Features

Sir David Willcocks (1919-2015)

On Saturday, December 19 at 7:30pm, Yorkminster Park Baptist Church will ring out with the sounds of carols and Chanukah songs old and new as Toronto’s Amadeus Choir, along with the glorious voices of the Bach Children’s Chorus, joins with the Trillium Brass, composer and pianist Eleanor Daley and organist Shawn Grenke to celebrate the life of Sir David Willcocks, the great British choral director, who died in September.

This event is much more than simply a tribute to a great musician for me personally, as Sir David was a great mentor and friend to me.

Canadian composer Ann Southam’s Glass Houses, a collection of 15 pieces for solo piano, was composed for Christina Petrowska Quilico in 1981. Christina often played selected pieces from the collection in her recitals, many of which were broadcast on my CBC Radio Two series, Two New Hours. We found that the public response to these pieces on our broadcasts was always enthusiastic. Southam (1937–2010) was quick to point out the essential elements in these compositions. The first was the allusion in the title to the minimalism of Philip Glass, which had charmed her since the 1970s. But equally important was the sound of traditional East Coast Canadian fiddle music, which she had first encountered in the 1950s on the CBC Television show, Don Messer’s Jubilee. Southam found great affinities between these two disparate sources, both of which delighted her.

Making our way to Sondra Radvanovsky’s rural Caledon, Ontario home, on this particular October day, takes us down a blazing gold avenue to the side door of a spacious country house on ten hilly acres, about an hour and a half’s drive from Toronto’s Four Seasons Centre for the Performing Arts.

Nice thing about arriving at the side door is it takes one into the house through a light-filled informal side room, past an upright piano laden mostly with opera scores, and lumped in among them an oversize box of Crayola crayons. The wall behind the piano is covered with posters for various operas. The posters collectively supply a snapshot of contemporary opera’s greats – its greatest singers, conductors, directors and opera houses. Radvanovsky’s name is nestled in among them in each poster.

I’m already mumbling my (only partially sincere) apologies for the intrusion as I sidle in the door. True, I am disrupting one of a few precious days of “down home” time for Radvanovsky before she and husband/manager Duncan Lear must hit the road again. She has just completed five Donizetti Anna Bolenas at the Met, as well as a glittering New York appearance at the annual Park Avenue Armory Gala (alongside electropop duo The Young Professionals). From here it’s on to Berlin for Manon Lescaut and Tosca. And it’s only October.

The WholeNote had a chance recently to chat with William Norris who has arrived in Toronto as the new managing director of Tafelmusik. (Norris replaces Tricia Baldwin, who has moved on to take the helm at the new Isabel Bader Centre for the Performing Arts in Kingston. But that will have to be a story for another day.)

Norris comes to Tafelmusik following a ten-year sojourn with Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment, in London, England, or OAE as he refers to it. OAE has a 30-year history, the past 20 as orchestra-in-residence at London’s Southbank Centre.

He dropped by our offices to chat with publisher David Perlman.

The WholeNote: We won’t start by asking you for sweeping statements about everying you’ve learned about Toronto already! Tell us about Orchestra of the Age of Enlightment and your connection to it. That way our readers who know Tafelmusik can draw some parallels.

Norris: OAE has been at Southbank for two decades, Southbank being the equivalent of, say, the Lincoln Center in New York. OAE plays in two halls there, one 900-seater, one almost 3,000 seats, and has been resident there for at least 20 years.

An unusual event that bodes well for opera in Toronto takes place in November. Canadian Stage and Soundstreams have combined forces to produce the chamber opera Julie by Belgian composer Philippe Boesmans. This will not only be the North American premiere of Julie, but, amazingly, the North American premiere of any opera by Boesmans, one of the most highly regarded contemporary composers of opera. This will also mark the first time that an opera has been included in Canadian Stage’s subscription series.