Volume 27 Issue 4 - February 2022
Gould's Wall -- Philip Akin's "breadcrumb trail; orchestras buying into hope; silver linings to the music theatre lockdown blues; Charlotte Siegel's watershed moments; Deep Wireless at 20; and guess who is Back in Focus. All this and more, now online for your reading pleasure.
Gould's Wall -- Philip Akin's "breadcrumb trail; orchestras buying into hope; silver linings to the music theatre lockdown blues; Charlotte Siegel's watershed moments; Deep Wireless at 20; and guess who is Back in Focus. All this and more, now online for your reading pleasure.
- No tags were found...
You also want an ePaper? Increase the reach of your titles
YUMPU automatically turns print PDFs into web optimized ePapers that Google loves.
For audiences too, I wonder if something<br />
of the same is not also beginning to<br />
happen. We have been tantalized so often<br />
with the imminent end of this gigantic<br />
emptiness, only to find it extended again<br />
and again; I wouldn’t be surprised if we<br />
have given up hope for now. (I think of<br />
poor Gustavo Gimeno and the Toronto<br />
Symphony, waiting in suspense for over<br />
a year to perform, finally appearing in<br />
concert together to begin a new era, only<br />
to have that beginning snapped shut after<br />
three programs comprising seven concerts<br />
from November 10 to 20.<br />
To be sure, my concerns might be the<br />
worst kind of overthinking. The memory<br />
and love of concert-going is so ingrained<br />
and intense for many of us that it will take<br />
nothing at all for us to regain our previous<br />
love affair with classical performance. Once<br />
this is done, it will be as though it never<br />
happened. Perhaps.<br />
But something within me says that will<br />
not be the case, and that’s not an altogether<br />
bad thing. Classical music is not<br />
a completely obvious part of our lives,<br />
even for those of us who depend on it for<br />
aesthetic and emotional sustenance. It is<br />
fuelled by habit and convention, as much as<br />
anything. How we are going to react when we hit “play” on conventions<br />
and habits that have been shut down entirely, broken off, or<br />
stretched out of shape as thoroughly as they have been during the<br />
past 23 months.<br />
Do I still want the same regimen of programming? I don’t know.<br />
But it’s entirely possible that I am ready for, and will not only want<br />
but expect, something new.<br />
TSO and COC<br />
There are more than a few indications that classical music<br />
has used the pandemic to rethink some of its basic programming<br />
assumptions, around inclusivity and diversity, repertoire,<br />
concert form and everything else. I know that, if nothing else, the<br />
musical institutions to which many of us will return are going to<br />
be quite different. To cite a couple of examples, here in Toronto (not<br />
completely because of the pandemic), both the Toronto Symphony<br />
and the Canadian Opera Company find themselves both under new<br />
management teams and facing quite different challenges than they<br />
could have anticipated in March of 2020.<br />
The TSO has just hired Mark Williams, most recently with The<br />
Cleveland Orchestra, as their new CEO. As we’ve noted before,<br />
sheer bad pandemic luck has so far left Maestro Gimeno champing<br />
at the bit while being held back by circumstance from establishing<br />
his vision and sound and presence with the Orchestra. Through<br />
no one’s fault, it has been a long time since the TSO could count on<br />
continuity of artistic leadership. With Gimeno and Williams having<br />
collaborated effectively together in Cleveland, over a number<br />
of years, maybe the orchestra’s leadership luck has turned for<br />
the better.<br />
I should also note that, for whatever reason, there has also been<br />
quite a sizable turnover among the players at the TSO, especially<br />
among first-desk positions; so there too the chemistry is changing.<br />
It’s hard to imagine the orchestra simply picking up where it left<br />
off when it finally starts performing again. And even harder to<br />
imagine that they would want to, even if they could. The world of<br />
symphonic classical performance in March of <strong>2022</strong> is just not the<br />
same as it was in March of 2020.<br />
To say that the Canadian Opera Company seems like a completely<br />
different place under general director Perryn Leech than it was<br />
under Alexander Neef feels like an understatement. Not all of this<br />
change can be laid at the feet of the pandemic; in fact, two years<br />
"Trucking along masked and distanced" at La Scala in Milan, Italy, May 2021<br />
of COVID-induced performance paralysis at the COC, for all its<br />
trauma, may have been something of a blessing in disguise for<br />
the institution. It seems clear that the COC Board had decided on<br />
a different sort of artistic vision for the company in the wake of<br />
Alexander Neef’s departure (which was accelerated, but not caused<br />
by the pandemic). It is a vision based on community and outreach,<br />
audience building and accessibility, including digital accessibility.<br />
The COC’s opening trio of productions under Leech – Madame<br />
Butterfly, La Traviata and The Magic Flute (interrupted sadly, by<br />
Omicron) – are quite a change from the more challenging repertoire<br />
we got used to under Neef. Having a buffer of a couple of<br />
seasons to separate the two visions may turn out to be to the COC’s<br />
great advantage.<br />
Pangs<br />
Paradoxically, it’s well-managed companies like Tafelmusik and<br />
Opera Atelier (to name but two of dozens),who maintained stable<br />
leadership during the pandemic, who are feeling the sharpest pangs<br />
of hunger from the long live-performing drought that has afflicted<br />
them. Well-functioning artistic companies need the adrenaline rush<br />
of production, before live human beings, repeatedly and constantly.<br />
It is their drug; it keeps them at the peak of their aesthetic capability.<br />
The lively arts have been in withdrawal for too long.<br />
And we, the public on the other side of the footlights, have<br />
similarly withdrawn. We are about to return: weaker, perhaps;<br />
hungrier, perhaps; with changed sensibilities? For sure we should<br />
assume that we will not just get to hit “start”. The old machine of<br />
my musical self, like my old cassette deck, spent a long time in<br />
pause. Then it either felt like it finally had enough and prudently<br />
shut down. Or it didn’t, and has either burnt itself out or stretched<br />
the tape badly enough to distort our previous pleasure at what<br />
was on it.<br />
But it will be a new beginning, I suspect. Game-changingly<br />
different? It needs to be. Because every new beginning has the<br />
potential for tragedy, comedy and everything in between.<br />
Robert Harris is a writer and broadcaster on music in all its<br />
forms. He is the former classical music critic of The Globe and Mail<br />
and the author of the Stratford Lectures and Song of a Nation: The<br />
Untold Story of O Canada.Story of O Canada.<br />
REUTERS/FLAVIO LO SCALZO<br />
thewholenote.com <strong>February</strong> <strong>2022</strong> | 61