Baroque or not, he'll fix it
BY ARTHUR KAPTAINIS, THE GAZETTE January 10, 2009
This week at the MSO: Rachmaninoff, Stravinsky, Mahler and Bach. Except the Bach.
On Friday in Place des Arts, Kent Nagano will lead not the orchestra of which he is music director, but Tafelmusik, from Toronto, through the mighty Mass in B Minor.
The collaboration is remarkable on many levels.
"It's the first time someone of the stature of Kent Nagano has hired Tafelmusik to do a major work like this," Jeanne Lamon, music director of the baroque ensemble, said the other day from Banff, Alta., where her orchestra is spending nine days in residence.
It might also be the first time someone of Nagano's stature has implicitly but clearly preferred a visiting ensemble to his own for the performance of a pillar of Western musical literature.
"Do they bring in the Bayerischen Rundfunks to do a Beethoven cycle?" asks one MSO player who enjoyed performing Bach's St. John Passion with Nagano in 2006.
"Bring in Jeanne Lamon to conduct the MSO or have Kent Nagano go conduct on their series, okay. This is different."
Always abreast of the latest research, Nagano has often demonstrated his interest in the practices now grouped handily under the initialism HIP, for Historically Informed Performance. His era-opening performance of Beethoven's Ninth on Sept. 6, 2006, was a lean, mean account with minimal vibrato.
For the St. John Passion the previous February, Nagano had imported a viola da gamba player from Germany and sent MSO concertmaster Richard Roberts to Berlin to be briefed on the baroque violin. Last season the baroque offering was Bach's Christmas Oratorio. Nagano asked woodwinds to stand while playing.
This year he has abandoned the effort to work backward with an orchestra famous for its Ravel and
instead hired Tafelmusik, a 30-year-old ensemble that counts itself among the HIP pioneers of lower pitch, little vibrato, baroque bows and less force on the strings.
"I know he's a little frustrated with modern performances of Bach and he really doesn't want to be doing much of that any more," Lamon said.
Amazingly enough, Nagano has never worked with Tafelmusik, nor even met Lamon. She got a phone call out of the blue from the MSO asking about the availability of Tafelmusik for this assignment. After discussing musical particulars (including pitch) with Nagano on the telephone, the two decided that expanding the Tafelmusik core of 18 with dedicated baroque musicians (rather than reprogrammed MSO players) was the best policy.
The 36 instrumentalists and 31 choristers will include only a handful of Montrealers. A bus leaves Toronto on Tuesday and rehearsals start on Wednesday. The Torontonians return after the second performance on the afternoon of Jan. 18 - and five nights in a hotel.
It might be asked whether the expense of importing a baroque ensemble is necessary or even advantageous. Many HIP habits have trickled down to non-baroque players, who now instinctively bow and blow Bach with less force and vibrato. While it is impossible to lower the pitch of a modern (or reconstructed) string instrument without compromising its tone, some modern musicians (notably those of Les Violons du Roy) are willing and able to use a baroque bow. ...Continue
