What does it take for a group of independent musicians to become a tight-knit band that can play Mozart and Wagner back to back—and even night to night? Lydia Perovic sat in on the Canadian Opera Company Orchestra’s winter season to find out.

Of Orchestras and Alchemy

Photo: michael cooPer

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Of Orchestras and Alchemy

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TThe third act of Tristan und Isolde is starting with the dark moan of the lower strings. It’s hour four and the lights are losing some of their lustre, but the atmosphere in the Canadian Opera Com-pany Orchestra pit is that of a party going very strong very late, with adrenalin and lucidity in abundant supply. The orchestra is in its augmented, Wagnerian version, with most sections doubled—there’s barely room for my chair—and for this Peter Sellars/Bill Viola production, many of the woodwinds and brass have to move to the upper rings of the opera house and then return after their solos. Soon the house and the pit will darken, and the sombre strings quiet down for the cor anglais solo.

Although impossible to tell from the audience, the sound is coming from the fifth-ring staircase, behind a closed door, where Lesley Young, the COC’s second oboe, is alone with her thoughts. I learn this in the weeks that follow, when I meet her and other

members of the orchestra for interviews. The cor anglais belongs to the oboe family, and anglais stands for “angled” rather than anything related to the English, Young explains. It’s a fifth below the oboe, has a darker, lower sound, and a different reed. Why did Wagner like it so much? “It has the melancholy tone built into it. It’s the same range as the cello, another good Romantic instru-ment with a dark, yearning voice.” What goes through her mind while she’s playing the Tristan solo up on the fifth ring? “That is a very personal question,” she laughs. “I can tell you that I reach inside and play straight from my heart. It’s a very sad solo, very beautiful. I play it differently each time. We are different every day, our moods are different…and the reed changes, it’s affected by humidity and temperature.”

An outsider in the pit will inevitably be swept away by the force of the orchestral playing, but how do the musicians handle the intensity? Do they ever become immune? Do they always stay

conscious of the job at hand? Young is adamant: “You don’t ever become immune to music.” Even if you’re making it? “Especially if you’re making it. You can’t help being swept up.” Permanent alertness is what distinguishes the rehearsal from the performance, explains COC Music Director (and Tristan conductor) Johannes Debus. “In performance, you have to let it go. You have to risk getting yourself into a musical high. If your awareness is in the way of music-making, then something is wrong.”

Suspending observation and letting something else take over is actually the goal, says principal bassoon Eric Hall: “To be so engrossed that you stop consciously analyzing—being intuitive as opposed to reactive…when the performance goes so well you can’t remember to think, ‘Oh that G sharp is really sharp,’ ‘I didn’t quite make that attack with the principal clarinet,’ ‘It seems that was a tiny bit behind the violins, but I’m not sure.’ You’re not

making all those judgment calls along the way, you’re just being involved in playing the music.”

This experience has pedagogical value, too. “When I teach,” says Hall, “I tell my kids, ‘When that happens, try to remember what it felt like, and try to recreate the feeling next time.’ You can’t really recreate sitting, breathing, fingers and all that, but you can recreate the feeling of calmness or whatever you were thinking about. That feeling brings everything into line. Also, think about what the piece is about, the emotional context of the composer. That will focus you in.”

Principal horn Joan Watson also emphasises the importance of thinking beyond the technical minutiae. “Both of our conductors have been talking in rehearsals about the story and the feelings and the colours. Most of the conversation is about how you can portray a particular thing, and I love that as a musician because it

Photo:(left) karen reeves; tracy kay

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Dreally pushes your technique. How do you play ‘night,’ for example. You have to really think about articulation, and color and balance.”

Concertmaster Marie Berard remembers Kaija Saariaho’s L’amour de loin last season as another interesting case in point. “She uses all the instruments in very specific ways that are restrictive. Our role is very small—important, but reduced. We do the one pattern of things, so you end up doing very little of what you love to do. But the soundscape she creates is incredible. I found myself during that opera thinking all kinds of bizarre things—things would pop up in my mind from the past. Maybe because there was more room for that, I was not focused on having to do something difficult.”

This zone of contemplation, as both musicians and conductors attest, always rests on the large amount of work preceding it. After the originally contracted Tristan conductor withdrew for health reasons, Johannes Debus withdrew from Mozart’s La clemenza di

Tito to take over the Wagner while a young Israeli conductor, Daniel Cohen, took over the Mozart from Debus. Neither had conducted their assigned works before, and Cohen had only 10 days to prepare. “I spent 10 sleepless day,” he says. “You learn the score, but developing an interpretation is a different thing.” The closer he got to know the score, the stranger the opera looked. “It doesn’t function like any other Mozart opera. It’s almost closer to Handel and Gluck. It’s a weird animal, it behaves as an opera seria, but then it has all these elements that don’t belong to that style.” He may have started the first rehearsal with the COC orchestra worried, but it ended up well. “They turned out to have a very live and energetic approach to music, almost in the historically informed or Baroque way. It was the perfect orchestra for this opera. They have both lightness and agility, and the heaviness and very clear characterization you need for some of the bigger numbers. There was only the question of finding the right tone,

and that can be exhausting labour, but they were completely on board the whole time, always positive, always willing to go the extra mile. And that is never taken for granted in our world.”

Debus, meanwhile, started work on his first Tristan by playing the score through on the piano. The second look is more detailed and in-depth, and might involve getting some orchestral material from other opera houses that have a certain tradition in mounting the piece. For Tristan, he asked his contacts at Munich’s Bayerische Staatsoper if they could send him a set of their string scores, which they did. He also sought information about performance practice for dynamics, since some marked in the Tristan score, if followed to the letter on modern instruments, “are pretty wild. There are some passages where if you really play what’s written there, you almost get a cacophony.” Then there is the process of understanding Tristan

as a dramatic piece and the essential connection between its words and music. “In Wagner, the orchestra is in a way psychological, even offering a look into the subconscious of the personae on stage. Then there’s the question of how the leitmotifs function in the music. They tell the story on various levels, sometimes even undermin-ing the spoken words on stage. Or, look how Wagner creates space in music. In one scene, there is the wide-screen Hollywood space, and in the next, we’re back to the intimate love duet.”

Meanwhile, the instrumentalists work on their own section scores, which for some includes preparation of the bowing, and for others instrument stewardship. For two key arias in Clemenza, principal clarinet James Shields plays the extended range basset clarinet and the basset horn, and the rest of the time his regular B-flat clarinet. While modern manufacturers still make good basset horns, basset clarinets are more likely custom-made. For Sesto’s aria, “Parto, parto, ma tu ben mio,” Shields had his own spare clarinet Ph

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extended by a local instrument maker. In the percussion section, timpanist Michael Perry uses the lighter of the two sets of drums he keeps in storage at the Four Seasons Centre for Clemenza , but brings out the heavier, deep-sounding set for Tristan. In the Mozart, he’ll mute the drums with round felt disc and use harder sticks that give a very dry, clear sound for the rhythms that they have to play with the trumpets. For the Wagner, the soft, felt-ended sticks are the order of the day, as he will be after a very homogenous, smooth sound, especially when playing rolls that blend in with the orchestra.

The job description of section leader is very much practice- and tradition-based, and can vary greatly from musician to musician. Concertmaster Berard plays the violin solos, sets the style for the strings, decides the bowing (which in turn affects the phrasing) and is the conduit between the orchestra and the conductor.

People skills are essential. For Bryan Epperson, the principal cello, the most important thing is to get the eight players (12 in Tristan) on the same page. He prepares the bowing and, for the exposed cello section solos, the fingering as well. Then there is the lead-ing in the course of the playing. “You have to make decisions in less than split seconds. It has to be almost an instinctual reaction to what you’re hearing or what you know you’re about to hear. We need to know where the puck is going to land before it gets there. And the great fun of opera is that it’s different every night. It’s the ultimate adrenalin rush.”

What makes a good section principal is both the ability to lead and to follow within the larger context of the orchestra. “You’re constantly adjusting and trying to figure out where your place is in the musical framework,” says bassoonist Hall. “One bar you could be the solo line and you need to bring that line out, the next minute you’re playing a chord underneath the clarinet, who’s

playing the solo line, and the next minute you’re the counter-melody with the violins and you need to be little higher than the chords underneath.” Clarinettist Shields takes up the theme: “Playing principal wind is a particularly interesting situation since there are four principals sitting right next to each other in a square and a lot of our individual responsibility is to set the tone with the other three. We have to listen carefully to set the pitch and the phrasing and the style amongst ourselves, and that should ideally radiate out. It’s the flute, the oboe, the bassoon and me. The horn is mediating between us and the brass.” Awareness of what’s going on around you is also emphasised by principal viola Keith Hamm: “Other than the technique, the section lead should develop social skills and morale, and all these contribute to the final sound. Listening to the sections around you is import-ant, and trying to find the sound that both blends and projects.”

Marie Berard: ARC Ensemble • Royal Conservatory of Music • University of Toronto

Sandra Baron: Santa Fe Opera Orchestra

Bryan Epperson: ARC Ensemble • Santa Fe Opera Orchestra • RCM

Eric Hall: Hamilton Philharmonic • Grand Park Orchestra, Chicago • Wilfrid Laurier University

Keith Hamm: Sweetwater Festival • Music by the Sea Festival

Michael Perry: National Ballet Orchestra

James T. Shields: New Mexico Symphony Orchestra

Joan Watson: CreativePeopleCoaching.com

Lesley Young: National Ballet Orchestra • Esprit Orchestra

BeyondtheCOCOrchestrapitCOC Orchestra members are active as teachers and players outside their Four Seasons Centre opera home. Here are some former and current commitments of our contacts

Photo: (left) harry Palmer; chris hutcheson

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AAnother decisive factor in the working of the orchestra is its relationship with the conductor. What exactly happens when a conductor and an orchestra get along? Many of the answers relate to the degree of commitment and passion demonstrated by both sides. Says Hall: “A lot if it has to do with the energy and the passion that the conductors bring to what they do. You can really pick that up right away. Also, when you see the quality of someone’s musi-cianship, you respect it and immediately respond to it. Enthusiasm from the podium becomes infectious.” Timpanist Perry agrees: “If there’s an exceptional conductor up there, we can play above and beyond our par. A good example of this was the Tristan opening night. Everybody was buzzed.”

It’s been observed that a symphony orchestra can decide whether it likes or dislikes a new conductor within the first minute, but the nature of musical collaboration and the primacy of the stage makes

this process more complicated in opera. In symphony orchestras, you are the main event, hornist Watson explains, and the musicians have a more soloist-like attitude. “In an opera orchestra, you’re always super-aware of what’s happening on the stage. Even if I have a solo line, the conductor can always signal, ‘That is too much, the singer needs to be heard.’ We have to be aware constantly of what’s going on around and above. It’s not always easy to hear, so we spend a lot of time making sure balances are good for the audience and the singer.” This situation creates some additional solidarity in the pit. Due to the complexity of operatic works, the conductors tend to be “very, very good,” Watson adds. “They have to be. You rarely get somebody who doesn’t know what they’re doing.”

Whether orchestra musicians take to a conductor also depends, says first violinist Sandra Baron, on the expectations you may have of him (or, very occasionally, her). “Some people care more about clarity, some more about energy. It’s great if you can have both.

Probably my biggest pet peeve is being visibly bored by the task you’re given.” In some operas, however, as Cohen notes from the podium point of view, there may not be a lot to do for some of the sections. “There are numbers where they just go ‘Oompa-pa-pa, Ooompa-pa-pa.’ As soon as three people in the orchestra start to think, ‘Oh, this is just doing ‘Oompa-pa-pa,’ it’s a dead evening. But when everyone is doing it as the heartbeat of the soprano or the threat of the baritone, as long as they’re giving you the characterization—playing the psychology of the characters—it’s a wonderful night.” And what does the conductor do when faced with an underwhelmed orchestra? “There’s not much you can do. There’s no cure. But you know the saying, ‘The fish stinks from the head’? Some conductors respect the orchestra enough to not just show up and go through the motions. And a good orches-tra plays well even if it doesn’t have an enthusiastic conductor.”

For Music Director Debus, this dance between orchestra and conductor is “about 30% technique and the rest is psychol-ogy. The same conductor can easily get on board with orchestra A, but not at all with orchestra B. At that point, you can only say, ‘Thank you very much, good bye.’ It took me a long time to understand that this doesn’t necessarily mean that you have failed. it might just mean that this particular relationship did not work this time. It’s a lot about anger, fear, preconception, being kind of blocked—on both sides. We are here doing the most wonderful thing in the world. We are touching music. It should be always magical, it should free us—but it doesn’t always.” The conductor, he adds, needs to be passionate and inspired, and share that with musicians. “You have to set the conditions in which they can perform at their very best. If they’re in the comfort zone, they’re feeling great and they can do anything.” Ph

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