Octobre 2010 - La Scena Musicale

MAUREEN FORRESTER
In Memoriam (1930-2010)
TRIBUTE
Paul E. Robinson
Lois Marshall passed away some years
ago, and now, just a few months ago,
Maureen Forrester, too, at the age of 79.
Maureen was a good friend of CJRT-FM
where I was music director, and she
readily donated her services, as did Andrew Davis
and the Toronto Symphony, for a benefit concert
for the station. Later, she joined the CJRT
Orchestra for a performance of Mahler’s Songs of
a Wayfarer. At another concert in 1979—entitled
The Romantic Spirit—she performed Schumann’s
song cycle Frauenliebe und Leben with pianist
Derek Bampton. Then with the CJRT Orchestra
she gave the Toronto premiere of R. Murray
Schafer’s remarkable Adieu Robert Schumann.
In a 1979 interview for CJRT-FM I asked her if
she was nervous about her Carnegie Hall debut
in 1956. Her answer was illuminating about both
her personality and her appreciation of Canadian
musical institutions:
I wasn’t particularly nervous. I was a bold,
brash, cheeky, self-confident person. That was
me, of course, but it was also the years of
experience I had had with Jeunesses
Musicales. I had sung dozens of concerts with
them across Canada and throughout Europe
too. That experience meant that if ‘the big
break’ came along I would be ready for it.
The ‘big break’ began to take shape when Bruno
Walter asked her to audition. He was about to give
his last concerts in New York and needed a contralto
for Mahler’s Symphony No. 2, “Resurrection.” His
favourite contralto was Kathleen Ferrier but she
had died in 1953 and he had been looking for someone
like her ever since. Why did he pick Maureen?
He picked me not because of my reputation
or technique but because of the colour of my
voice. He thought it was just right for
Mahler. But at the audition he also told me I
should be singing the Verdi Requiem. I didn’t
know the piece at the time and couldn’t
appreciate what he was saying. But he was
absolutely right. Years later it became one of
my bread and butter pieces. (Maureen later
recorded it with Ormandy and the
Philadelphia Orchestra.)
Maureen was a great artist but never let her
reputation go to her head. She went about her
work with a smile and with a ready and hearty
laugh. She was famous and beloved and happy in
her life and work. At least this was the public persona.
What few admirers knew—at least until the
appearance of her autobiography in 1986—was
that there was pain and suffering too. Her first
child was born out of wedlock and it was a struggle
to persuade the father of her child to do the
honourable thing. She raised five fine children
with husband Eugene Kash and they shared many
happy times together. But the marriage ended in
divorce, Maureen struggled with alcoholism, and
then came dementia in her later years. Maureen
was a successful but complex woman. The public
admired the talent, the confidence, the energy
and the jolly personality, but she had her demons.
And her last years were sad and disheartening for
those of us who admired her so much and wished
her a kinder and gentler old age.
She was justly famous for her Mahler but she
had a wide repertoire that encompassed a lot of
music by Canadian composers. She did opera too
and did it well. Highlights for the author include
her powerful Countess in Tchaikovsky’s Queen of
Spades at the National Arts Centre, Madame de la
Haltière in Massenet’s Cendrillon—again, at the
National Arts Centre—Erda in Wagner’s Das
Rheingold at the Met, or her crazy and jolly Witch
in Hansel and Gretel for the CBC in 1969.
The music written for her vocal range was
more often gloom and doom than comic turns,
but that wasn’t Maureen’s personality. She
laughed often, talked a mile a minute and really
wanted to present herself to the public in a less
formal way. As she put it in her autobiography:
Little did that world know about my outrageous,
raunchy side. But ever since that
role—the Witch in Hansel and Gretel—
they’ve realized that it’s my serious side
which is the put-on part; the other part
which lets it all hang out is the real me.
Her career took a totally new direction when
she agreed to put together a nightclub act for the
Imperial Room at the Royal York Hotel in Toronto.
You can get some idea of what kind of repertoire
she did and how she did it on a 1985 CD titled
“From Kern to Sondheim” with pianist John Arpin
(Fanfare/Pro Arte CDD 374).
While she could have lived anywhere in the
world after she became famous, she chose to live
in Toronto most of her life, and travelled frequently
to some of the smallest communities in
the country. And we shouldn’t forget the good
work she did to encourage Canadian artists as
president of Jeunesses Musicales and as chairman
of the Canada Council.
For more about Maureen from her own perspective,
read her autobiography Out of Character
(McClelland and Stewart). Apart from the ups and
downs of her personal and professional life,
Maureen talks about what she learned from the
great German actor Anton Walbrook (The Red
Shoes), and the many coaching sessions she had
with Bruno Walter. Then seek out her many fine
recordings of music by Mahler, Schumann, Bach,
Handel and much more besides. Her recorded
legacy includes Mahler’s Symphony No. 2 (Bruno
Walter), Symphony No. 3 (Bernard Haitink and
Zubin Mehta) and Das Lied von der Erde (Fritz
Reiner); Delius, Songs of Sunset (Sir Thomas
Beecham) and Beethoven’s Symphony No. 9
(Ferenc Fricsay). Subscribers to La Scena Musicale
received a Maureen Forrester CD attached to the
June 2010 issue. It includes some of her earliest
commercial recordings, including a Brahms-
Schumann recital with John Newmark from
1958. ■
OCTOBRE 2010 OCTOBER 19