Volume 27 Issue 3 - December 2021 / January 2022

REAR VIEW
MIRROR
Dang ROBERT Thai HARRIS Son on the cover of
The WholeNote, vol. 6, no. 5
SONY
“The great era of
Canadian pianism”
Reflecting on the
flags we fly
ROBERT HARRIS
ABIGAIL LEBRECHT
“The final was, he says, ‘Inspiration
upon inspiration. For me there was
nothing to fear. Nobody knew me.
It felt fresh.’”
The quote above is by a Montreal-based winner of the prestigious
Warsaw Chopin Piano Competition, a Canadian citizen since 1995,
reflecting on his victory. But it’s not Bruce Liu, whose stunning
performances in Warsaw won him first prize just a few weeks ago.
It’s Dang Thai Son (one of Liu’s teachers, as it happens), as quoted in
The WholeNote, vol. 6, no. 5, in February 2001, on the occasion of
his first Toronto recital. Born and raised in Vietnam, Dang was resident
in the Soviet Union when he won the Chopin Competition in
1980, and has lived in Montreal since 1991.
On the heels of Bruce Liu’s triumph in
Warsaw, Norman Lebrecht, the resident
scourge and critic of the classical world
through his many books and his popular
blog, Slipped Disc, proclaimed the present
day the “era of the Canadian pianist,”
noting that, with his Warsaw victory, Liu
joins the ranks of Angela Hewitt, Marc-
André Hamelin, Charles Richard-Hamelin,
Norman Lebrecht
Jan Lisiecki and Stewart Goodyear as
players of the first rank on the international
stage. Forget Glenn Gould – for Lebrecht,
this is the great era of Canadian pianism.
Previously, it was Canadian singers that dominated the classical
world, helping us punch above our weight in international musical
circles – the Heppners, Schades, Brauns, Finleys, Pieczonkas,
Bayrakdarians. Within a smaller sample size, we can also note
Yannick Nézet-Séguin’s achievements as one of the great names in
international conducting today.
The question that keeps crossing my mind, though, is this. Should
we Canadians take any particular flag-waving pride in these international
superstars? Is there anything intrinsically Canadian
about them?
With the significance of nationalism as one of the central debates
defining the modern world, it is not an incidental question. One
of the surprises, for me, anyway, of this pandemic, has been the
extent to which, despite the existence of a deadly planetary crisis,
nationalism became a central determining factor in everything –
from pandemic rules, mask mandates, vaccine distribution, infection
rates, likelihood of death. We are all one world, in theory
– until it comes time to get your shot. Then it’s every country for
itself. (The climate emergency is unfolding exactly the same way.)
Paradoxically, we are, as a nation, conflicted about nationalism
in the arts, especially now in our post-nationalist, confused 21st
century, as we try to deal with our odd doubled colonial past, as a
country that was colonizing and colonized at the same time. On the
one hand we are suspicious of national enthusiasms, especially as we
view their more frightening and murderous manifestations around
the world. On the other hand, let’s be honest, the emergence of
cultural nationalism in Canada in the 1970s, which led to everything
from Canadian content rules in the recording industry to Telefilm
Canada to a resurgence of an almost moribund CBC Radio to a
renewed interest in Canadian writing, was one of the great moments
in our cultural history. It led to many Canadian cultural heroes,
one of whom, not to put too fine a point on it, won a Nobel Prize in
Literature – not an insignificant cultural achievement.
So, can we legitimately take similar pride today in the Goodyears,
Lius, Hamelins, Lisieckis and Hewitts of the world? Let me try
to answer that question by shifting the focus from one international
performing arena to another. This year’s US Open Tennis
Championships, the one dominated on the women’s side by the teenagers
Emma Raducanu and Leylah Fernandez raised a a similar
question for me: among the many fascinating correspondences
between the two young women who contested the tournament final
was one generally overlooked –
they both hold Canadian citizenship!
Raducanu was born in
Toronto 19 years ago; Fernandez,
19 years ago in Montreal:
Raducanu to a Romanian
father and a Chinese mother;
Fernandez to an Ecuadorian
father and a Filipina mother.
Raducanu moved to England
when she was two. Fernandez
currently lives in Florida.
How exactly would you parse
either of their nationalities?
I’ll tell you how. Not at all. In
Leylah Fernandez at the US
Open, summer 2021.
SI.ROBI
60 | December 2021 and January 2022 thewholenote.com