Volume 29 Issue 1 | September 2023

SPEAKING FOR THEMSELVES
A TRUE REUNION
Tafelmusik welcomes back Bruno Weil
Compiled and edited by MJ BUELL
Tafelmusik at the Klang und Raum Festival, in Irsee, Germany (2006)
SIAN RICHARDS
“When I heard that Tafelmusik was opening its
2023/24 season with Beethoven symphonies
conducted by Bruno Weil and in celebration of its
45th anniversary season, it sounded like a reunion
that I could not miss,” writes Christina Mahler,
Tafelmusik principal cellist from 1981 to 2019.
Christina
Mahler
“Tafelmusik’s collaboration
with Bruno Weil
started in the early 1990s
with an annual invitation to
play at his music festival in
Bavaria: Klang und Raum
(Sound and Space). As the
festival’s orchestra-in-residence
for 19 years, we ended
our summers in southern
Germany with Bruno and his
family. This relationship has
greatly shaped our orchestra
and helped extend our repertoire
into the 19th century,
because Bruno wanted to
explore the classical and
Romantic music periods with
Tafelmusik on period instruments.
Playing Romantic
music on period instruments
was a fairly new concept at the time, and we were able to learn and
explore alongside each other.
“Bruno has said that he especially loves to play Beethoven with
Tafelmusik, which makes a lot of sense to me. Beethoven is a
composer who makes you work. His life was hard, with many
dramatic challenges. He had a fiery, earthy and willful temperament,
which comes through in his music. Playing his works on period
instruments gives a clearer understanding and experience of what
Beethoven wanted to say. Once we learn about the composer, use the
instruments of the time, and learn about the specific styles of the
period, the music becomes much more powerful. Winds and strings
find their original balance.
“Bruno has offered us many beautiful insights. As he has said,
working with Tafelmusik means exploring Beethoven as if it was
newly composed music. Approaching the music as Baroque musicians,
we had to expand our palette, flexing and toning our muscles
to re-learn this new style. It was an exciting process for everyone
including the festival’s audience. Our annual stay in Germany often
ended with the making of one or more recordings. Then, returning to
Toronto, we were ready for our opening concerts, sharing our repertoire
discoveries with our home audience.
“It is such a thrill that Bruno is coming back to collaborate
with Tafelmusik after these awful years of COVID drought. He will
bring his family and some friends from our Klang & Raum years to
Toronto, and it will feel like a true reunion.
“When I joined Tafelmusik in 2004, it was my incredible good
fortune to be welcomed into the musical relationship between
Tafelmusik and Bruno Weil, and into the middle of the Beethoven
symphony recordings” says Cristina Zacharias, Tafelmusik violinist
and Artistic Co-Director.
“I knew I was lucky, but I didn’t understand at that time just how
rare such relationships are in the orchestral world. The atmosphere
in our work together was characterized by trust, exploration and a
relentless commitment to the music in front of us. The performances
that resulted from this collaboration are among the most special in
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