Maestri (Act one)
Post #7: Maurizio Travaglini, Bernard Haitink, Candice, Trevor Pinnock, Linda Bouchard, Sergei Gergiev, Thomas Adès
Maurizio Travaglini. Management Consultant. Introducing Harvard’s executive course on ‘design thinking’, Maurizio points out how architects will study other architects in the same way leaders will study other leaders. I raise the example of orchestra conductors, having worked with quite a number of them, starting at the National Arts Centre in the 1980s. Asked to define ‘maestro’ or ‘maestra’, I offer this: “A leader widely accepted as a final arbiter of aesthetic judgments, whereas for others such judgments remain ambiguous and require further validation.” (March 15th, 2017, Cambridge.)
...This week-long course is highly original, a kind of group performance piece by CEOs, always in rehearsal, with ear-crushing music, quiet interludes, food, journal-writing, readings from books scattered on the floor, seating and whiteboards swirl in changing juxtapositions.
I suggested yesterday that Maurizio’s preferred ‘flat’ management hierarchy has some precedent in Theatre. In an actors’ company, for example, it is not uncommon for the director of ‘production X’ to become an actor in ‘production Y’. One might call this ‘ensemble’ leadership; less apt is the jazz metaphor of trading solos. (March 15th, 2017, Cambridge.)
Bernard Haitink. Conductor. Attending the Boston Symphony, I recall Maestro Haitink’s guest appearances with NACO thirty years ago. Even then his was an austere presence, old school, mature beyond his years, reserved, perhaps shy. Any exchange with me was brusquely cordial; nor did he mingle with the players, all of whom respected his sterling musicianship.
Tonight, he attended closely to the strings, achieving serene clarity with restrained emotion. In Debussy’s Nocturnes extraordinary muted trumpets; passages with harp and flute in tender unison; a brooding choral backdrop to the last movement. Surprising that a conductor of Haitink’s calibre would carry onstage the score of a Beethoven symphony. A talisman; he neither opened it nor turned a page. (March 16th, 2017, Cambridge.)
Candice. Uber Driver. Raucous ride to Cambridge from Symphony Hall: our Uber driver ‘Candice’ jaunty in a platinum wig and shimmering sequins dominates with non-stop baritone patter from the front seat of her Mercedes.
“You have SIX entertainment options,” she declares, proceeding to name four.
“One: ‘sing along with Candice’, could be Van Morrison or Bohemian Rhapsody; two: ‘dirty jokes with Candice’; three: ‘what’s new with Candice?’; four: ‘solo-singing with Candice...’”
Momentarily distracted, her attention lights on passengers waiting on the other side of the street.
“Pah! If they can’t bother crossing, I’m leaving them behind,” she huffs, but instead pulls a U-turn alongside this earnest couple visiting from Missouri.
They demur from entertainment choices. Crestfallen, Candice slumps behind the wheel.
“Van Morrison?” I suggest, gallantly.
She laughs, counting in ’Wavelength’, blasting it on the car stereo, delivering its opening falsetto in spirited Bostonian off-key. (March 17th, 2017, Cambridge.)
Trevor Pinnock. Conductor. For years a frequent guest conductor, Trevor Pinnock became the NACO’s music director in 1991. Unpretentious, he’d arrive with an open enthusiasm, buoyed by the kinetic baroque revival then underway. Often, he’d join us at the Café bar. A natural leader, he induced musicians playing modern instruments to embrace his early music sensibility. I’d slip backstage to hear him rehearse on the Canadian-built harpsichord the NAC had commissioned for him, or else take a seat in the empty hall during rehearsals fathoming his shaping of a performance. (January 2009, Ottawa.)
...The Dunedin Ensemble’s practice of distilling orchestral arrangements to one artist per voice tonight revealed Bach’s intentions as not invariably melodic or harmonic. Guest-conducted with alacrity by Trevor Pinnock, this flagrantly raw St. Matthew’s Passion seized the intimate Queen’s Hall; horsehair rasping on gut, supremely moving. Soloists teamed up as the chorus, unearthing unexpected textures. Trevor’s zest was manifested in the continuo, yet he infused the evening with a specifically English melancholy à la Charles Avison. Now venerable, the maestro arches forward with precise selectivity. Stripped to its bare life, so to speak, Bach’s passion was musical wisdom of a high order. (19 April 2019, Edinburgh.)
Linda Bouchard. Composer. Invited by Pinnock to become resident composer at the National Arts Centre in 1992, Québecoise Linda Bouchard arrived in Ottawa calm and confident from a decade presenting new music in New York City. A maestra-in-the-making, I welcomed her cue to listen for “undertow” in the orchestral suite Ressac.
She proposed Variété, by her former teacher the Argentinian composer Mauricio Kagel. Staged in the NAC’s theatre, Montreal director Michel Barrette integrated circus performance into this evocative work. He liked my suggestion to use the thrust stage with its trident of entrances emerging from beneath the audience.
From the Hammond B3 organ, Leslies spinning beside her, Linda presided over the Brechtian band, including accordion and harmonica. The circus people conjured their way into the emotional centre of Kagel’s tango-inflected composition. A make-shift company, we became tight-knit during early rehearsals in Montreal, before the production period in Ottawa.
Linda and Michel’s conductor/director chemistry made it a joy to help create the spatial matrix and atmosphere for this ethereal production. It played only a few shows to small audiences in January 1994, one of the NAC’s best-ever in-house creations. On an unspeakably frigid night, the two hosted a closing dinner in the Byward Market. I never forgot the quiet solidarity and graciousness of that group. (March 2019, Quebec City.)
Sergei Gergiev. Orchestral Conductor. On Sunday Gergiev conducted the Mariinsky Orchestra in Tchaikovsky’s first and last symphonies at the NAC. Even if not his orchestra’s best outing it was thrilling to hear musicians whose veins run with this repertoire. The second movement of the First Symphony stood out. Afterwards in the Salon we greeted the Maestro. Gergiev expressed satisfaction with Canadian architect Jack Diamond’s rebuilding of the Mariinsky Theatre, the orchestra’s home base in St. Petersburg. Charming. Perhaps as much tycoon as conductor (with music likely the easier part). The NCC’s Chairman Russell Mills joined us, recounting his Cold-War-era exchange visit to Russia as a young Ottawa Citizen journalist. (24 October 2011, Ottawa.)
Thomas Adès. Composer, pianist, conductor. A week-ago Saturday, before leaving for the UK, we emerged dazed from the Met’s satellite broadcast of The Exterminating Angel, Thomas Adès’ wrenching operatic interpretation of Luis Buñuel’s film classic.
Last night at Wigmore Hall, during the intermission of Dame Imogen Cooper’s piano recital, Léa noticed Adès with a friend at the bar near our table. His early work ‘Darknesse Visible’ was on the program. We congratulated him on his audacious opera, a seminal contemporary parable of aesthetics and survival.
In the crowded Wigmore bar the composer was relaxed, cheerful, approachable, still flushed with what must have been a peak experience in New York. We raised a glass to darkness visible, exterminating angels, and the redemptive song. (October 2017, London.)
Mark...thoroughly enjoying your diary. "Exterminating Angel" is an extraordinary work. These works are necessary and should be seen more. Having produced operas by Schafer, Vivier and original operas by Christopher Butterfield, Wende Bartley (electronic), Rainer Weins (prepared electric guitars), Ahmed Hassan (requiem), etc. We need more compelling music-theatre and opera in the larger halls, rather than keeping them as outlier works. Just a thought. Wagner's 'mystic gulf' promoted change and those changes can only come to life with belief in alternative experiences which deal with cathartic ineffabilities the public can engage with in the 'total work' as both Adolphe Appia and Edward Gordon Craig felt needed in theatre and music.