James Strecker Reviews the Arts

A MAN AND SOME WOMEN
A Man and Some Women, in a challenging intimate gem of a production, is an intense and gripping exploration of human relations that pulsates with restrained vindictiveness in some of the characters. It’s not a comfortable play and, because A Man and Some Women addresses the ugly side of human nature, it requires adult honesty and insight from the audience. Director Alisa Palmer and her exceptional cast negotiate the many shades of grey in personal psychology and societal suppression of women and Githa Sowerby’s play, first produced in 1914, is certainly proves relevant today.

Three ladies garbed in black sit in a dimly lit library. One reads, one plays solitaire, one sews, and it’s a very oppressive place. Then Hilda the wife joins the two sisters Rose and Elizabeth and friend Jessica and Rose and Hilda repeatedly reveal themselves as petty, mean spirited, limited in human qualities, uninteresting and spiteful. We are compelled to experience the oppressive atmosphere in which these people lived their lives a hundred years ago, and one achievement of this production is how it explains, in demonstration, how the more undesirable side of human nature is unleashed in a society made of denial and oppression.

So, we have an unhappy marriage, two unhappy sisters dependent on their brother, a lady friend whose decency inspires some meanness of spirit, a young boy whose dependency is abused, and much sibling snippiness from Rose. Rose happily senses the worst in the relationship between brother Richard and Jessica, saying “she knows the difference between right and wrong,” while the more kindly yet attuned sister Elizabeth observes “you haven’t enjoyed yourself so much in a long time.” Richard knows Rose as a “meddler” and accusation is constantly in the air.

Richard summarizes his marriage to Hilda thus: “the whole of our life together has been planned to please you” and they then keep trying to get at one another. Richard is worn out, his sister Rose is disease posing as duty, and Hilda is his money leaching wife though, of course, in this airless society wives were expected to be dependent and kept in the home. Still, Richard is accurate in saying that he lives with ”a pack of idle shallow women” who are “bullies” and although Jessica loves Richard, she does not want to destroy him more by being a “continuation of all the others”.

Sowerby’s writing contains some challenging lines like “We forgive you, you can’t refuse to be forgiven” and “Married people can’t part simply because they are unhappy,” and many times in this compact play the characters -and we- are forced to deal with life of no easy answers. I’ve heard much praise for both this play and this production and heard of only one dissenting view that deemed it as boring. The only thing that is boring, I would think, is a lack of maturity that compels one to run from life’s difficult issues, presented in such a riveting fashion as we have at the Courthouse. Is it not a kind of personal cowardice to hide such evasion in condemnation of the production? The cast features Graeme Somerville, Marla McLean, Sharry Flett, Kate Hennig and Jenny L. Wright and each one is outstanding.

Which leads me to the positive feelings I’ve had about this year’s Shaw Festival, at least after seeing three of its offerings – A Man and Some Women, French Without Tears, and Ragtime- a week ago. A Man and Some Woman is a revival of an unknown but incisive play of much value from a historical, feminist, societal perspective, to be sure, but also of relevance to men and women who need to look in the mirror some time and consider what they are. It’s a gutsy decision by artistic director Jackie Maxwell to program and creatively interpret plays that will challenge complacency and ask that people pay their money to be disturbed, but without such purpose theatre, simply put, does not live.

FRENCH WITHOUT TEARS
Another gutsy choice by Maxwell is Terence Rattigan’s French Without Tears, a chatty period comedy from a society of long ago, 1936, a play that unfolds easy and unrushed. Certainly the audience of nowadays is accustomed to quicker pacing, snappy laughs and grabby lines –they want the punch line and they want to get going. But the gentle humour in French Without Tears evolves from the prevailing leisurely energy of characters who, throughout the play, take their time because they have time. That’s the point about these somewhat pointless people.

French Without Tears has a leisurely pace because this world it depicts has room for leisure. Thus, both the playwright and director allow us to experience the rhythm and pacing of a way of life as they are experienced by the characters before us. Gradually these characters grow on each other and they grow on us and we live with them, at least temporally, in their world. In the one other production I’ve seen of this play, some of the characters had silver spoons deeper in their mouths than in this Shaw Festival version and I despised their ingrained snobbery of privileged birth. They didn’t do much except take life slow and snobby and weren’t as likable as the characters in the Shaw production. But note that in a recent copy of The Observer, the paper’s Washington correspondent, returning to Britain, finds the country still “beset by class and inequality.” And that is relevance for you, isn’t it?

The original mounting of French Without Tears ran for 1039 performances in 1936, transferred to Broadway, and was made into a film. Perhaps folks at the time of Depression needed such light stuff, I don’t know, but it is the first major play of a man who later wrote some devastating works like The Browning Version. In any case, this production doesn’t quite probe Rattigan’s depiction of an inbred class system, but there were many laughs I heard and it does entertain. Ably directed by Kate Lynch to give the text a physical dimension, the words and movement in this production play echo to each other. The characters speak sentences in their facial expressions and gestures and do suggest meanings implicit or implied in their words.

French Without Tears reflects the manners and attitudes of a time when people acknowledged rules of social behavior, even in breaking them, so a tension exists between social form and the substrata of instincts. It’s fun, and perhaps instructive, to watch characters expressing love through awkward shyness in a time when people didn’t know everything there was to know about life, and, yes, I am being sarcastic about today’s pseudo sophisticates. Each diversion from propriety is cause for laughter but people look silly either way, either rigid in conformity or awkward and as bad as naughty, while life issues are a matter of course and resolved by a system that tolerates no laps from civilized behavior. A quaint bunch they are, but real.

We have four young men and one naval fellow, some being diplomats in training, and all required to speak French under the strict tutelage of Michael Ball’s Monsieur Maingot. The naval bloke, subtly presented by Martin Happer, is tall blazered and proper with his sense of manners and propriety. He is gullible, naïve about women and dupable, while his navy lingo is mocked by the others. The lads are casual, conceited and young, with one, Ben Sanders’ Alan, who is savvy in French and one, Craig Pike’s Brian, knows just a dozen words and seems satisfied at that. Alan, a crucial player in the play’s development, is intelligent, smart about women, authoritative, rich with insight and concern, mischievous, and appealingly vulnerable when matters of the heart arise. Meanwhile, elsewhere, we have Wade Bogert-O’Brien’s Kit, adorable in befuddlement, who loves the blonde tease Diana while Jacqueline loves Kit.

Diana is self centered, manipulative of men, greedy to have all in her power, and unkind to men whom she treats as toys. Played not too nasty by Robin Evan Willis, she is tall with sexy tomboyish limbs she likes to put on tantalizing display, and not too calculatingly cold in her manipulations, although it is said of her that “She likes to tear him up to pieces and trample on him”. Jacqueline via Julie Martel has a tactile sexuality and makes a very believable Francaise one might find in one’s imagination or on Parisian streets. She has an expansive physicality, with a touch of earthiness in her, and offers delightful inflexions in her delivery.

French, in this pleasantly charming production, means opening with a lively French duet over French travel posters, and then deliberate misguided translations like “au dessus de sa gare” and then some hilarious pronunciation “ s’il vous plate” (intentional) and “la cham-pain est tres mauvaise” (not intended). There are quick precise exchanges like “I don’t think he likes me. Who does” and word turns like “A peer in one hand” that delight. There’s also the wisdom and profundity of young drunks who can ask, “tell us why we disliked you so much” and guys just goofing around. Most intriguing are the way of life and attitudes the play implies about its characters and, most of all, its audience that gave the play’s first production a three year run in London. French Without Tears may be very understated, but beneath its surface it does suggest so much.

RAGTIME
In director Jackie Maxwell’s hands, Ragtime becomes a production of cumulative effect, both on grand musical scale and, more to the point, in plain dramatic terms. One responds from the gut at unpredictable moments and perhaps her main achievement is that a show of blockbuster dimension breathes naturally and believably through individual lives. Credit must go to Maxwell’s insightful and proportioned direction and to her casting of key actors who create through subtle shadings in their characters a natural humanity. Once one adjusts to being overwhelmed by solid narrative content and by compelling musical numbers, one discovers that the show vibrates from a potent emotional core. It becomes a drama that is sung, a drama with dramatic impetus, not so much a depiction of concisely etched musical types but a drama sung to imply depths of life in a variety of characters. We believe them as people.

Ragtime depicts an era of immense wealth, appalling poverty, suffering and survival of immigrants, and ubiquitous racism against the blacks. It’s an era of Emma Goldman, Henry Ford, Houdini, Commander Perry, Carnegie and other rich industrialists, and Booker T. Washington. It’s a time when “nothing will change in a year. Everything will be the same,” when lower east side tenements have “thousands of stories to tell, a time of “the night Goldman spoke in Union Square” and a time when racists might say, “that nigger doesn’t know he’s a nigger”. It’s a big show and sometimes feels crowded and too comprehensive in depicting an era, with individual lives too simplified, the grime and violence too stylized and clean. But such is the nature of the musical beast and fortunately Maxwell has found its believably human scale. Meanwhile, the ragtime-infused music is always listenable, sometimes catchy, and the duets and group numbers are rich with appealing harmonies. There is much variety in singing voices which gives the production a compelling texture in sound. Choreographer Valerie Moore’s loose limbed ensemble dance numbers are stylish and smooth.

The opening of Ragtime declares that this is the era, this is the music, these are the characters, and a tale is about to be told. Sue LePage’s seductively cold metal-beamed set, with mind enhancing and informative rear projections, and Alan Brodie’s dark lighting reveal the era’s inhuman underbelly. Meanwhile, LePage’s costumes are rich and precisely detailed, clothes that some in an opulent era would wear. If the book, lyrics, and music of the show guide us to emotions we are intended to feel, Maxwell’s directorial precision, meanwhile, seeks the inner lives of her characters and shows restraint form sentimentality. Yes, with a less insightful director, these whites would be tight assed and these blacks would have style, and these Jewish immigrants would be wise survivors. But they are not stereotypes at all in Maxwell’s hands and she saves us from cliché. And Terrence McNally’s book is concise and often ripe in poetical writing as in descriptions of ragtime music.

This production of Ragtime features much variety in characterization and many theatrically thrilling moments even when the complexity of individual lives is implied through presence and inflection alone. Patty Jamieson’s Mother is a woman of centered femininity, subtle in revealing her human depth, and, in her totally engaging solos of vulnerable compassion, has a voice that supports emotional variety in singing through tonal shifts. Thom Allison’s Coalhouse Walker is a very compelling man of inherent style, the most dynamic of the three anchors in the show, who sings full-bodied in all registers with resonance of deep beauty. I thought of Leon Bibb’s similar tones and when Allison sang I certainly wanted to listen, I wanted more.

As Tateh, Jay Turvey easily gets below stereotype and cliché with a vulnerable urgency in his words and manner that makes one understand the plight of immigrants. He is not as much an archetype, he’s a human being. With clean depiction, Benedict Campbell does Father as dominating and frustratingly unreachable with a glint of humanity in him. To him “destruction of property” is the ultimate sin because he owns a lot of it and there is no surprise that his idealist brother in law says “I despise you”. The latter is portrayed by Evan Alexander Smith as passionate and sincere, with believably personal values as the basis of his ideals. There are many other special performances here, including Neil Barclay’s Fire Chief Willie Conklin who, when we’re escaping into the music of this unforgettable production, brings us back to earth as a very chilling and cruel racist.

During rehearsals for a 1937 performance, Ralph Vaughan Williams remarked about his Symphony Number 4, not two years old, in these words: “I don’t know if I like it, but it’s what I mean.” And, certainly, this is not a work whose sometimes aggressively loud and military manner one would consider right off the bat as likable. Albeit the intervals of lyrical, even mystical, passages, one is assaulted, sometimes unrelentingly, by cosmically boorish and brass-edged chords and their unpredictable eruptions. One does not sit back and listen; one waits with increasing nervousness, even as one eases into a serene dimension evoked by string and woodwind led passages, a dimension that might also might erupt at any time.

One prime quality in conductor Peter Oundjian’s seductively engaging interpretation here is his ability to create tension through a combination of elements: a subtle sense of restraint, control of the orchestra as one voice of many clearly articulated shadings, and, whatever the broad variety in the composer’s juxtaposed effects, a clarity in execution. As well, he reveals a sophisticated polish in sound and a sense of unwavering and unified purpose, both typical of his conducting. The composer maintained of this work written between two world wars that it was “not a definite picture of anything external like the state of Europe, but simply because it occurred to me like this. . .it is what I wanted to do at the time.” The Toronto Symphony impresses with both a secure precision in playing that is lyrical and explosive and as well evocative powers that suggest extra-musical interpretations, whatever one chooses these to be.

The shimmering descent in the strings, both lush and poignant, that opens the Fifth Symphony reminds us that few composers are capable of pastoral effects as Vaughan Williams. Indeed, his are one of the distinct sounds in the orchestral canon. Again Oundjian maintains an air of measured freedom that keeps complete abandon just ever so slightly contained in passages of unfolding beauty that suggest human longing and quiet resolution. This is a beautiful recording for reflection and imagination. Symphony No. 4 was recorded live in March 2011 at Roy Thomson Hall, Toronto, while Symphony No. 5 was recorded live in November 2008 at Roy Thomson Hall, Toronto, and appear on tsoLive, the Toronto Symphony’s own label.

Likewise the just released Shostakovich Symphony No. 11 “The Year 1905″ in which the composer’s systematic achievement of uncluttered orchestral effects finds a very attuned conductor in Oundjian who sustains an ominous and brooding atmosphere throughout and shapes the unfoldment of musical subplots with keen awareness as to their part in the whole. The music of Shostakovich is sometimes a window and sometimes an insinuating mirror to the Stalinist society of Russia that long tormented him, and the TSO prove passionate yet refined, emphatic yet suggestive, able to negotiate with ironic finesse the dynamics of a musical statement that is implicitly political and personal. They are exact and secure in rhythm, pinpoint and dynamic in those surprising trademark passages of the composer that elbow and unsettle the listener, and perfectly in synch with the dramatic developments within the work- This very compelling recording was made at Roy Thomson Hall in 2008.

Handel Sing-Along, a new release by Tafelmusik Baroque Orchestra on their own label named –what else?- Tafelmusik Media, is a filmed record of an eagerly anticipated annual event at Toronto’s Massey Hall, one that has offered many thousands since 1986 a chance to join in and belt out Handel’s beloved masterwork. First presented on Bravo in December of 2010, this DVD, here filmed at Koerner Hall, is a gem of celebratory and open-hearted music-making and –how else to say it?- a hell of a lot of fun. Soprano Suzie LeBlanc with poignant voice and charming presence, countertenor Daniel Taylor with tones of aching purity, tenor Rufus Mueller and bass-baritone Locky Chung make up an outstanding quartet of soloists who front the invariably memorable Tafelmusik Baroque Orchestra and Chamber Choir of about two dozen members per group.

During the overture we have clips of musicians in preparation backstage while in the lobby members of the audience enthusiastically declare the number of times they have come to sing along at this annual ritual, the number for some being over two dozen. Since its debut in 1742 in Dublin, Messiah has over time been given the bigger is better treatment in many symphonic performances and here the intention is to return to standards that, on a smaller scale, are “more intimate and more approachable.” And how is this accomplished? Why, of course, through taking one of the world’s great baroque orchestras with none other than Herr Handel himself to conduct.

You see, it seems that the corpulent Handel’s higher power once maneuvered the composer into conducting these sing alongs for all eternity and, happily, we have a post-Pilates Handel embodied here by a thinner choir director Ivars Taurins who both tells the tale and conducts. He is indeed a very funny guy in powdered wig and eighteenth century garb, a man who exudes warmth, wit, joy in the music, and certainly something of the heartbeat of a man who could compose Messiah in about three weeks. On my last two visits to London I dropped in again to the Handel House Museum at 25 Brook Street, and felt a slight shiver as I stood in the room alleged to be the one where Handel did the deed. Such sensation returned on watching this film of music-making at its most joyfully human.

The second DVD release from Tafelmusik is a much celebrated multimedia creation, The Galileo Project, which, in 2009, had its premiere at The Banff Centre in Alberta in celebration of Galileo’s first public demonstration of his telescope. In a nutshell, this production explores “the fusion of arts, science and culture in the 17th and 18th centuries” with Tafelmusik performing “the music by memory to a backdrop of high-definition images from the Hubble telescope and Canadian astronomers.” We hear music by Monteverdi, Bach, Lully, Rameau, Handel, Telemann, Zelenka, Purcell Vivaldi, and Weiss, along with the lesser known Merula, Galilei, Marini, and, yes, the accompanying CD is a baroque treasure as one would expect of Tafelmusik.

The whole project was “programmed and scripted” by double bassist Allison Mackay with actor Shaun Smyth handling performance of intriguing texts that include Ovid’s ‘Metamorphoses, a letter written by Galileo in 1629 concerning his appearance before the Venetian Senate, even the Inquisition’s sentence of Galileo, and much else that places the era’s scientific zeitgeist, its human dimension, and its cultural life into the listener’s consciousness. The texts are informative, touching or, as in the tale of Phaeton, quite thrilling, especially when juxtaposed with musical selections that enhance their dramatic content. Indeed, this is a multi-media production that is based, in concept, on a sensitive intelligence and in turn is realized to dazzling and awe-inspiring effect.

There are so many things that please in this ninety minute performance and the interaction of the musicians is one. Right at the outset, we have an assertive downbeat from violinist Jeanne Lamon, the entry by second violinist Julia Wedman who in quick order turns –with an expression of impish sunrise in her eyes- toward the actively benign presence of cellist Christina Mahler whose ensuing gaze at Ms. Lamon sets the latter into a breathtaking frenzy of violin playing in Vivaldi. The interaction of musicians, especially when they are choreographed as celestial bodies by Marshall Pynkoski against radiant or haunting images of the sky, and especially with camera work that plants the viewer among them, is magical.

With the Tafelmusik sound that is perfect as crystal, shining, and majestic, one might be taken aback by the contemporary and youthful voice of actor Shaun Smyth. The readings are intelligently shaped for meaning and echo the emotional variety of the orchestra’s selections certainly, but the voice is not stately or classically resonant as that of a traditional stage actor might be. Very soon, however, one shares through Smyth’s readings a sense of everyday human wonder that is very moving, since we are thus made contemporaries of those who spoke these lines long ago. After all, we are so lucky as a species that when we look skyward at infinity, we find millions of luminous heavenly bodies blocking our view.

The combination of conductor Bruno Weil and the Tafelmusik Baroque Orchestra is a longstanding and inspired musical union with many performances and recordings of distinction to its credit. This pairing proves that the scale and quality of musical performance are achieved not in the number of musicians but in the skillfully articulated intensity of individual passions put in service of collective expression. So it was last season with a memorable Beethoven’s Ninth symphony and so it was last week with a program of Beethoven’s Eroica and Mendelssohn’s “Italian” symphonies at Koerner Hall in Toronto.

Weil on the podium seemed, as usual, centred and relaxed in authority, unshowy in manner, and economical in gesture. The Mendelssohn’s “Italian” Symphony was in turn both earthy and brisk, propelled with form-bursting joie de vivre, not dainty but full-bodied with a belly full of local ale rather than a Chianti or Barolo. The performance was celebratory overall and the pretty or impish passages felt muscular as well, like raindrops echoing a thundercloud. At times this Mendelssohn seemed quite like Beethoven’s kin taking on all comers with a breathtaking blast of poetry. Between Allegro and Andante, concertmistress Jeanne Lamon scanned the audience here and there with a piercing eye to silence all intrusive noise makers, for these performances are destined for a future recording on Tafelmusik’s new label.

The Andante revealed here a robust finesse as Weil explored the composer’s magical atmosphere, his implied unknowns, and perhaps the secrets that a natural world almost told the composer. Weil evoked a substantial orchestral presence, especially in the strings, by creating linear progression through a blending of forward moving textures. One’s imagination again felt enveloped and consumed. No lightness of being in the Saltarello either, but more a sense of great struggle, or eruption, and one imagined both conductor and composer holding earth and stormy sky in one hand. Tafelmusik, as we happily expect, was again a band of stylistic fibre, agility, and integrated purpose, of delicious variety in individual contributions, of unwavering presence, and as a result one felt very human in their world.

With the Beethoven Third, sounds and passages that still seem oddly eccentric and still jar one with compositional freshness evolved as perfectly placed under Weil’s direction. There was always an inherent sense of adventure, even in smallest details, and a genuine sense of discovery for both orchestra and audience. Tafelmusik are certainly masters in making precision seem like abandon, through attack that is at once fierce and fine among other things, and the result was an immediacy of pulsating textures that in turn created a compelling atmospheric world of sound overall.

Bruno Weil sustained the first movement’s unfoldment with attention to solo and collective detail. A sense of integrated momentum of a complex whole thus resulted, one interwoven with rhythms and syncopations and barely containing Beethoven’s explosive chordal punctuations. Weil repeatedly demonstrated he knew where emphasis would best enhance the overall performance and the result was certainly not an abstraction of cerebral shadings but more a sense of body in the world and world as body in the cosmos. It was a demonstration of visceral existence, a blending of individual statement and overall propulsion, of singular will and massive common will in eruptive musical assertions.

There was so much to relish in this performance -a variety of textured sounds, the breathtaking fluidity in rapidly executed scales, the assertive emphasis by each voice in solo or group passages- and yet it never seemed intended for blatant emotional or metaphysical meaning, or any effect whatsoever. It seemed more a process of realization in very human terms that negotiates its existence in the world. We were very much aware that this was a declaration, through musical means, in which the potential sounds of each instrument would add existential sub-clauses and footnotes to the overall statement. Bruno Weill gave the impression of wanting each voice to be heard, thus creating an inner cumulative tension of individual voices and the overall orchestral thrust to breathtaking effect. This performance seemed metaphysical without the intrusion of philosophy.

In this most involving of symphonies, the variety boldness of Beethoven’s musical innovations allowed for no complacency and manipulated one’s anticipation and expectations, pushing the comfort zone of each listener’s habits. Weil and his band tended to push aside the familiarity acquired through many previous hearings of the Eroica. One tended to appreciate the effect of subtle compositional touches that sometimes ceded to more overt methods and all the while the meatier sound of period instruments revealed new riches in sound everywhere. At one point, the second violinists seemed to be dancing as they sat, almost frenzied it seemed to the point of popping from their seats into collision with the microphones overhead.

As trumpeter Norman Engel remarked during a brief chat after the concert, “Bruno Weil always finds details in the orchestral textures that make the symphony into a new piece of music.” Amen to that, for this was a spirited and subtly demanding performance that led to deeper appreciation of Beethoven’s innovative and aesthetic genius and to much profound pleasure of spirit and mind. Now when do we get the CD?

Some years ago, when I asked Jonathan Miller about directing opera, he declared outright, “I wouldn’t touch historic kitsch like Trovatore with a barge pole. It’s got wonderful music and beautiful arias in it, but the story is just Madame Tussaud rubbish.”

And certainly Il Trovatore, though often polled among the most popular of all Verdi operas, merits its many parodies. Where else can you find, in a mere few hours, revenge, a threesome of lovers, much premonition, identities mistaken, suicide, murder, concealed truths, poison, kidnapping, beheading, undying devotion, burning at the stake –have I left anything out? And where else such deliciously melodramatic lines like these: “Have you come down from heaven or am I in heaven with you?” or “I had burned my own son!” or “Rage is seething in my breast?”

Still, since I first experienced Il Trovatore as a lad many years ago, the over the top inner logic of the plot, expressed through sometimes equally improbable Verdian musical devices, has always been easy to accept on its own terms. It’s not psychologically sophisticated stuff, to be sure, but it does border on the mythic and it is delightfully, unrelentingly melodramatic in a gripping way. So I must confess that I very much enjoyed the opportunity to experience Opera Hamilton’s recent production which offered many pleasures.

Opera Hamilton’s Il Trovatore opened with five flame bearers and helmeted soldiers gathered to hear about “a child’s bones half-burned and still smoldering’ and “a dark, despicable Gypsy hag,” an “evil hag” as it were, who was burned at the stake and whose cursed daughter seeks vengeance. Michael Ganio’s spare but evocative setting –two crosses suggest a convent- and Valerie Kuinka’s assertively unsettling projections -including a moon, fog, bare trees and branches- gave the goings-on a dark and foreboding context. The prison setting, with its rear-lighting by Steve Ross extending shadows toward the audience, created a dramatically oppressive atmosphere that was most unnerving. The only distracting visual gaff was the group of nuns garbed, so it seemed, like extras from Lawrence of Arabia.

Conductor David Speers leaned more to supporting and enveloping his singers rather than driving them, and from a balcony seat one could enjoy the collective presence of orchestra and voices as one. The necessarily reduced orchestra, though not big scale as some might prefer their Verdi, offered a sense of intimate urgency that was most suited to this frenzied tale directed with efficient insight by Valerie Kuinka. The male chorus was consistently gentle and delicate in sound and very pleasing to the ear, although they did not seem like men ever bloodied in battle or especially desirous for loot in declaring, “There will be much treasure today.”

Each of the four leads contributed distinctly in voice to the dramatic thrust of the story. As Leonora, Joni Henson offered a full fruity wine of a voice in mid and lower registers although, in the first half, the roundness of tone became narrower in higher passages and even seemed a different voice. Later the upper register did prove a natural tonal extension of the lower. To Azucena, mezzo Emilia Boteva brought compelling vocal powers that seemed naturally infused with drama, so much so that she seemed to have otherworldly connections. Her tormented, judgmental and driven facial expression added to her commanding intensity of voice and presence, and one hardly noticed that, with a six by six beam on her shoulders, she still managed much flexibility in her fingers. She was one scary woman.

In Count di Luna, James Weston offered a voice of grace, authority and warmly resonant sound, quite seamless and fluid with the pleasing ease of air, a deeply rooted lyrical instrument. More than a concise and reacting villain, this Count was a touchingly obsessed human being of some inner complexity. His presence brought dramatic texture to the production. After a few initial bigger notes that seemed pushed, perhaps the result of a bad wig day and errant hairs breathed in, Richard Margison’s Manrico was delivered throughout with a creamy ring in softer passages and benign energy and magnitude in his heroic moments, consistent always with high notes that thrilled. To experience such a potent vocal resource, one that fills the world’s major opera houses and now within perhaps eighty feet, is an opportunity offered by Opera Hamilton’s recent move to the Dofasco Centre. One felt the tingling effects of grand opera.

So a final word about next season’s offerings: another quintessentially theatrical masterwork from Verdi’s “middle” period in Rigoletto, Bizet’s The Pearl Fishers with its eternally heart-touching duet Au Fond du Temple Saint, and the always celebratory Popera PLUS! with its usual quartet of opera stars of today and tomorrow, always a revelation. These are difficult times for the arts to survive and to have a regional company buck economic constraints and consistently produce freshly realized productions of impressive standards, especially in an intimate theatre like the Dofasco Centre, makes opera lovers in the Hamilton region a lucky bunch indeed. Subscriptions are available at 905-527-7627.

John Gielgud once recalled that, when offered the play Home by David Storey in 1970, he was “quite taken with it but didn’t understand it.” Yet, he added, “there was something very fascinating about it. It’s one of the most beautiful plays I’ve ever been in……it symbolized the modern world and its horrors and it was compassionate and touching.” Gielgud co-starred in Home with Ralph Richardson and the two appeared again five years later in No Man’s Land, by another “new writer” Harold Pinter, in which we heard, “All we have left is the English language…can it be salvaged?” The answer? “Its salvation must rest in you.”

With Beckett’s immense influence looking on, the use and value and meaning of language were up for grabs. Thus, the early seventies were certainly a fruitful time to be visiting London and taking in the new energy in theatrical offerings, anything from Pinter to Stoppard’s wit-bulging Jumpers and Travesties. I also saw David Storey’s Life Class and his The Contractor, always aware that the language was incisively current, that subtext prevailed, and that implications within the playwright’s text led ultimately to our needs, in the audience, for the world to somehow make sense.

Take this exchange between Jack and Harry in Home, now running until June 20 at Toronto’s Young Centre for the Performing Arts in a delicately heartbreaking production by Soulpepper Theatre: “He is disappointed… ……..Oh, yes….Heartbreak…..Oh, yes…..Same mistake, why make it twice?…..Oh, no…..Once over, never again.” The writing, like human lives, is full of non sequiturs, ambiguities, implications, and dead ends. People co-exist, perhaps have temporary effect on one another, their sentences begin and just stop, and then they fade back again into the solitude of their own worlds and their own words.

You might think that the experience of Home is perhaps like logging in nowadays to Facebook and its loads of arbitrary information -some of it profoundly disturbing and relevant, some of it self-serving drivel- as people hurl their endless offerings into indifferent space. But, in either situation, is anyone ever listening? Does anyone even care? Some maintain that the Home under scrutiny in Storey’s play is a mental institution, but the context here is much, much larger than that. Home stands for the world in which we are not articulate and we are not rational. We are existential fumblers who realize the futility of opening our mouths, but need to do so anyway.

Home is also an actor’s goldmine of potential for implied character and implied personal histories, but it does not allow for, and here does not make, one false step in realization. No wonder Oliver Dennis, who plays Jack, remarked after one recent performance: “It took us the whole six weeks of rehearsal to figure out all the beats in the play.” But under director Albert Schultz’s finely-tuned awareness, all the notes in this production ring restrained and true. Moreover, my sacred memories of the performances of Gielgud and Richardson as Harry and Jack can happily co-exist now with those of Michael Hanrahan and Oliver Dennis. The Soulpepper production is distinctly its own thing and certainly memorable in its immediacy, poetry, impact and beauty.

Schultz’s sensitive direction balances the quiet inner sparkle within Jack and Harry with the inner torment from which each man might explode or collapse and which each man contains through inane and evasive conversation. Harry is sad, wearied, ever so slightly hesitant in speech, with hopelessness in his eyes. Jack is made of eagerness, but when interrupted or intruded upon, collapses into his own hopelessness. He assumes a prominence that is not his and rules conversation with anecdotes. These are not mentally secure men, albeit their occasional gossipy, even catty, tones and their animated facial expressions. They weep a lot.

Of the ladies, Kathleen, played by Brenda Robbins, is louder, unbearably tight in facial expression, and constant in annoying laughter as she sits short-skirted with her private regions not so private. Marjorie, played by Maria Vacratsis, is suspicious, fussy, naturally aggressive, and obsessed with being right. The attitude and conversation of the ladies can be very bitchy. Alfred, played by Andre Sills, is abrupt, driven, given to blank stares and jerky expressions like, “Wanna fight?” No wonder Marjorie declares, “You go mad here if you don’t watch out.” Or this Harry and Jack exchange: “Another day…..Yes, in shadows.”

The Soulpepper production of Home is a compassionate and entertaining excursion into human hopelessness and we find here, in these outstanding performances by all, that there is much beauty in human endurance of emotional pain. Again we realize that one does what one must in order not to collapse, that illusions are not necessarily lies if they help one to endure. And always it’s small details –a scowl, a tear, a wounded glance, a nervous laugh- that suggest intense inner lives as their origin, although the production’s special strength is that so much of these lives, though unspoken, speaks very loud in silence throughout.

In Soulpepper’s current production of You Can’t Take It With You, by Moss Hart and George S. Kaufman, you won’t find anyone hooked up to Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, email or other media of incessant and obsessive connection. After all, these of late have been considered ironically, in publications like The Atlantic Monthly and The New Yorker, as facilitators of widespread social isolation and loneliness and not a deep human connection that the play celebrates.

You will find instead a subtly rewarding production, under Joseph Ziegler’s sensitively judged direction, that treats individual eccentricity as a positive and necessary human characteristic -and not a theatrical cliché to be used for easy laughs. It’s a production that also treats love as a praiseworthy passion coexistent with vulnerable dignity in people -and not a theatrical cliché that inspires easy and shallow sentiment. It’s also a production that draws appreciative laughter from the heart as it proves how genuine love needs more that a “send” button to be received.

Without straining to broadcast the essential human values inherent in the play, Ziegler and his finely tuned company accomplish a celebration of some of life’s essential values as they unfold in an everyday context. As a result, we come to care about these characters because we discover, through their unobtrusive focus on the basics of human existence, what we all care about, in others and in ourselves. It’s “lighthearted comedy” that takes the heart seriously.

The Sycamore household is certainly a busy place in which individuals do their own thing, always accepted and somehow in harmony with the others. Mom writes plays because one day a typewriter was delivered by mistake and now, in frustration with creative process involving her “war play” and her “sex play” and her “religious play,” she wonders aloud, regarding the latter, “You’d think that with forty monks and a girl something would happen.” Dad, who reads Trotsky in the bathroom, and permanent visitor Mr. De Pinna concoct fireworks in the basement, along with house-filling smoke and occasional explosions.

Of the younger folk, daughter Essie practices ballet, with self-indulgent dramatics, throughout the living room while hubby Ed, “who came for me one day and just stayed” plays a xylophone. Meanwhile, the broadly Russian Mister Kolenkhov supervises her lesson and, in summary, declares candidly, “she stinks.” An energetic black maid Reba, spiced with a touch of earthy femininity, coasts about in overdrive like the rest and keeps the household functioning, while her not so energetic boyfriend, on relief, complains that he must wait a whole half hour in line.

The play has two theme-defining centres and the performance of each one strikes a special note. Krystin Pellerin, as other daughter Alice, glows with purity of heart and urgent vulnerability and her declaration that she couldn’t “break away” from her family because they have a “nobility” to them rings true. Pellerin’s pivotal Alice is a distinct presence -think early Shirley Jones- and she is girlishly feminine with charm rooted in human decency and firm values. Inevitably she must be tested –think Joseph Campbell- and with her marital dream on the verge of collapse, blurts out, “Why can’t we be like other people….a place where you can bring your friends to?”

Eric Peterson as sagacious Grandpa begins the saying of grace with “Well, Sir…….” and doesn’t pay taxes because he “doesn’t believe in it”. He long ago dropped out of the business world, “just stopped” actually, and now seems open to any delight that life can offer. He can therefore question Alice’s potential father in law about his life in business with “Where’s the fun come in?” since the latter’s career is sustained with “bicarbonate of soda.” Of course, Grandpa, with his preference for enjoyment, is accused of communism and being un-American, but, since he seems so easy and wise, the ways of Wall Street seem even more lifeless, pointless, and inhuman as a result. The play was written in 1936….or was it yesterday?

The Soulpepper cast here achieve a balance of rightness and surprise in each characterization –too many instances to mention- and create an overall atmosphere in which the coexistence of idiosyncrasies and an unforced familial bond seem natural. There is much to enjoy here: the common folks decide to offer the Wall Street aristocrats a dinner of canned salmon, beer, frankfurters and Campbell soup; a house-calling internal revenue officer is utterly confused by questions regarding the raison d’être of taxes; the Grand Duchess, related to the Czar and now a waitress in a Times Square restaurant, still maintains values of a dead class system; a totally drunk actress who seems a dead weight with every move sleeps on the couch; the Wall Street exec’s wife carries both her snobbery and her unhappiness in the most vertical and unbending spine you’ll ever see. And always, one is touched by the undercurrent of loving acceptance, of life being fun if only we’d get out of the way and let it be so.

Yes, this is populist optimism circa 1936: idealization of family life that faces only resolvable problems and somehow always finds food on the table; a celebration of social equality (black, Italian, Russian, rich, poor, young, old) in a country with racism and economic inequality at its core; an experience of human warmth that for two hours puts aside a world in which humans are killing and will kill one another by the millions. Yes, of course, Frank Capra made a film of You Can’t Take It With You and, yes, in the wrong hands a play like this might seem anachronistic and quaint, even cloyingly innocent. But in a perpetually cruel world, our hopes for love and decency and kindness always seem innocent and naïve, just as these same hopes nonetheless remain crucial to our wanting to be alive. In an excellent production, the Soulpepper company makes this point very contemporary and very clear.

As the curtain descended yesterday to end Opera Atelier’s performance of  Lully’s systematically evolving Armide, what came to mind, of all things, was music certainly from another musical era, Sviatoslav Richter’s sublime recording of the first movement of Schubert’s  Piano Sonata in G, D 894. With its sense of all-encompassing continuum through worldly elements in time, Richter’s recording requires one’s submission to inevitability that contains climaxes but not resolution, contains a permeating undercurrent of destiny in which human lives play their part.  

 Such ruminations were short-lived, however, as I met in the lobby an acquaintance who enthused, “What did you think of the flaming cock on Hatred? And the blue buns? And the flaming testicles?” Didi had been seated intimately close for such observation in Row B and continued, with sadder voice, “Love had super wings but was otherwise not well-endowed.” So, as you can already imagine, this production appeals to both mind and body, fuels mental and physical passions simultaneously, and throughout proves to be a very sexy show.

 Allow me to quote the program notes to introduce the plot: “The action primarily concerns the Muslim warrior princess Armide and the Christian knight Renaud. Despite her virginity, Armide’s greatest power lies in her sexual allure, which eradicates the aggressive instinct in men. Armide is protected by the fact that she herself has never experienced desire. Renaud also draws his strength from an almost mystic virginity which renders him impervious to Armide’s allure.” But, yes, you have guessed correctly: things heat up and are never the same again.

 There’s too much of special merit in this production –directed by Marshall Pynoski, conducted by David Fallis, choreographed by Jeanette Lajeunesse Zingg, set designed by Gerard Gauci, costume designed by Dora Rust D’Eye, lighting designed by Bonnie Beecher- to sing its praises adequately. Each one brings abundance of imagination to an organically and richly realized whole and, as a result, a sense of freshness prevails throughout. If Lully’s operatic idiom lives and breathes poise, composure, and propriety, Opera Atelier’s production proves that such decorum possesses a very hot centre ready to burst.

 This Armide is unmissable, partly because it is superbly theatrical, partly because, like all art of substance, it penetrates the zeitgeist of its time and in turn achieves universality. But let us count the other reasons, at least some of them. That orchestral gem that is Tafelmusik offers many masteries we now expect of them: a blend of individual resonances and collective lightness of touch, the coexistence of soufflé and storm as it were, an inherent lilt, an acute awareness of potential for tonal shapings and compelling phrasing, an approach to playing that vibrates with commitment. And this time we also have dueling –well, complimentary- theorbos on either side of the pit

 Armide is here directed with a knack for precision and clarity in defining individual beings and the opera’s narrative purpose, always with easy touches of charm and comedy emerging as needed to please. The chorus, and occasionally soloists, inhabit upper box seats and thus draw the audience into this, yes, alluring world in which the sets are ornate, richly textured, and of eye-commanding hues that facilitate theatrical magic. The elegant script on the scrim provides an exotic and layered effect that seduces.  Flat surfaces, with stylized floral, tree and mountain motifs do indeed seem sculpted. Costumes blend bold simplicity of hues and simple lines with ornate and fluid elements that make flesh and garment one entity. Women’s dresses are low cut with results that are lusciously woman while, as Didi noted above, the men are noteworthy in sinew and suggestion of genitalia.  

 Voice and dance are of equal value in realizing this Armide, and sixteen dancers serve as narrative continuation or as  juxtaposed metaphorical commentary. Grace in movement informs both singers and dancers in a manner that, whatever the dramatic intensity, is not melodramatic but beautifully stylized. Sometimes soprano Armide seems also a dancer, and always the stage is densely populated and fluid with flesh that is guided ahead by a compelling linear momentum in the music.  

The precision of Lully’s writing features minute points of articulation that all the singers deliver in a manner both declarative and poised. Lully’s music, via Tafelmusik, proves rousing or stately in its delicacy, with, as in the singing, ethereal and poignant musical lines. Still, a tension remains between Armide’s sexuality and the graceful musical context in which she dwells, especially when she moves, stooped, about the stage like a caged tiger going every which way but into freedom.

A comic duo from Renaud’s side of the war provides diversion, all to Lully’s now slightly flippant tempo. Albeit the occasional “O, ciel!” emotion is an unforced given, not something that psychologically builds, in this straight ahead tale. Each aspect of this delicately balanced opera is a necessary component. A bass is a bass, a soprano is a soprano, and each represents a psychology that is more archetypal than simply cut and dry. Hate, after all, like love, is as  much a character as an emotion and with each characterization here, we believe both the emotion and the person as a physical presence.

Lully’s opera is never showy for its own sake and, happily, there is singing here, from all quarters, of seamless strands in vocal lines and of elegance in sound, and each voice possesses an inherent and distinct individuality. These vocal sources of much pleasure belong to Aaron Ferguson, Joao Fernandes, Vasil Garvanliev, Carla Huhtanen, Olivier LaQuerre, Meghan Lindsay, and Curtis Sullivan (he’s La Haine/Hate). This solid company reveals many instances of theatrical and musical distinction. One delight in this erotic, exotic, and sometimes ecstatic show is the trio of Armide and her two ladies which, as well as being a vocal delight, is something one might remember as a trio of cleavages.

Colin Ainsworth is “invincible” Renaud who, before he is “beguiled” declares, “I cannot be idle. Only glory attracts me.” Appropriately, his tenor voice, scored mostly in upper levels, possesses a virginal purity of tone that, as it seems immune to the world, is hypnotic in its beauty. In the title role, the dramatically and musically assertive Peggy Kriha Dye, with a compelling timbre and a physically expressive presence, is Armide. Through crisply defined gestures and a tonally bold voice that combined make Armide a compelling vehicle of varying emotion, she a rich creation of inner tension and succinct expressions of passion. She is boldly forward in warrior confidence that imbues her sensuality, a blend of martial authority and barely controlled sensuality. She seems genuinely torn between a need for vengeance and the beckoning of love. One rarely finds a performance of such unwavering female potency, one which balances the polarities of being. She is a thrilling centre for memorable production.

In May, Opera Atelier takes this production to the Opera Royal de Versailles and this summer to the Glimmerglass Festival in Cooperstown, New York.

Opera Atelier’s Armide in Toronto

In some ways, the plays of Samuel Beckett are as much an artistic tuning fork of one’s existence as, say, the late quartets of Beethoven which are also, at once, profoundly spiritual, playful, poetic, and uncompromising expressions of resolution to life in this world. In fact, I find that being present at a production of a Beckett play can be much like a musical experience with poetry distilled into pure and essential sounds that resonate with one another without any redundancy.  No wonder, then, that a friend and I sometimes burst spontaneously into quotation from Beckett or Harold Pinter too, a playwright influenced by Becket, as if we are singing a duet. More to the point of this review, I was glad to recently experience a number of revelations in Beckett: Feck it!, a current production of the Queen of Puddings Music Theatre Company that I urge you to see.

I once walked out of a production of Waiting for Godot on which the director had imposed all manner of vaudevillian side effects and other stage business, because such intrusive elements violated both the inherent theatrical magic and meticulously realized poetry of this unique masterpiece. Around the same time, give or take a decade, I discovered the Irishness of Beckett and his Godot at the Old Vic. This production was attuned to both the underpinning of humanity in the play and the musicality of Beckett’s distinct voice. It was entertaining and moving, a spiritual eye-opener in some ways, and a beautifully rendered reminder of, as we struggle to be in this world, just how putrid we are. But as we breathe and decay, we are still human and food for music and poetry.

Beckett: Feck It! is another challenging evening of theatre from Queen of Puddings, one that offers four of the playwright’s short plays alternating with composer Andrew Hamilton’s specially commissioned take on the lieder of Schubert, Beckett’s favourite composer, and two trumpet solos from composer Gerald Barry. One might instinctively question the juxtaposition of any music or any additional elements of sound at all with Beckett, a writer who once declared that “every word is like an unnecessary stain on silence and nothingness,” but such innovation is here both logical and theatrically gripping, not an intrusion but something of a a mirror in sound that seeks to reflect Beckett and say what he says another way.

Beckett is certainly existentially minimalist, a literary and literal purveyer of reductio ad absurdum, one who says more with less and eschews redundancy with incisive passion. But the musical selections here seek to serve as an echo to Beckett’s existential concerns, as a musical context for the musicality of Beckett’s words, as a supportive atmosphere for the playwright’s theatrical imagery, and as something of a co-creator’s amen to the path Beckett has chosen to follow.

Thus the Drei Gesange, performed with unsettling conviction, dazzling technical elan, and interpretive sensitivity by soprano Shannon Mercer, like the agile and assertive trumpet solos of Michael Fedyshyn, demand that we deal with silence punctuated with almost brutal declarations, repetitions, crude sounds, assaults on both romantic notions and fluidity, pinched and eerie cries, fragmented idioms, plus implied and explicitly delivered breakdown of musical form and by implication of the human psyche, all simultaneously. Mercer’s rendition of Cearbhall O Dalaigh’s 16^th century Eleanor a Run, delivered a cappella with slides and fluid descents provides a lovely coda to the evening’s Irishness. 

My very few concerns involve director Jennifer Tarver who might have stressed more the urgency and acidity of gossipy pettiness in Come and Go, stressed more the need for one’s words to have effect. Beckett’s texts are most poetic and effective when treated as a ritual of colloquial expression, very human but poetic through pointed and clearly pronounced delivery and unobtrusive projection, but this threesome of ladies seemed to come and go without leaving sufficient impact. In this vein, Michal Grzejszczak in Ohio Impromptu, also seems a tad too  inward in delivery and thus reduces his balancing presence somewhat in a play of only two characters. Ironically, his inwardness does add a poignant touch to the atmosphere of sadness where one can offer no real solutions.

Otherwise, Tarver has shaped an evening of fluidity from one visually striking hopelessness to the next and elicited some striking moments of human character. In Act Without Words Michal Grzejszczak is a hilariously basic concoction of ass and scrotum barely held in by his underwear as he proceeds to yawns and prayers until Tom Rooney replaces him with a pathetically enthusiastic routine of smiles and vigorous exercises and brushing of teeth and eating of a carrot, all with an idiotic smile. Come and Go is haunting in its concision and brevity of only 121 words and visually threatening with its three ladies uniformed in long brown overcoats and helmet-like hats. They are actively before us but we feel left out, and so playwright and director have established a compelling tension in us

Ohio Impromptu is striking in how Grzejszczak as the Reader seems humanly adequate and Rooney seems wounded beyond bearable grief as he punctuates the Reader’s words with a fist to the table. Play, with Rooney, Laura Condlin and Sofia Tomic buried to their necks as they embody an emotional mess involving a man, wife and mistress, has the three deliver their words and burps in rapid shots that almost defy one’s ability to follow what they say, and it is a stroke of genius in conception and here both frantic in performance and strangely hypnotic in effect. The spotlight switches from speaker to speaker and the lighting cues are therefore grueling in their demands, and the speed of articulate delivery required here always amazes me.

One aspect of Beckett’s genius is how he can say more of the same so uniquely so many times and this production is, in total, a rare opportunity to explore Beckett’s theatrical and philosophical mind and also the creative minds of those who dare to so ably interpret him. If you love Beckett, Beckett: Feck It! also offers a challenging and creatively fresh opportunity to see the lesser known works in his canon and to re-assess where Beckett  stands in your life and in the lives of others who also find him essential. As with every substantial evening of Beckett, one doesn’t simply ask questions afterwards; one asks why one asks questions in the first place.

February 17 – 25, 2012
Berkeley Street Theatre Downstairs
26 Berkeley Street, Toronto
www.canadianstage.com
416.368.3110

James Sommerville is a French horn soloist of international reputation and the current principal hornist for the legendary  Boston Symphony Orchestra. He is also the inspiring and inspired conductor of the Hamilton Philharmonic Orchestra and thus a major force in classical music of the city. The date of this unpublished interview is December, 2009.

1) You are James in published biographies and Jamie too when you are talked about, and each name suggests a distinct personality. Which do you prefer? Why?

Jim, I’d like to say there’s a deeper, psychological significance to it, but the truth is really just haphazard. I grew up being called Jamie – like a lot of WASP households, it was a normal diminutive – and it has more or less stuck, but “James” crops up, especially in more formal situations.

2) You have been a member of several orchestras, as a French horn player, including the Boston Symphony, the Montreal Symphony, the Chamber Orchestra of Europe, and others. Please evaluate the skills and unique qualities of conductors James Levine, Seiji Ozawa, Charles Dutoit, Richard Bradshaw, Jukka-Pekka Saraste, and any others you found to be of major musical significance or influential on your conducting.

One thing that I have found to be very interesting about Music Directors is how each time one leaves a long-held position, the one who follows is so clearly different from the last. In many cases, there is a clear, diametric opposition. So the TSO went from Gunther Herbig, a very traditional, kappelmeisterisch leader, to Jukka-Pekka, who is very much a conductor ‘ in the moment’ I would say, with an extremely varied, quicksilver, expressive baton technique and then to Peter Oundjian, who again is more traditional, physically, but expressive, intelligent, and knowledgeable. In Boston, we went from Seiji, who showed everything with his hands – probably the most fluent and musically clear technique I will ever see – and said very little about the music; then to Levine, who consciously eschews a lot of traditionally demonstrative flourishes, but rehearses very verbally, and has clear ideas of what he wants musically and how to articulate them to the ensemble. All of these approaches, of course, can be very successful in the right hands and setting. I guess the overarching lesson I’ve learned is that you need a sophisticated and objective self-knowledge to conduct well, to know what kind of musician and communicator you actually are (as opposed, perhaps, to what you would like to be), and then exploit your strengths, and avoid your weaknesses!

3) I like so much about your conducting, such as the way you give compositional details presence as, at the same time, you create a dynamic sense of balance in the orchestra’s playing. Now I don’t mean you put you on the spot, but please discuss the attitude, skills and goals you bring or try to bring to your own conducting.

It’s hard to steer clear of clichés with a question like this! I think the key ingredient in every conductor’s approach is thoroughness of preparation – knowing every aspect of the score as well and deeply as he/she possibly can. And of course, the only way to be motivated enough to do all that hard work (at least for me), is to have a deep love for the repertoire you are studying, a profound respect for the composer’s art, and an awareness of the responsibility that we musicians hold in presenting these works to the public. Because, of course, a painting, a sculpture, a novel, exists independently, of both its creator and its interpreter, in a way a musical score does not: It is the task of the performer to (I would say literally) bring the music to life for the public.

4) Why do you enjoy conducting, as you so obviously do?

I find it gives me a new perspective on the masterpieces I have been performing for so many years. I have used the analogy before, that playing an instrument in an orchestra can feel like walking through a darkened church or palace, knowing what lies around you, but shining a powerful flashlight on the one direction that takes you where you are going. Conducting is like gradually (through study) illuminating for yourself the whole structure, in all its details. As such, the nature of performance is also less sharply focused, but hopefully with more scope and sense of the proportion and content of the gestalt.

5) What do you like about the Hamilton Philharmonic Orchestra?

The greatest thing about the HPO is it’s most important resource, the musicians. They are such an amazing group. Many of them have been through a lot of hardship and sacrifice with this ensemble, and yet they continue to invest themselves in its present and future with a passion that, in my experience, is completely unique. That and, of course, there is so much talent and musicality on the stage, that it makes conducting much easier than it sometimes is elsewhere!

6) The French horn is certainly an instrument of distinct and appealing tonal qualities and it is uniquely essential in countless compositions. So what should a listener know about this special instrument in order to appreciate it and you as a soloist?

I think what attracts me still to the horn, as you point out, is its amazing range of sonorities. The horn is considered a member of both the woodwind and the brass sections, in part for that very reason: That the sounds and dynamics possible on the horn can blend perfectly with both groups, and indeed with the strings as well. Added to that fact (or I suppose because of it), the horn has a solo and chamber music repertoire that, although not the equal of that for the violin or the piano, I would say comes in a strong third, in terms of the breadth and quality of the music written for us over the centuries.

7) What can tell us about French horns with the two kinds of valves and those without as in Mozart’s time.

Essentially, the valves, which were developed around 1815 and came into common usage a couple of decades later, allow the player to instantly lengthen or shorten the horn, whereas before that we had to use the right hand and the embouchure to change pitches. While these techniques allow for great virtuosity and expressiveness (as evidenced by the masterpieces of Mozart, Haydn, Beethoven etc. for the solo horn), the new technology allowed hornists to more easily play in the styles which were evolving in the Romantic period: more extensive and faster modulation to distant keys, a generally longer, smoother approach to melodic line, a greater emphasis on extremes of loud and soft playing. All of these attributes were easier to achieve with the valve horn, and musical technology always has a way of changing with the demands of the art of the times.

8) I remember reading a laudatory review of your recording of the four horn concerti by Mozart in the British press and you were compared as equal to the legendary recordings that Dennis Brain made with Von Karajan. You also played one of these famous concerti recently as a soloist with the Hamilton Philharmonic. So please tell me what it is about these four compositions that a lover of music would appreciate and enjoy.

Mozart’s Horn concerti certainly demonstrate Mozart’s effortless mastery of melody, of drama, and his amazing understanding of the capabilities of the instrument. What continues to draw me to them is the personality contained in the writing. Mozart always composed solo music (and solo song and opera for that matter) with a particular player in mind, and he tailored the demands of the piece to his soloist. The concerti were written for a dear old family friend, Ignaz Leutgeb. Leutgeb was also the butt of many of Mozart’s practical jokes, some of which are contained within this music – scatological annotations in the score in Italian, witty little musical jokes scattered everywhere. But with all this tomfoolery, they remain so beautiful and generous, and it is clear the Wolfgang really admired and loved Leutgeb, in spite of the pranks!

9) It’s obvious at any given classical music concert that grey hair prevails in the audience, so I have several questions here. First, please give me some ways that young people would benefit from hearing a live concert by your orchestra? What’s in it for them?

I think the same thing that is ‘in it’ for anyone: It is emphatically not true, in my experience and belief, that young people are incapable of understanding, or appreciating, or responding emotionally to great art of all kinds. It is arguably true that we have not done enough to demystify what we do, and there is undeniably an aura of snobbery and stuffiness around art music that we need to do a better job of dispelling.

10) You introduce many compositions from the stage in words of great sensitivity and passion, so name five composers (yes, only five) whose music you could not live without and in each case please tell me why.

I’d like to answer this a bit differently if you don’t mind. There is one composer who I appreciate more deeply than before as a result of having taken up conducting: That composer is J S Bach. This may seem odd on the face of it, since we don’t play a lot of Bach in the HPO, but we do as much as I can squeeze in to our programs appropriately. Although I have, of course, studied his works for decades, and performed many of them, I have above all been startled by the depth of emotional response that his music creates in me whenever I conduct it. I think it is the perfect marriage of intellect and emotion that he brings to every major work; The incredible mind behind the music is visible on the page, but to perform a Bach concerto, a cantata or a mass brings you into direct contact with the passion, with the depth of feeling in his music, and it is often an overwhelming spiritual experience.

11) Would you name a few, as they say, underrated or not too well known classical compositions you like and explain why they should be given wider attention.

I think I would rather say that we all tend to stick a bit too closely to the “canon” as it were, the few hundred standard orchestral works that march through the concert hall regularly. Although there is no denying that the greatest masterpieces always have something new to show us, I think everyone (and I include musicians in this) would benefit from expanding their horizons and listening to the new and untried. Most particularly, I feel that many listeners have fears or preconceptions about contemporary music, music by living composers. Although it is true that some of the languages today’s artists use in their composition are unfamiliar, there is great beauty, passion and energy in the concert hall now, coming from young composers who have articulate, fresh artistic voices with a great deal to say. Any listener, with whatever amount of experience, who brings open ears to a concert of new music, should be able to find something inspiring and moving there, if we as performers and programmers are doing our jobs well!