Volume 23 Issue 3 - November 2017

Beat by Beat | Early Music
Starry-Eyed in
November
MATTHEW WHITFIELD
Celebrity success in classical music is a strange amalgam. In very
few disciplines do we give as much focus to the medium-like,
necromancing qualities that a good performer must have. Using
training, taste, research and the occasional séance, an interpreter must
form a personal connection with composers who are most often longdead,
and emerge with an interpretation that is ingeniously creative
and original, yet faithful to the written score.
The duty of the classical performer is similar in many ways to that
of an actor who takes a script, often
written by someone else, and absorbs
the on-page style and personality of a
character while fusing it with an individual,
personal energy. A play script,
much like a musical score, can be read
without hearing it live, but the deeper
meaning that can be wrung from the
page through practice and experience
is what separates the “pros” from the
“Joes.” And, if one is lucky as well as
good, he or she may be fortunate enough
to be discovered and swept up through
the ranks into the realm of the classical
music elite, just as can happen for actors.
This link between performing as a
Angela Hewitt
musician and as an actor is likely the closest parallel we can find
within the arts – in no other discipline is pure interpretation the
primary focus and determinant of artistic achievement. Imagine,
for example, if we bought a copy of There’s Gonna Be a God Damn
Riot in Here!, the famous film of Charles Bukowski’s 1979 Vancouver
poetry reading, only to find someone else reading his poems! In the
same way, we cannot conceive of a person whose exclusive role might
be to meander around art galleries, exhibits and openings to explain
the works using great, erudite phrases
and explanations. Certainly we have
art critics, professors, curators and
gallery owners, but they do not look at
a Mapplethorpe photograph or Basquiat
painting, stand there and tell us what to
see, and expect to be thought of on the
same artistic plane as the artist himself.
Since the late 19th century, when
the roles of composer and performer
began to exist independently, the classical
musician as performing interpreter
has existed in this rather paradoxical
grey area. Where Beethoven, Liszt and
countless others wrote the music they
played, today’s batch of internationally
renowned soloists with legendary
technique may not have written a single note on staff paper since
their student days. There are, of course, notable exceptions, including
Leonard Bernstein, John Adams and Pierre Boulez, though these are
often conductor-composers rather than instrumental virtuosi.
Modern academies and conservatories are compartmentalized,
welcoming young, talented students to learn “more and more
about less and less,” as the saying goes. When we ask “What are you
studying?” they do not reply “Music,” but rather “Composition” or
“Collaborative Piano” or “Conducting.” We categorize, break down
and divide the encompassing art into smaller, easy-to-market bites,
thereby enabling the young musician to become a rather pigeonholed,
although superiorly skilled, superstar “[fill in the blank].”
This is the old-yet-new world of classical music in the 21st century, a
roster consisting of a relatively small number of highly specialized, jetsetting
superstars who tour the globe, guest-starring with the world’s
top orchestras. Managed by a few artist agencies who book their
clients in a manner reminiscent of pop music – the biggest venues
in the biggest cities, for the biggest fees – the names are revered,
and they need not be in good form, either. Recently Lang Lang, who
is recovering from an injury to his left hand, took the stage with a
teenage prodigy who literally served as his left-hand man for the
performance.
Mind you, the phenomenon of the superstar performer is not a bad
thing for the propagation of classical music. Superstars attract hype,
and hype fills seats, which ultimately brings the music to a wider
audience. Toronto is fortunate to host a spectrum of marquee artists
from the international scene every year, which continues to foster
interest in the revival and performance of music from long ago. This
November is no exception. Here are some
highlights from the early music world:
Angela Hewitt
Legendary Canadian pianist Angela
Hewitt makes an extended stop in
Toronto this month, playing a solo recital
at Koerner Hall and two concerts with
the TSO. (I wonder if her Fazioli piano
will travel with her to each venue?)
On November 12, Hewitt’s Koerner
Hall recital, her third such appearance,
will be an all-Johann Sebastian
Bach program, which is part of her
three-year exploration of the composer.
Works include three Partitas (No. 3 in
A Minor, BWV827, No. 5 in G Major, BWV829 and No. 6 in E Minor,
BWV830) and the Partie in A Major, BWV832. This concert will be
preceded at 7pm by a talk by Rick Phillips. According to the RCM
box office, tickets are sold out, but industrious ticket seekers may dig
some up through secondhand sources such as scalpers, rush tickets
or StubHub.
The Toronto Symphony then features Hewitt as director and soloist
on November 18 and 19 in a concert of works by Bach and Mozart.
It will be interesting to hear how the
Kristian Bezuidenhout modern grand-piano-with-orchestra
instrumental approach to Bach and
Mozart will come across, particularly
in contrast with Hewitt’s solo recital.
Will the TSO’s leader attempt to temper
the Romantic tendencies of the full
orchestra, or will we hear a more scaleddown,
“HIP”-style performance?
Kristian Bezuidenhout
Speaking of Mozart, Tafelmusik
welcomes South African-born, Londonbased
guest director and fortepianist
Kristian Bezuidenhout from November 9
to 12, as he leads the orchestra through
an early Classical-era program
which includes Mozart’s Concerto for Piano in A Major K414 and
symphonies by Mozart and two of his mentors, Carl Philipp Emanuel
and Johann Christoph Bach.
This performance will pair exceedingly well with the Hewitt/
TSO concerts, as one ensemble interprets Mozart through a modern
orchestra looking back in time, the other as a Baroque ensemble
looking ahead. Both orchestras have deep roots in this style of music
and it will be fascinating to hear the different approaches each group
takes towards very similar repertoire.
26 | November 2017 thewholenote.com