2004 a pretty decent year

by David Gordon Duke

In Vancouver, 2004 was a year of anniversaries. Early Music Vancouver, 35 years old this season, celebrated with a gala of Bach Cantatas at the Chan right before Christmas. They’re in the middle of a full, provocative season stretching the idea of “early music” from the Mediaeval era almost to the turn of the last century. Leila Getz’s Vancouver Recital Society turned 25, and is celebrating its silver jubilee with an astonishing array of riches. Old favourite, pianist Yefim Bronfman presided over the official anniversary concert, and there’s much more to come.

It turned out to be a good year for the Vancouver Symphony. Management announced a surplus — only $41,895, but in the world of big performance, no small achievement. Then on Dec. 16 came the announcement that music director Bramwell Tovey has signed a new contract extending his run until 2010. Tovey got to conduct the New York Philharmonic this summer, but his Gilbert and Sullivan was greeted with distinctly modified raptures by New York Times critic Anne Midgett.

Vancouver gets to host outside orchestras too infrequently; 2004 brought Toronto’s Taffelmusik and the National Arts Centre ensembles. Both disappointed. Tafelmusik’s baroque hits programme was inappropriate for a town with a distinguished early music tradition. The NACO is a good ensemble, but the personality cult surrounding music director Pinchas Zukerman is getting more than a little creepy.

Vancouver’s gutsy Modern Baroque Opera is “in hiatus.” After producing 18th-century work by the likes of Galuppi and Gluck, and Canadian contemporary works by Barry Truax and Peter Hannan, artistic director Kate Hutchinson decided it was time to take a breather.

At Vancouver Opera, there was a homegrown scandal of big-league proportions when superstar (and supersize) soprano Deborah Voigt bailed on her (and VO’s) first Rosenkavalier. Deutsche-Operam- Rhein’s Carol Wilson stepped into the part, singing her heart out and winning over the local audience with her grace and dignity. Toronto Star critic William Littler felt she wasn't ready for top international houses, but then neither, evidently, was Ms. Voigt.

Two major singers near their sell-by dates made Vancouver stops: Anne Sophie von Otter delivered a diverse programme in January that pleased some and exasperated others. (Given her recent re-discovery of ABBA, we may have gotten off lightly.) In September Kiri Te Kanawa hit the right note with her VSO-sponsored programme of nostalgic favourites.

As for that other reliable classical draw, pianists, locals got to compare rising contenders Yundi Li and Lang Lang in showcase recitals. In a programme celebrating his 70th birthday, Fou Ts’ong showed his lifetime of commitment to the best of the classical tradition.

The UBC School of Music saw an important changing of the guard. Andrew Dawes, the distinguished founder and first violinist of the Orford Quartet, is about to step down; newbie Jasper Wood, from Moncton but trained in Cleveland, is the university’s new string star.

Our summer festival scene continues to make YVR, if not exactly a cultural summer destination, then at least a city with something to offer beyond scenery and sushi. At the VRS’s Chamber Music Festival lieder was added to the mix in three programmes assembled by London-based accompanist Graham Johnson. Festival Vancouver celebrated a French theme: highlights included the debut of counter-tenor Phillipe Jaroussky, conductor/musicologist Harvey Piquet’s take on the French baroque master Carpentier, and a luscious non-production of Bizet’s Pearl Fishers, conducted in concert by Vancouver Opera’s Jonathan Darlington.

Canada’s National Youth Orchestra discovered the West Coast last summer, training in Victoria and taking works by Vancouver composers Stephen Chatman and Rodney Sharman on their cross-country road trip. There was plenty more new music in 2004, for the most part targeted to specific constituencies. The large non-specialist crowds that turned out for Philip Glass in January and Laurie Anderson in November showed the populist side of the new music spectrum.

But 2004 saw some important farewells, too. Diva Renata Tebaldi, the nemesis of Maria Callas, died at 82 just before the holidays. The world of film music lost three of the old guard: David Rankin, Jerry Goldsmith, and, perhaps most significantly, Elmer Bernstein, whose Magnificent Seven score remains a defining moment in the American film music.

At home the November death of mezzo Phyllis Mailing ended the career of one of Canada’s most committed new music advocates. Kay Meek, who also died in November aged 98, was never in front of the footlights, but her support of the VSO and the Vancouver Academy of Music made her a patron of significance. The completion of West Vancouver’s new Kay Meek Centre for the Performing Arts promises to change the North Shore’s cultural ecology for decades to come.

Vancouver Sun
27 Dec. 2004

 

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