Volume 27 Issue 4 - February 2022

For audiences too, I wonder if something
of the same is not also beginning to
happen. We have been tantalized so often
with the imminent end of this gigantic
emptiness, only to find it extended again
and again; I wouldn’t be surprised if we
have given up hope for now. (I think of
poor Gustavo Gimeno and the Toronto
Symphony, waiting in suspense for over
a year to perform, finally appearing in
concert together to begin a new era, only
to have that beginning snapped shut after
three programs comprising seven concerts
from November 10 to 20.
To be sure, my concerns might be the
worst kind of overthinking. The memory
and love of concert-going is so ingrained
and intense for many of us that it will take
nothing at all for us to regain our previous
love affair with classical performance. Once
this is done, it will be as though it never
happened. Perhaps.
But something within me says that will
not be the case, and that’s not an altogether
bad thing. Classical music is not
a completely obvious part of our lives,
even for those of us who depend on it for
aesthetic and emotional sustenance. It is
fuelled by habit and convention, as much as
anything. How we are going to react when we hit “play” on conventions
and habits that have been shut down entirely, broken off, or
stretched out of shape as thoroughly as they have been during the
past 23 months.
Do I still want the same regimen of programming? I don’t know.
But it’s entirely possible that I am ready for, and will not only want
but expect, something new.
TSO and COC
There are more than a few indications that classical music
has used the pandemic to rethink some of its basic programming
assumptions, around inclusivity and diversity, repertoire,
concert form and everything else. I know that, if nothing else, the
musical institutions to which many of us will return are going to
be quite different. To cite a couple of examples, here in Toronto (not
completely because of the pandemic), both the Toronto Symphony
and the Canadian Opera Company find themselves both under new
management teams and facing quite different challenges than they
could have anticipated in March of 2020.
The TSO has just hired Mark Williams, most recently with The
Cleveland Orchestra, as their new CEO. As we’ve noted before,
sheer bad pandemic luck has so far left Maestro Gimeno champing
at the bit while being held back by circumstance from establishing
his vision and sound and presence with the Orchestra. Through
no one’s fault, it has been a long time since the TSO could count on
continuity of artistic leadership. With Gimeno and Williams having
collaborated effectively together in Cleveland, over a number
of years, maybe the orchestra’s leadership luck has turned for
the better.
I should also note that, for whatever reason, there has also been
quite a sizable turnover among the players at the TSO, especially
among first-desk positions; so there too the chemistry is changing.
It’s hard to imagine the orchestra simply picking up where it left
off when it finally starts performing again. And even harder to
imagine that they would want to, even if they could. The world of
symphonic classical performance in March of 2022 is just not the
same as it was in March of 2020.
To say that the Canadian Opera Company seems like a completely
different place under general director Perryn Leech than it was
under Alexander Neef feels like an understatement. Not all of this
change can be laid at the feet of the pandemic; in fact, two years
"Trucking along masked and distanced" at La Scala in Milan, Italy, May 2021
of COVID-induced performance paralysis at the COC, for all its
trauma, may have been something of a blessing in disguise for
the institution. It seems clear that the COC Board had decided on
a different sort of artistic vision for the company in the wake of
Alexander Neef’s departure (which was accelerated, but not caused
by the pandemic). It is a vision based on community and outreach,
audience building and accessibility, including digital accessibility.
The COC’s opening trio of productions under Leech – Madame
Butterfly, La Traviata and The Magic Flute (interrupted sadly, by
Omicron) – are quite a change from the more challenging repertoire
we got used to under Neef. Having a buffer of a couple of
seasons to separate the two visions may turn out to be to the COC’s
great advantage.
Pangs
Paradoxically, it’s well-managed companies like Tafelmusik and
Opera Atelier (to name but two of dozens),who maintained stable
leadership during the pandemic, who are feeling the sharpest pangs
of hunger from the long live-performing drought that has afflicted
them. Well-functioning artistic companies need the adrenaline rush
of production, before live human beings, repeatedly and constantly.
It is their drug; it keeps them at the peak of their aesthetic capability.
The lively arts have been in withdrawal for too long.
And we, the public on the other side of the footlights, have
similarly withdrawn. We are about to return: weaker, perhaps;
hungrier, perhaps; with changed sensibilities? For sure we should
assume that we will not just get to hit “start”. The old machine of
my musical self, like my old cassette deck, spent a long time in
pause. Then it either felt like it finally had enough and prudently
shut down. Or it didn’t, and has either burnt itself out or stretched
the tape badly enough to distort our previous pleasure at what
was on it.
But it will be a new beginning, I suspect. Game-changingly
different? It needs to be. Because every new beginning has the
potential for tragedy, comedy and everything in between.
Robert Harris is a writer and broadcaster on music in all its
forms. He is the former classical music critic of The Globe and Mail
and the author of the Stratford Lectures and Song of a Nation: The
Untold Story of O Canada.Story of O Canada.
REUTERS/FLAVIO LO SCALZO
thewholenote.com February 2022 | 61