Volume 6 Issue 5 - February 2001

B.Y DAVID PERLMAN
"True to its talent-spotting
reputation, the Women's Musical
Club of Toronto opened its ...
season with the local debut of what
is probably one of the most
promising young quartets currently
before the public. "
. The writer quoted above was
William Littler of the Toronto
Star talking about the October 14
1999 performance of the Miro
String Quartet, opening WMCT's
102"d season. But the words could
apply to almost any year you
could name in the last century.
Robin Elliott's entertaining
1997 book Counterpoint to a
City celebrates the "first hundred
years" of the Women's Musical
Club. In it he says:
"During the tenth season ,
two US musicians were presented
in their local debuts -the baritone
Francis Rogers and pianist Olga
Samaroff. In the ensuing ninety
years, the list of artists who have
made their Toronto or Canadian
debuts for the WMCT reads like
a who's who of the great
musicians of this century: Myra
Hess; Wanda Landowska; Mitsuko
Uchida; the Flonz.aley and Kolisch
String Quartets; the Vienna Boys
Choir; Andres Segovia; Szigeti,
Enesco, Grumiaux; Alexander
Kipnis; Marian Anderson;
Leontyne Price; Dietrich Fischer­
Dieskau ... . "
This month's WMCT
Toronto debut recital by pianist
Dang Thai Son promises to add
another pearl to that string.
Vietnamese-born Dang Thai Son
burst, seemingly from nowhere,
onto the world stage in 1980,
when he was awarded the First
Prize Gold Medal at the tenth
Chopin Piano Competition in
Warsaw. His resume since then
reads like a guide to the world's
concert halls; conductors and
orchestras. ·
But when he takes the
Walter Hall stage February 8 he
will pull no punches, packing into
the daunting all-Chopin first half
of his program as much
excitement and challenge as
many artists would into a whole
recital.
"The program for this
Toronto concert is what it is
because I consider it my real
Toronto debut. So I want to show
the best I can do - the most
Cover Story
WMCT welcomes Dang Thai Son
beautiful, Chopin's chef
d'oeuvre. The first half of the
program is therefore all Chopin.
From the point of view of form it
encompasses everything, the big
·and the small, the mazurka and
,the polonaise." ..
The second half of the
program is French - Debussy and
Ravel. "It is the school that I
very much enjoy. And again
there is the contrast - in the
Debussy the small elements, and
with the Ravel, the large. For me
Debussy and Chopin come from
the family of Mozart -
but contemplative."
romantic
The place of western classical
music in the Indo-China of Dang
Thai Son's youth was tenuous at
best. There was ofcourse a
massive French influence, born
of nearly one hundred years of
colonization. "I was born in what
was then Saigon," he says. " It
was still a French colony and my
mother and my aunt were
schooled in the French system,
becoming the country's first
teachers of western classical
piano. "
Then came the American
36 wholenote FEBRUARY 1, 2001 - MARCH 7, 2001
And then in 1970 his mother
was invited to attend the Chopin
competition in Warsaw, as an
observer. "She brought back the
complete Chopin scores and a
recording - Martha Argerich,
her competition-winning
performance in 1965- the e minor
(Concerto #1) with the op. 59
mazurkas. I was twelve years old
at the time. It changed me."
"In my learning I was
fortunate to get both sides" he
says. "My mother's teaching -­
the French school -- taught some
things very well - strong finger
technique, and velocity. Then in
my Russian years I was able to
build on it the more massive and
architectural side. In the Russian
school, everything is grande. It is
perhaps because Russia comes to
classicism and romanticism all at
once, I suppose, with Glinka. It
is all suddenly just there."
The years in Russia almost
didn't happen, though. "There
was a cultural exchange. Three or
four students a year would be
chosen. But my father Dang Dinh
Hung was a poet - a dissident,
which went against me."
Then, in 1974 a visiting
war and in 1965 the whole Hanoi . Russian pianist Isaac Katz heard
Conservatory of Music was the sixteen year-old play, and
moved into the mountains to made it his business to get him to
avoid the bombing. Seven year Moscow - to the Moscow State
old Dang Thai Son went too. Tchaikovsky Conservatory. "Katz
"There were no roads; no is now in Jerusalem. All my key
way really to take pianos. But teachers in Moscow were Russian
they did-two grands and a few Jews - Katz, Vladimir Natanson,
uprights, across four rivers with Dmitry Bashkirov. Bashkirov is
no bridges, using buffalo. Of now in Spain and his students are
course when they arrived remarkable."
everything was broken apart. We The 1980 Warsaw Chopin
had to share time. I remember I competition was the turning
would have 20 minutes a day point in his life. "It was curious
only to play piano."
that I even came to be there.
Music had a function in There were no audition tapes at
wartime. "All of us piano the time, no videos. It was all on
students had to study accordion as paper. And I had no concert
a second instrument, so the music history to send. I had never
could be taken where it was played with an orchestra. Finally
needed, although at first I was I was accepted I think because
exempt because I was too small Moscow was what it was, so by
to carry the instrument." being there I couldn't be that bad.
And also, I think, because I was
It was there in the mountains, the first Vietnamese who had
that his link with Chopin was applied."
made. "I am really connected to The competition itself never
Chopin. It is a special
felt like a competition, he says,
. relationship. I remember because making it past the first
listening to my mother playing round was already beyond his
pieces of music I liked very expectations. "The only thing I
much. It was Chopin - the became scared of," he says, "is
Nocturne in c minor and the that I had no suit. It was all right
Berceuse, some mazurkas." for the first couple of rounds, but
then we ran around to department
stores. There was nothing. This
was eastern bloc. And I was too
small. Finally a tailor was
ordered to prepare a suit for me,
in twenty four hours .."
The final was, he says,
"inspiration upon inspiration. For
me there was nothing to fear.
Nobody knew me. It felt fresh."
His victory began to change
the attitude to western classical
music in Vietnam, he says. And
in the immediate short term it
saved his father's life. "He was
in hospital with a tumour on his
lung, and the situation was
palliative only. He was a
dissident. There would be no
treatment. But with my arrival
after the competition, suddenly
the finest surgeon was available.
He survived ten more years."
Dang Thai Son lived in
Moscow from 1977 till 1987,
then went to Japan, touring from
there. In 1989 he made his first
visit to Montreal. "Right then I
knew, this is where I want to be"
he says. In 1991 he returned to
live in Montreal, and in 1995
became a Canadian citizen. He
has played with all Montreal's
major ensembles, but though
Montreal is his home "my work
takes me everywhere-this year I
go to Boston, then Toronto, then
Hamilton, then Japan, China,
Russia again. "
"Russia has changed a lot
since my ten years as a student.
Some things are better, some
worse. Concerts in the big cities I
like less than I did. The audiences
all used to be highly cultured, the
atmosphere electric, charged.
Now the typical audience is more
nouveau, the understanding less."
Dang Thai Son's mother is
still with him, at 83 years of age.
She took Canadian citizenship
with him in 1995 and
accompanies him to Japan when
he goes there to teach.
In his future? "I would like
to record all of Chopin" he says.
(Ironically none of his
recordi.ngs, most of them with
Victor in Japan, are normally
available in Canada.) They will
however be available for sale at
Walter Hall the afternoon of
February 8th.
One more memorable
afternoon of music in WMCT's
hundred year gift to the city. I
for one won't miss it.