because it’s an acclaimed classic.  And now it’s coming to the Four Seasons Centre in Toronto, presented by the Canadian Opera Company in May.  Carsen is a huge star in the operatic world, yet has only recently started directing in Toronto; better late than never.

And there’s a DVD of the production from 2004.  I picked it up when I went to see Lucia last week at the Four Seasons Centre.

Poulenc’s style is surprisingly accessible, considering it’s an opera written after 1950.  In places it reminds me of Pelléas et Mélisande, another opera without any arias or big set-pieces, and with a spiritual focus.

I don’t want to spoil the best moments of Carsen’s production, except to address his interpretation broadly.  The most distinctive element is the use of the chorus, something I’m particularly aware of after seeing David Alden’s Lucia and François Girard’s Parsifal this past week (the latter in a high-definition encore).  Although I suspect Carsen’s ideas were ground-breaking in 1997, nowadays such deployments of personnel are more common.  In a nutshell, the chorus move beyond their usual role to become a major part of the mise-en-scène, a dramaturgical feature.  Carsen’s reading merely amplifies what’s already latent in the story & the score, the revolutionary mob that lurks at the heart of this story.

This is perhaps the most passionate opera ever written.  How so? Because there is almost no action in it.  This is a passive world, filled with surrender.  Even when the mob comes to get the nuns near the end, the pronouncement is in the passive voice, as we hear the statement made that they have been condemned.  Everyone –the people included—are passive in this opera.

The one action of the work occurs when Blanche –who could have escaped—chooses to join the nuns in the procession to the guillotine.  Much of this surrender is of a spiritual sort, the moments among the Carmelite nuns like an ongoing meditation or prayer.

Carsen reverses one trend rather decisively.  Director’s theatre usually deconstructs powerful discourses such as war or finance or monarchy or religion.  I think most would agree that Carsen manages to be truer to Poulenc’s piety than to the text in his score; but I won’t tell you how because that would spoil it.  At times the action seems to float in a safe place with the souls between lives rather than in the brutal place on earth where the incarnated souls (aka “people”) get massacred.

Top: Felicity Palmer as Madame de Croissy and Isabel Bayrakdarian as Blanche de la Force in the Lyric Opera of Chicago production of Dialogues des Carmélites. Photo: Robert Kusel © 2007

Among the glories of this DVD is the work of Riccardo Muti & the La Scala Orchestra, playing this remarkable score.  It’s full of instantaneous effects, quicksilver changes of mood & temperament, mercurial emotions boiling over at any time.  I have read lots of praise for the orchestras in Chicago & New York, but never heard this orchestra spoken of in the same breath: possibly because the appraisals were being made by proud Americans;  i have no problem with pride, so long as we acknowledge another magnificent ensemble, namely Muti’s orchestra at La Scala.

In May go see this wonderful production, and by the way, i would say it’s a better cast than what’s on the DVD.  And after you’ve seen it at the COC, take home the DVD as a lovely souvenir.

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Stephen Bell: Kojuigatsus – longing for home

Posted on April 22, 2013 by barczablog

“Longing for home” is a phrase that resonates in North America, where everyone—immigrant or aboriginal—is in some sense displaced.  As a child born in Canada of Hungarian parents I am in a funny place, loyal to the old country of my forebears, but 100% committed to Canada.  I have read about the 1956 uprising, and feel a special connection to Hungarian culture (Franz Liszt, George Faludy, Béla Tarr…).  In the global melting pot, culture is one way we discover who we are supposed to be, whether in the appropriation of a pretty tune, or in a sudden rush of recognition. Who am i exactly?  I felt very comfortable listening to what i thought of as an Eastern-European folk tune in Smetana’s Moldau (the most famous movement from Ma Vlast), deconstructed nicely for me by my Mom who told me that no, it’s actually a Swedish folk-song.  Such details are unimportant though, as i could connect to the melody either way.

So much for nostalgia.

Tenor Stephen Bell

I have been listening to tenor Stephen Bell’s CD Kojuigatsus – longing for home a CD suggestive of these tensions, dramas, perplexities.  Recording in February 2013 at the Estonian House in Toronto, the CD presents thirteen songs sung by Bell with pianist Charles Kipper. 

Like so many of us Bell has a dual identity, having been born in Vancouver, but spoken of on the CD as a “Canadian and Estonian tenor”, a duality captured wonderfully on the jacket photo of the Toronto skyline, and the texts of the songs in both Estonian and an English translation.  I have no idea whether Bell can speak Estonian (accented or otherwise), but his pronunciation of the songs sounds persuasive.

Each of the countries of Europe has a culture, painters & poets & composers.  That they don’t always attract the attention of critics outside their own country does not negate their importance, especially in the specifically nationalist discourse of a country discovering its unique voice & identity.

With the help of Kojuigatsus I’ve made the first tentative step towards acquainting myself with the music of Estonia, particularly the compositions of Saar (five of the songs) and Tammeveski (three more).  The music is attractively lyrical, although a musicologist might observe that the music is tuneful yet derivative: which is another way of saying that the songs are a happy throwback to a time when music was expected to be beautiful.  In some circles that may be a weakness, but one could do a lot worse.

Kipper’s piano is strong and full, with a tone redolent of nostalgia; but that’s only fitting considering, as Kipper supports Bell throughout.

Click the CD image for info on how to obtain

Bell’s recital takes you on a trip to another place and time, as though recalling a far-off country and a way of seeing life.  The first and last songs are especially reticent, but most of the sentiments are gentle and poetic, never coarse or blatant.  In every song Bell’s voice soars comfortably above the murmuring piano accompaniments.  At times he sounds effete, perhaps as thoughtful as the poet who wrote the words he sings.

Kojuigatsus – longing for home is like a photo album, a series of snapshots of a place we might otherwise never know.  I’m thankful that although Bell takes us on this journey, he’s still here in Canada. 

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Windermere String Quartet Sunday April 28th

Posted on April 21, 2013 by barczablog

“Press releases and announcements” are presented verbatim without comment.

WINDERMERE STRING QUARTET CLOSES ITS EIGHTH SEASON WITH “THE
ART OF THE FUGAL FINALE”

Contact: Laura Jones (416) 516-8487
ldeanjones@hotmail.com

On Sunday, April 28th at 3:00 p.m, the Windermere String Quartet on Period
Instruments will conclude the eighth season of its Concert Series with a celebration of the fugal finale. The programme will include Haydn’s op. 20 #6, Toronto composer Stephanie Martin’s “From a Distant Island,” and Beethoven’s op. 59 #3. The concert will take place at St. Olave’s Anglican Church, 360 Windermere Ave., just south of Bloor (between Runnymede and Jane/South Kingsway). Tickets are $20; $14 for seniors/students and can be purchased securely online at the Quartet’s website,  www.windermerestringquartet.com or reserved by phone at (416) 769-0952. For more  information, phone (416) 769-0952 or visit www.windermerestringquartet.com

In the 2011-2012 season, the Windermere String Quartet were honoured to be the
dedicatees of the first string quartet composed by multi-talented Torontonian musician Stephanie Martin. At home in both contemporary and early music, Stephanie wrote us a wonderful quartet, combining traditional compositional techniques with a modern sensibility. “From a Distant Island” closes with a final fugue, which inspired us to explore other classic quartets with fugal finales. What, we wondered, draws quartet composers to conclude their works with this somewhat antique musical form? Does its contrapuntal nature appeal to a sense of instrumental justice, giving each instrument an equal voice? Or is it an opportunity to display compositional virtuosity by fusing intellectual and expressive approaches? The finale of Haydn’s op. 20 #6 leans towards the latter, while the famous conclusion of Beethoven’s op. 59 #3 is an example of the former, a dazzling showcase for all four members of the Quartet. We trust our audience will leave the concert with all their fugal questions answered!

Described by the Toronto Star as “Toronto’s masters of the genre” for period instrument string quartets, the Windermere String Quartet (Rona Goldensher and Elizabeth Loewen Andrews, violins, Anthony Rapoport, viola and Laura Jones, cello) is known for its dynamic performances and distinctive sound. The Quartet’s own series concerts take place in the warm acoustic and intimate atmosphere of St. Olave’s Anglican Church in Toronto’s vibrant west end. The WSQ has been quartet-in-residence at CAMMAC Lake MacDonald and Music at Port Milford, and has also performed at the Toronto Music Garden, Nuit Blanche, Toronto’s Academy Concert Series, Toronto Early Music Centre’s “Musically Speaking” series, and Stratford Chamber Music. Their recently released CD, “The Golden Age of String Quartets,” has been praised for its “period performances that blend life, spirit and soul with a perfectly-judged sensitivity for contemporary style and practice.” The WSQ gratefully acknowledges the support of the Ontario Arts Council.

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Egoyan: teaching us how to hear

Posted on April 20, 2013 by barczablog

I was certainly ready for the concert I attended tonight at Glenn Gould studio, to launch Eve Egoyans CD 5 .  Work had drained me, and yes, i’d been listening to her CD a great deal.

I found myself thinking a lot about hearing because of the injunction on the CD, to turn the playback level low.  Now of course I’ve been listening to the CD incessantly in the car, often with the windows down, which necessitates a certain volume above what might have been prescribed.  Even so, I am aware of the soundscape around me.  It was with such thoughts in my head that i chose a different path to the concert venue.  No I didn’t walk down University Ave or Spadina from my office at the university.  Nope.  I walked down Huron St, enjoying the human scale of interaction, and while noticing the pets and the gardens and the friendly and gregarious people hanging out early on a Friday evening, I thought this might be a good preparation for the concert.  The sounds were softer, more respectful of community and neighbours and even of self, as engines never revved, conversation never shouted.  Coming into the hall, I felt the same expectant softness between the patrons in attendance.

I was reminded of something I’d observed in my studies, concerning the relationship between artists and their milieu.  I’ve wondered which comes first, not unlike the proverbial chicken and egg.  Does the artist create an audience for their work, or does the community feel a need that is somehow answered or filled by the artist?  I think it’s a little of both.  Certainly this was a sophisticated concert for a sophisticated audience.

Egoyan created a program that reminded me of something I’d read about visual artists, who in some respects refine our sense of sight, teaching us to discriminate and discern in ways that we had not been able before.  The artist changes the way we see.   Same with Egoyan and our hearing.

Let’s start with that injunction I spoke of, which may or may not have a feminist subtext: that we should listen to soft sounds rather than be conquered by phallic pianists (and if you hear the homonym, so much the better).  Egoyan reminded me of the proverbial orator speaking softly, to force an audience to quiet down: in order to hear.  And so I was part of one of the best behaved audiences I’ve ever encountered, even if we were given hyper-ears as a result.  A couple of times I heard breathing or people stirring in their seats, and I was jarred as if by a massive sound when of course it was simply normal sound, heard by my new attentiveness.

How did she get us to listen?

The first part of the program was like a rondo (a rondo is a form alternating between a theme and episodes, some of which may repeat, as for example A-B-A-C-A-D).   But what Egoyan had done was program three short pieces, each of the same sort, namely Nocturnes by Taylan Susam.  Each Nocturne is about two minutes, soft, tranquil and meditative.

In each case I was reminded of the part of Hector in Les Troyens; Hector is a ghost who appears to Aenée, warning him of impending doom.  Hector’s greatest energy is upon arrival; the ghost’s highest note is his first, while his lowest is his last, as we see him gradually run out of steam, lower and lower and lower.  So too with each of the Nocturnes, arcing downwards from the top of the keyboard to the very bottom, one discreet note at a time.  By the end of each of these 120 second gems, the audience were quieted and ready for the next item.  It’s as if they were pieces of baguette or sips of wine between courses, to cleanse our aural palette.  And then in between each of the Nocturnes, Egoyan played a different piece, wildly divergent in style, but anchored in each case by the quiet little gem.

The first episode of the rondo –aka the second item on the program—was Piers Hellawell’s Piani, Latebre, a three movement work whose virtuosic demands made a stunning contrast with the Nocturnes on either side.   I need to hear the composition again, as its complexity largely went over my head; but then again I think I was just awash in the pure sensations, watching Egoyan’s hands working, the brilliant passage work, and the sonorities.

The second of the episodes –falling between the second and third Nocturnes, so “c” in my ABACAD schematic—was Claude Vivier’s Shiraz.  I was fascinated to read the program note just now, which correlates curiously with what I experienced.  I was struck by reminiscences of Stravinsky, particularly Trois Mouvements de Petrouchka, in its use of clusters moving up and down the keyboard  and occasional echoes of Le Sacre du Printemps (thinking of the sudden moments of unprepared tranquility after something loud).  The mention in the program of a marketplace wasn’t surprising given the brash sound I thought I recognized from Petrouchka.  Egoyan’s playing was if anything more virtuosic, yet coming from a surprisingly still and calm player.  I felt she was in a zone, very tranquil and still even when the music was frenetic.   If good playing is understood as the transmission of body dynamics to the efficient and elegant creation of sound, this was like a master class, her body balletic in its smooth transfer of energy to the keys.

The third episode was what this scheme was surely designed for, namely one of the pieces from the Ann Southam CD, namely RETURNINGS II.  The program says it’s seventeen minutes long.  Really?  I felt the way I did the first time I encountered Philip Glass, back in the 1970s: which is to say, simultaneously calm and yet inside my head, extraordinarily alert.  I lost all sense of time, and couldn’t tell you whether Egoyan really played the piece as written or decided to add an extra ten minutes to it.  I had no wish for it to end, but of course it’s fine that it did.

Otherwise how would I get home?

Click image for more info about obtaining the CD

After intermission, Egoyan offered another piece that seemed to capitalize on our willingness to listen.  Hm, or was that urbanity already characteristic of this audience, and only I was transformed out of my usual rudeness?

SKRYABIN in itself is a large composition by Michael Finnissy that seems to be abstracted from the composer (Skryabin that is, rather than Finnissy).  I don’t pretend to understand the relationship, only that I’m inclined to invoke the word “reified”, which is a word I regularly truck out when I sense that someone is so deep inside their head that they’re not nearly as intelligible as they think.  I used it not long ago to talk about Thomas Adès, and I think it applies here as well.  There’s much to unpack in this composition, which again may have simply gone over my head.  Whereas the Southam and the Vivier blew me away, I was –as with Hellawell—wanting another listen before I’d venture any sort of analysis.  Even so there were some lovely stretches, particularly the last ten minutes.

I am now looking forward to getting into the car and listening to Egoyan again.

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Lucia meets Carrie

Posted on April 18, 2013 by barczablog

Tonight the Canadian Opera Company opened their new production of Donizetti’s Lucia di Lammermoor, the dark tale of a bride forced to marry against her will who goes mad on her wedding night, killing her new husband.  This is not your usual Lucia.

In the past I’d come with low expectations, preoccupied by the singing as if I were watching American Idol, measuring individuals for their high notes rather than the dramatic credibility.  But this time, with director David Alden’s English National Opera Production, conducted by Stephen Lord, and starring Anna Christy & Stephen Costello, my expectations were much higher.

For Act I, the production mostly persuaded me, even if there were troubling elements.  Alden has moved the action to a more recent time (instead of the 17th century, we’re in the 19th century).  While i resisted the production for awhile, let’s cut to the chase, and conclude that I was blown away on the whole.  The last act especially knocked my socks off, giving me much more than just virtuosity, but a deep and probing exploration of the story & its implications.

Christy & Costello both deliver.  With Anna Christy, you get a Lucia who looks very young.  She could have been Juliet Capulet.  Her voice was good, but what you remember is the portrayal, which is understated.  An article in the Toronto Star said that Alden had used the film Carrie as a model, which come to think of it makes sense, given that in a real sense, Lucia is the prototype for the horror film.  The glory of that mad-scene (both in the film and the opera) is that a person who has been wronged breaks free of constraints, and becomes like an avenging angel, righting the huge wrongs that we’ve seen in the previous scenes.

Christy didn’t really surprise me, given what I’d read, and given that the material is so well written/composed as to be sure-fire, working even when the soprano looks 55 rather than 15.  But I’ve never –until now—seen an Edgardo that I really liked.  He’s a troubling character, sailing off into the sunset early on, and then suddenly appearing self-righteously five minutes too late, romantic in the ineffectual way that’s classic Walter Scott.  While it’s really a team effort –that is both soprano and tenor have to paint a convincing portrait of a couple who can love one another, and of people who deserve love—I feel Costello deserves special credit, making such a likable and charismatic Edgardo.   I had been warned privately (an email from someone who saw him in NYC in 2007) that while he sings like a god, his acting is mediocre; that was then, and this is now.  Not only is the voice spectacular, but Costello has become quite a good actor.

Thank goodness I have tickets already to see/hear them again!

Yet the man with the hardest job is the nub of my objections to the production, playing an impossible role.  Forgive me if I sound conservative, but I can’t help knowing the opera, can’t help hearing what the singers are singing.  When a director does as Alden did, changing the story slightly, it’s usually in order to create some important effect with the key protagonists: Lucia and Edgardo.  In my experience director’s theatre works in the big moments of the opera, but will have at least a few places where it falls down because either it wasn’t fully thought out or worse, where they got lazy.  And the usual nexus for this problem is the baritone role.  It happened in a Traviata I saw, where “di Provenza” is sung in the strangest locale, but can’t be cut because it’s a pivot in the plot.

Similarly, tonight I watched the grim brilliance of Brian Mulligan as Enrico.  He is the power in this opera even as he struggles to arrange a marriage for his sister to save the family fortune.  Enrico blocks the happy ending that should be possible in this story, forcing Lucia to marry the wrong man, forging letters to discredit Edgardo in Lucia’s eyes.  In another century he might be the one that gets boos and hisses from the audience.   But does he also have to be a pervert who ties up his sister, who jabs his arm under his sister’s dress just as she squeals a high note as if in response?  We see him rolling around with Lucia’s doll in her bed, reminding me of Hedley Lamarr as played by Harvey Korman in Blazing Saddles (minus the cry of “where’s my froggy”).  If you think i am exaggerating see the opera and then tell me that’s not what Enrico resembles [a morning-after addition to explain the similarity; both Hedley and Enrico are infantile and tyannical, capriciously switching back and forth].   And I reiterate, Mulligan was wonderful, managing to not merely do as he was asked, but to be genuinely unavoidable, the centre of everything, regardless of how blatantly absurd the creation that was foisted upon him by the director.  This was grace under pressure.  In Act II I was laughing out loud as he played with Lucia’s toys in her bedroom.

Anna Christy and Brian Mulligan (Photo: Chris Hutcheson)

Anna Christy and Brian Mulligan (Photo: Chris Hutcheson)

It seemed to me that the opera was being re-framed as a kind of dark comedy, and by the way there were lots of people laughing throughout this scene, so it wasn’t just me (even if i was the big-mouth who started the laughter).

And then in the next act, I stopped resisting Alden, and then it clicked into place.  Nathaniel Peake struts in as Arturo, accompanied by quiet thugs who reminded me of those quiet thugs in Yellow Submarine (except the colour scheme is different; but otherwise they move exactly like the tall “bonkers”: those scary cartoon dudes, except nobody drops any apples on anyone’s head). 

When Arturo hands his hat to Enrico as if he were simply a valet? Poof! we get a very new kind of tension that makes wonderful sense.  The family dynamics suddenly cohere perfectly, even if I wondered whether we really needed all the madcap antics from Mulligan.  So I forgive Alden for that, even as I quietly mutter under my breath that it’s a gratuitous attack on the most macho creature onstage.  From the wedding scene onward, everything worked magnificently.

Alden does create some wonderful conceits that take us into a symbolic realm suitable for such a story of myth & consciousness.  For me the best of these is the use of a stage within the stage, but I am a complete sucker for self-reflexive devices.  When Edgardo arrives he comes as if out of a story-book, arriving from that stage, and exiting too into that stage.  It will be the site for Lucia’s mad-scene, undermining all the performativity of the coloratura showpiece we’re watching.  And later, when we meet up with Edgardo, how wonderful that it’s as though we’re backstage, where the poor hero has gone to meet his not-so-heroic end.

Stephen Lord was quite magnificent to watch, deliciously flexible with the COC orchestra in following the singers no matter where they wanted to go, one of the most impressive displays of musicianship I have ever seen. And the orchestra were in splendid form, especially the horns.

So this is a Lucia that’s much more than just a virtuoso vehicle, with fabulous singing and where there’s madness running through the whole family.  All in all, I’d say it’s way better than I dared expect.  You should see it.

Stephen Costello (Photo: Chris Hutcheson)

Stephen Costello (Photo: Chris Hutcheson)

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Duo Concertante: Beethoven Violin Sonatas

Posted on April 17, 2013 by barczablog

When one thinks of Beethoven cycles, the mind immediately thinks of symphonies, piano sonatas and string quartets, forms in which we see the complete range of the composer’s voice.  The early ones remind us of Beethoven’s influences, such as Mozart or Haydn.  The middle ones break free, reinventing the form, and the late ones astonish.  In each case –solo piano, string quartet, or symphony—the forces in question trace a line of development.  We see the transition begin from the classical to the romantic, the move away from perfect balance & symmetry, towards experimentation, larger forms, and romantic references outside the realm of pure music.

While I’ve played a few of the violin sonatas I can’t pretend I knew Beethoven’s cycle; indeed I didn’t realize its scope.  I now have my first recording, from Duo Concertante: Nancy Dahn, violin and Timothy Steeves, piano.  I had played some of the earlier ones, and did not realize there were ten in total, again describing a kind of arc through the life of the composer that reveals his growth and development through another lens.  With Beethoven one never has enough such lenses, to bear witness to his boundless creativity.

While the cycle leans a bit towards Beethoven’s youth (with nine of the ten composed in the six years from 1797 to 1803, or in other words, roughly between the time he was 27 and 33, before his Third Symphony appeared in 1805), the concentration of works bears witness to progress, innovation and daring.

There’s a note on the record jacket that’s a good indication of what you find on the recordings:

We hope the permanence and consistency of these Beethoven sonatas in our daily lives and the great joy they bring to us are tangible in these recordings. 

Indeed they are.  The playing is very well thought-out, interpretations that are solidly in the middle of the road.  If I were to compare their approach to a set of Beethoven symphonies, I’d say they’re like von Karajan or Furtwangler: interpreters who don’t rush excessively but who make the architecture of the music transparent, with solid emphasis on the necessary contrasts.  These are congenial readings of the sonatas that are neither radical nor conservative, but comfortably recognizable as Beethoven.

Dahn’s violin sings sweetly, occasionally fiery but mostly a tuneful instrument.  Dahn and Steeves are joined at the hip, as though they shared one mind.  Steeves is occasionally centre stage, but mostly seems to work in support of Dahn’s glamorous sound.  The pristeen clarity of the recording is ideal, never too dry but with just enough reverb to comfortably display the performances.

This is a set full of stunning music that deserves to be better known; only two or three of the sonatas are what I would call “familiar”.  I’m grateful to have found Duo Concertante and to have been led deeper into Beethoven through their intelligent readings of the violin sonatas.

April 22nd Duo Concertante are playing a concert at Gallery 345 in celebration of their new recordings.

Beethoven: Complete Sonatas for Violin and Piano
Performance/CD Celebration by Duo Concertante
Monday, April 22, 2013 at 8PM
Gallery 345: 345 Sorauren Avenue, Toronto
Tickets: $20/$10
Reservations can be made by calling 416 822.9781
or via email info@gallery345.com

www.duoconcertante.com
www.marquisclassics.com

Duo Concertante (photo Ivan Otis)

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10 Questions for Rufus Müller

Posted on April 15, 2013 by barczablog

Tenor Rufus Müller

Rufus Müller was acclaimed by The New York Times following a performance in Carnegie Hall as “…easily the best tenor I have heard in a live Messiah.”  The British/German tenor is celebrated as the Evangelist in Bach’s Passions,  and his unique dramatic interpretation of this rôle has confirmed his status as one of the world’s most sought-after performers. He gave the world premiere of Jonathan Miller’s acclaimed production of the St Matthew Passion in London, which he also recorded for United and broadcast on BBC TV;  he repeated the rôle in three revivals of the production at the Brooklyn Academy of Music in New York (“a sensational Evangelist”- New York Times.   Müller is also a leading recitalist, performing worldwide with pianist Maria João Pires.

In addition to Müller’s success in live opera and oratorio, his recordings include Bach’s St John Passion and Bach Cantatas with John Elliot Gardiner for DG Archiv, Mozart’s Die Zauberflöte and Beethoven’s Choral Fantasia with Roger Norrington for EMI, Messiah with Tafelmusik and with Washington Cathedral Choir,  Haydn’s Creation with Edward Higginbottom and New College Oxford, Handel’s operas Ariodante with Nicholas McGegan and Rodrigo with Alan Curtis, songs by Franz Lachner with Christoph Hammer on Oehms Classics, and  Ned Rorem’s Evidence of Things Not Seen with the New York Festival of Song on New World Records.

The 2012/13 season includes recitals with fortepianist Christoph Hammer in Germany and  New York , Britten’s Serenade in Toronto, Hans Zender’s version of Winterreise in Montreal, Bach’s Passions  in Oxford, Stockholm, New York, San Francisco and Washington DC, Cantatas in Seattle, Messiah in Montreal and Washington,  Mendelssohn’s Paulus in Madrid, Haydn’s Creation in Norway, Satyavan in Holst’s opera Savitri with Little Opera Theater New York, a Britten recital with guitarist David Leisner in New York,  recitals and masterclasses in Japan,  and the title rôle in Monteverdi’s Orfeo in Germany with Andrew Parrott.

Müller was born in Kent and was a choral scholar at New College, Oxford. He studied in New York with Thomas LoMonaco. In 1985 he won first prize in the English Song Award in Brighton, and in 1999 was a prize winner in the Oratorio Society of New York Singing Competition. He is Assistant Professor of Music at Bard College, New York.

On the occasion of Müller’s participation in Tafelmusik’s upcoming A Handel Celebration on May 1-7, I ask him ten questions: five about himself and five more concerning a historically informed approach to baroque repertoire.

1-Are you more like your father or your mother?

We are always surprised by our resemblances to our parents, and not always pleased by them!  But I recognise as I get older that people love us for all of it, and that we can learn from both what we think of as positive traits and negative.  My obvious, exterior traits are very much my English mother’s, a certain eccentricity , and an old-fashioned approach to the English language, for example.  Like her, her mother, and her grandmother, I “cannot hold my tongue in any language”.  I have her obvious flair for the dramatic, too.  But I get much from my German father, such as a certain fastidiousness,  which often leans into being over-critical.  But he was a great preacher, and professed a very human view of Christ, so that now, some years after his death, I recognize  him in my interpretations of the Evangelist rôles in the Bach “Passions”, and in “Messiah.  Physiognomically , I have my father’s mouth and  facial expressions, and my mother’s bones and family nose, as well as her father’s hair, or lack of it!

2-What is the best thing or worst thing about being a singer?

The best thing about being a singer is that I get to move  a large number of people, generally through a beautiful and universal medium.  The worst thing is the freuqent inability to remember that that is what it is about, and  to focus instead on the worry about what it sounds like!

3-Who do you like to listen to or watch?

Wouldn’t it be obvious for a tenor to talk about listening and watching my hero tenors, such as Caruso and Wunderlich, who keep reminding me of my aspirations!  I confess I spend much more time with Joni Mitchell, the 1970s Elton John, Donny Hathaway, Billy Holiday, Sarah Vaughan,  Stevie Wonder, and Motown in general.  My partner Max is a huge source of wonderful music of all kinds which moves me. I’ll relax very often to instrumental music, though, jazz, baroque, string quartets.  My favourite piano soloist is  Maria joão Pires,  with whom I have had the pleasure of performing many recitals around the world, including at least a dozen performances of Schubert’s “Winterreise”.  Being at a performance with her, whether as a spectator or participant, is to be transported completely to the bliss of the present moment.  The Real Thing.

4-What ability or skill do you wish you had, that you don’t have?

I’d love to be passionate about, and really good at, accounting.  I’d never get behind with the taxes, and  I’d be a lot richer!

5-When you’re just relaxing and not working what is your favourite thing to do?

I’m a beach bum. And I love to play tennis.  Boring of me, I know, but work is more than interesting enough, and I don’t get many breaks!

~~~~~~~

Five more concerning Müller’s participation in Tafelmusik’s upcoming A Handel Celebration on May 1-7

1-What are the challenges you face with baroque repertoire (in a “historically informed style”)?

Really the only real challenge I find  in some of this repertoire is not to starve or attenuate my sound  in the interests of staying “light”.  The style requires a much more subtle and demanding form of physical support, but it must be there.  I have never enjoyed an over-ethereal  sound in “Early” music, except as a special effect, and baroque music is as passionate and sexy as anything from later periods.  So the challenge consists of being all that, but still  maintaining a transparent texture.  With Tafelmusik I have never felt the need to hold back, thank goodness!  But when, after years of singing with the orchestra,  I  sang Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony with them, there was some surprise that my romantic singing was so much louder and fuller than they were used to with the usual baroque repertoire!

2-What do you love about  the repertoire you’re playing?

Sophie Daneman, soprano (photograph: Sandra Lousada)

Händel is one of the ultimate “singers’” composers, like Verdi, for example.  His coloratura is generally singable (!), and he more often than not knows that singers have to breathe occasionally, something that Bach often seems to forget, much as I love him!   I love this programme for its contrasts, the alternation with choir, obbligato instruments, full orchestra, and the lovely duets with my old friend Sophie Daneman, the epitome of elegant and sexy.  And if I could name one orchestra in the world whom I consider family, it would be Tafelmusik, and its chorus,  and conductor Ivars Taurins.  Such long and, yes, intimate relationships with whole groups of musicians and the individuals in those groups – these are rare and precious.

3-Do you have a favourite moment in the program?

Yes, I do – the duet “As Steals the Morn”.  I first sang it with the Mark Morris Dance Group in Mark’s setting of “L’ Allegro” in the Edinburgh Festival a long time ago, and that sealed it as an all-time favourite.  It comes near the end of this programme, and I’m so glad about that.  It shimmers in the distance throughout the evening, and then we finally get the treat.

4-How do you feel about the relevance of music & the performing arts, particularly the music you play, as a modern citizen?

When I was living through the seeming endless double term of President Bush the Younger, it became very clear to me that audiences in the States in particular were becoming deprived of reliable truth, both in public discourse, and in the decisions taken on their behalf by their government.  I felt a kind of collective starvation on a deep, spiritual level, even in places like Carnegie Hall.  And when they got the Real Thing, even just one aria or song of complete honesty and integrity, of presence and deep feeling, there was a palpable sense of collective relief and emotion, a transformation.  That hunger has not gone away enough, despite the changes at the “top”.  Governments nearly always cut funding to the arts as soon as the economic going gets rough, deeming them a luxury, rather than the lifeblood we know them to be.  In our best moments as performers of music, we have the power to give new impulses to that lifeblood, and it nourishes both us and our listeners and viewers.  Love, despair, joy, grief – these outlive, and have relevance far beyond, any temporal powers, and our ability to interpret them and make them accessible to any number of people is our privilege, as well as our calling.

5-Is there a teacher or an influence you’d care to name that you especially admire?

All I do as a singer is of course my own personal statement.  But for many years at the start of my career, I knew how I felt and how I wanted to transform an audience, but didn’t have the technical means to achieve these things.  My voice, though always elegant, didn’t make enough sound to be heard in an opera house, and had other weaknesses which frustrated me.  In the end I found a wonderful teacher  in New York, Dr. Thomas LoMonaco, and had lessons with him for almost 20 years.  Tom, who died at the beginning of last year just short of his 90th birthday, having had a long battle with Parkinson’s Disease, was one of the old-school, Italian-based teachers, with a particular and personal flair for building up voices, and healing those that had gone off the rails.  Under his guidance, I learned to access much more of my voice, and after about a year I was ready for my first opera of many.  I continued to have lessons with Tom until 6 months before his death, and have just recently had my first lesson with his widow, Ilka LoMonaco – there’s nothing like going as close the source as possible!  We played recordings of Tom as a young man at his memorial service, and his strong, golden, musical and passionate voice reminded me of what I am still working to achieve.  The singer’s journey is never done.

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Tenor Rufus Müller joins Tafelmusik for A Handel Celebration on May 1-7. Click image below for further information.

Tafelmusik Chamber Choir, directed by Ivars Taurins (left foreground). Click for concert program & Taurins’ notes.

 

 

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