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Notes from Edwin Outwater, KWS Music Director
Edwin writes about the details that go into the concerts of the Signature Series.
Viennese Delights
April 25, 2013:
James Judd has become a regular and welcome guest at the Kitchener-Waterloo Symphony. This season he leads the orchestra in a musical tour through the city and history of Vienna. You’ll discover that besides being a wonderful musician, James is a charming and insightful host and presenter. Below, he shares some of his thoughts about this special concert.
- Edwin Outwater
Perhaps the biggest 'Surprise' for you on this programme will turn out to be the Webern Symphony rather than the Haydn, which of course we all know and love. Webern, writing in the 12-tone technique of his mentor Schoenberg, takes us on a short and challenging journey in just 2 movements. In a way, the first pays homage to Bach since the composer using canons to develop his ideas. The second movement is based on the same 12-tone row as the first and is a set of 7 variations, each lasting just 11 measures packed with intense musical interest.
However you do not really need to know all this but rather I hope you will just open your ears and minds and let these rather sparse and exquisite sounds,with themes often passed note by note from one instrument to another, create pictures and feelings.
I have loved this strangely haunting music for a long time,and the same certainly is true of all the works tonight. I am especially looking forward to making music with our two fine soloists so please sit back and enjoy, and perhaps even be surprised!
- James Judd, guest conductor |
Organ Superstar
April 1, 2013:
For this concert we welcome one of orchestral music’s real iconoclasts, Cameron Carpenter. From the way he dresses, to the fact that he prefers digital organs to pipe organs, Cameron is shaking up the music world. Luckily, this iconoclasm is combined with real musicianship and talent.
Here are some other unusual things about this concert:
- We are playing Bach in a Signature concert. This is so rare these days. Usually Baroque music is left to specialists and chamber orchestras. Our orchestra plays Bach all the time, in the Baroque and Beyond series and also with the Grand Philharmonic Choir. I’m quite pleased to be sharing our orchestras formidable Bach skills with our Signature audience. I think specialization is great, but I also think great music belongs everywhere.
- We are playing a piece written by our soloist! These days composers generally don’t perform, and performers don’t compose. I’m thrilled that Cameron has written a concerto for himself, and I hope this happens more often. It worked for Liszt, Beethoven, Mozart, Rachmaninov, and many others.
- Cameron will be playing Bach’s famous Toccata and Fugue in a version that combines the versions of generations of famous organists.
- There will be improvisation! Improvising almost never happens in classical concerts, but Cameron will be making music up on the spot.
The reason I’m listing all of these things is that they’re so rare in classical concerts, and I think they make concerts more fun. I’m so glad that Cameron is joining us this season and shaking things up for the better.
- Edwin Outwater |
Tchaikovsky Festival
Feb 13, 2013:
This season’s composer festival features another favorite, Tchaikovsky. I can’t tell you how much of his music I’ve conducted over the years. To me, performing Tchaikovsky is a lot like performing Mozart. Meaning, it’s difficult! His music is so perfect, everything is so beautifully in place, that slight miscalculations are easily noticed by everyone. There’s also an incredible range of emotional intensity that must be accounted for. Mahlerian outbursts of desperation must be balanced with music of the most refined elegance from the French and Italian musical traditions. When it’s right, a whole universe of music comes alive. It’s a challenge worth undertaking.
For the Tchaikovsky festival, we will be looking at his works in terms of scale. On Friday and Saturday nights, we present the Symphony No. 5 and the Piano Concerto No. 2. Both are epic works, one well-known, one not well-known enough. The Piano Concerto No. 2 is unfairly eclipsed by the more famous first. In my opinion, this concerto is Tchaikovsky at his absolute finest, with a grand scale, incredibly inventive melodies, stunning virtuosity and inspiration in every bar. I’m so pleased to bring this piece to the KWS with the fantastic Russian pianist, Yakov Kasman.
On the matinée program on Sunday, we visit Tchaikovsky on a much smaller scale. His “Rococo” Variations for cello and orchestra and Serenade for Strings are brilliant and elegant like his ballet music. His first Symphony “Winter Dreams” is as precious and delicate as freshly fallen snow.
If you experience both programs it will become clear that Tchaikovsky is a master of both the epic and the intimate. Not many composers are.
- Edwin Outwater |
Sublime Beethoven
Jan 3, 2013:
The pieces by Beethoven on this program deal, I think, with the sublime.
The Violin Concerto is one of the most stately and elegant pieces of music ever written by any composer. It is a piece that does not derive its power from drama or extreme emotion, but rather from pure, ideal beauty. It is full of gorgeous symmetries, and seems to me to be not only Classical but Classic in the Greek sense. It reminds me of Greek buildings and statues because it is a large, epic work, but also full of calm and poise. Its challenges is that it requires to play everyone to play absolutely beautifully all the time. I’m very pleased to welcome back Stefan Jackiw. His pure, silver tone and refined musicianship are ideal for this concerto.
In his “Pastoral” Symphony, Beethoven also concentrates mainly on stillness, echoing pastoral painting to create music that causes deep calm and satisfaction in the listener. Like nature, it is not afraid to repeat itself, and by doing this helps create a kind of static visual impression using sound. At times these repetitions seem like the precursors to musical Minimalism. In both the Violin Concerto and the “Pastoral” Symphony, Beethoven uses stasis to great effect.
Even the opening work on the program, Missy Mazzoli’s Violent, Violent Sea is anything but. It’s a gorgeous meditation on nature by one of America’s most stylish young composers.
This concert has a vibe. All three works create sound, live and breathe, in a similar way. You should come out of the concert with a certain feeling.
- Edwin Outwater |
Edwin & Gustav: An Invitation
Nov 15, 2012:
Mahler’s Symphony No. 5 is one of the great showpieces for an orchestra, and one of the most moving and engrossing modern symphonies. Mahler took a strong new direction with his 5th. Previously, his symphonies were based on songs and stories, almost folkloric. Here, Mahler moves in a more abstract direction - writing what would be considered “pure music.” To me the symphony’s, long, virtuosic movements resemble Beethoven in that they seem fueled by the energy of the notes and counterpoint themselves. Propelled by a trumpet call that echoes Beethoven’s 5th Symphony, we embark on a 65-minute journey through funeral marches, scherzos, rondos, theatre music, and a musical love letter, Mahler’s famous Adagietto.
I should also mention that this symphony has two of the most famous orchestral parts for brass instruments ever written. The opening mentioned above is an astonishing solo turn for the trumpet, and the third movement is anchored by a horn part that is a concerto in itself. It will be an incredible concert for Larry Larson and Martin Limoges, and I know they have been practicing their parts for months!
Michael Tilson Thomas once commented that conducting a Mahler symphony was “like visiting a favorite national park.” I think that’s a great way to listen to this music. It’s so massive that it’s almost impossible to take it all in at once. Mahler said that “a Symphony should be a whole world.” In this concert I’ll spend the first half introducing you to Mahler’s world, with musical examples, excerpts, and other music to put it in context. It’s an exciting way of presenting music that I hope you enjoy. It’s also an opportunity for me to share my feelings about this music, which means more to me than I can express in words. When I was young and Mahler’s world was revealed to me, it made me not only want to be a musician, but also introduced me to the awesome creative potential of an artist.
- Edwin Outwater
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Lefèvre's Romantic Discovery
Oct 19, 2012:
I’m very pleased to present a fantastic Canadian work for piano and orchestra by André Mathieu. It’s a gorgeous, romantic and epic work, championed by our two guest artists, pianist Alain Lefèfvre and conductor Jean-Philippe Tremblay. Below, Jean-Philippe Tremblay will tell you more about this amazing concert. Enjoy! - Edwin Outwater
In the last ten years or so, pianist Alain Lefèvre has re-discovered and championed the works of french-canadian wunderkind composer André Mathieu on all continents. The fourth piano concerto is probably the strongest work that Mathieu wrote in his short career. It has a more personal feeling to it, as if he had found his own voice. I had the chance to conduct this piece with Alain in France, China and Canada and each time it is such a thrill to be part of this monster concerto demanding on both soloist and orchestra. The amazing work of orchestrator Gilles Bellemare is to salute as only sound recordings of a two pianos version was available to him. Truly a wonderful addition to the piano repertoire, and it's canadian !
Opening the program, Grieg's In Autumn is a wonderful piece by, again, a young composer. The two piano version of this overture will have Grieg be the winner of the Swedish Academy Prize in 1866. This will allow him to keep studying and working abroad. The work has a clear "Mendelshonian" fell to it and is a wonderful window into the composer's early years and is a premise of his passion for his country's folklore. Listen carefully to the ending of the piece where he uses an authentic norwegian "Springdans" to conclude the overture. A habit he will never let go.
Sibelius was thirty four when he wrote his first symphony. He was a young man that was clearly influenced by classical conventions and certainly by Tchaikovsy as well. But already we see his own genius and trademark quick mood changes all throughout the work. His gift for melody and orchestration is clear. His passionate writing is a real treat for us musicians as we are constantly challenged by both its technical challenges and by the energy required to give it justice. This first symphony would give birth to six more amazing works that make him of the great symphonist of all times.
- Jean-Philippe Tremblay, guest conductor. |
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Ode to Joy, Ode to Kitchener
Aug 30, 2012:
To even begin to think about Beethoven’s 9th symphony is daunting. The music itself is a whole universe, and very much from Beethoven’s late style - that is, full of meaning known only to Beethoven specifically. Then there is the subject of the piece as a cultural artifact: popping up every New Year’s in Japan, or as counterpoint to the violence of A Clockwork Orange, or as a song you knew as a child. There’s just so much.
What I want to discuss is the moment when the human voices emerge for the first time, after the 45 minutes of music that begin this symphony. It starts with three movements that, in a way, lack a human narrative. Rather, they seem to me to be a creation, more like something carved from stone and counterpoint. When the voices finally emerge, the music becomes human. It’s joyful, highbrow, lowbrow, vivacious, and finally yearning, looking above the stars for something more. It’s as if Beethoven, the creator of this massive work, comes down to earth, joining the audience and orchestra, and tells us there’s more above the stars than even he can imagine.
I felt this earlier this year, as I helped the San Francisco Symphony record the Ninth. Each night I sat in the audience and journeyed with them as they were awed, moved, and confused by the first part of the piece. It is uncompromising, unyielding music. Then, when the baritone sings, “O Friends, not these tones!” and the chorus answers “Joy!” there was an uncanny feeling of recognition, relaxation, earthliness and transcendence. The audience collectively exhaled. It was magic. It’s why we go to concerts.
- Edwin Outwater
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Beethoven: Triple Concerto and Symphony No. 7
May 18, 2012: Growing up in Southern California, every single day was beautiful like ones we've experienced here recently. Now that I live in a colder climate, the joy associated with spring, its blooming flowers and the wonderful, inevitable greening of things is something I understand more deeply. I don't think having four distinct seasons is necessarily better, but I will admit it's more emotional!
The joy of spring is reflected in our final Signature concert. Michael Oesterle describes his piece Perennials as a "treat for himself." He writes six very simple, lively orchestral portraits of flowers returning to his garden. They're colorful of course, but they also have zippy solos, quick accents and the mercurial energy of things that are young.
Beethoven's Symphony No. 7 is also bursting with joy. Its repeating rhythms mirror the pulse of dance and life itself. The final outpouring of energy in this piece is beyond overwhelming. Music becomes pure energy. This stunning finale would not have the same impact without the previous three movements. The first movement is a complex study of an elegant dance rhythm, and each movement subsequently becomes more simple and direct. The second movement is a noble and deeply felt pantomime of grief, the third an spinning Italian dance, the last a romp. It's one of the greatest rides in all of classical music.
- Edwin Outwater |
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Mozart: Composer and Comedian?
April 13, 2012:Think of Mozart as a comedy writer. Yes, he wrote some drama too, but overall, not that much. If you look through his work, you’ll find a G minor symphony or string quintet here and there, or a D minor piano concerto, but the rest is pretty Major key, pretty sunny. Of the operas, a few are serious, like Idomeneo, La Clemenza di Tito, and a bit of Don Giovanni, but mostly it’s a lot of situation comedies, mistaken identities, costumes, goofy bird catchers, right? The strange thing is, we take Mozart very seriously for someone who wrote mostly comedy. Few comedy writers in any genre are so revered. We might think of Haydn in terms of comedy -- but Mozart?
There are two reasons for this. One is that beauty and perfection are the things that strike us first in Mozart’s music. This is true especially now, hundreds of years later, that the subversive elements in his music have lost some of their social and sonic impact. In terms of beauty, Mozart’s music is unmatched: the perfect melodies, the flawless structure, the warm, singing timbre of everything he wrote. Music is the most sensual of the arts, and the pure, miraculous beauty of his work casts a spell on us, and that spell can sometimes hide its other qualities.
We also tend to forget Mozart that worked in comedy because he used it for such serious purposes. The power of comedy is that it disarms and equalizes. When we laugh, we are outside of ourselves. Father and child, king and peasant, friend and enemy can be united, even just for a moment, with laughter. Mozart knew this about comedy and used it expertly. Think of his operas: they entertain and play over a period of hours, but we all remember those moments when, out of nowhere, he suddenly lands the sucker punch and we’re knocked out! Our hearts pound, and tears well up when we hear the Count’s pleading apology to the Countess at the end of Le nozze di Figaro, or when we hear the trio at the beginning of Così fan tutte that seems to bid farewell to honesty itself. Mozart uses comedy to get our guard down before he hits us with the real stuff. And when these moments do come, they are moments of truth and humanity, moments so strong that they break social and family conventions. In one instance, a philandering husband apologizes to his wife; in another, a young woman breaks free of her screaming, oppressive mother. In Mozart, maximum truth equals maximum beauty, and these moments of truth can be found throughout his works, whether they have words or not.
Hours of elegant farce, leading to a few big moments. It feels familiar. Mozart’s music is a metaphor for our lives. After all, if we add up the minutes of how we live, how many of them are truly serious? Don’t we spend most of our time making elegant, pleasant, witty maneuvers that allow us to get through the day unscathed, and allow to coexist peacefully with our fellow humans? And when the big moments of truth do arrive in our lives, don’t they seem to come out of nowhere, to knock us out, to change us, in an instant, forever?
- Edwin Outwater |
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Spanish Origins: Boléro and Rodrigo
February 13, 2012:What I love about this concert is that all four of these pieces revel in exquisite effect. Each piece has a certain lightness, a certain elegance, a kind of sheen. Of course, this all comes from Ravel, whom Stravinsky called "That most perfect of Swiss watchmakers." Ravel creates beauty through precision, and you can hear this in his understated Mother Goose suite as well as the enormous climax of Boléro. Certainly the Impressionist style of Ravel influenced Rodrigo which is only fair, since Spanish music lived in the soul of some of his most famous work. Nico Muhly also has a lovely sheen to his music, though I don't recall discussing French music that much with him. I know Britten is a big influence for Nico, and you can see that in this score. But Britten himself was captivated by the French sheen - even as it became in his hands an English foggy dew. So enjoy the music of Ravel and the results of his influence. Enjoy the sound and color.
- Edwin Outwater |
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Musical Fireworks: Prokofiev 5 and Brahms' Concerto for Violin
January 6, 2012:It's so easy to be swept away by Prokofiev's music that it's easy to forget what it's actually about. The Fifth Symphony is a great example of this. It's full of wit, soaring melodies, pulsating mechanical rhythms -- but it really is a war symphony, composed in the midst of World War II. It's a hymn to the spirit of the Russian people, full of heroism and a lament for the same people, decimated by war. The very opening of the piece is a pastoral melody the spirit of nobility and peace. But what will become of these farmers, these workers, these everyday people? After the opening statement, the entire first movement is an awakening to war in all its triumph and horror. The noble pastoral theme is transformed by the end of the movement into a slouching, brutal military juggernaut. It's thrilling, but also terrifying. The two quick movements of the symphony alternate between dizzying musical acrobatics and maniacal mechanism. Russian artists were fascinated with machines and this sense of Futurism pervades this music. It's a great ride, but there is always a hint of danger, of things getting out of control, of the machine going off the rails. The third movement is the most personal, starting as a dirge, descending into madness and ending with a long coda that echoes Wagner's sleep music from Die Walküre. An entire civilization, exhausted.
- Edwin Outwater |
Russian Fire
November 16, 2011:Shotakovich, Stravinsky, Rachmaninoff, Tchaikovsky: they are Russian masters. They all composed epic sprawling symphonies and ballets, full of unbridled passion both tender and violent. They're musical versions of Tolstoy or Dostoevsky. These are the works of these composers we know well ... Tchaikovsky's Romeo and Juliet, Stravinsky's Rite of Spring, Shostakovich's wartime symphonies, and Rachmaninoff's massive piano concertos.
In this concert you won’t hear any of these works.
What you're going to hear is that most exquisite of musical forms, the Russian Minature. All of these composers worked beautifully in the small scale as well as the grand. Think of the incredible tone-painting of The Nutcracker, or the beautiful short Preludes for Piano by Rachmaninoff. Folk tales, subtle emotion, beautiful neoclassical symmetry and a Mozartean sense of detail await you at this beautiful December concert. Enjoy the color, the charm and the warmth of this special corner of Russian music.
- Edwin Outwater
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The Magic of Hugh Russell
October 21, 2011: Brahms wrote of his Second Symphony, "It is so melancholy that you will not be able to bear it. I have never written anything so sad, and the score must come out in mourning." Brahms was joking. It is a pastoral work, written one summer by a beautiful lake. It's an exhale after the tremendous weight and anxiety of influence Brahms felt following Beethoven's Ninth Symphony with his own First. At times serene, at times jovial, it rarely lingers on the overtly melancholy. But everything Brahms says has many layers of meaning. I love reading over Brahms's letters to Clara Schumann and others. The close readings of the scores they send each other, the care with which they craft their responses is a lost art today. Often a line is ironic several times over. So I wonder if Brahms was really happy when he wrote this symphony, whether there was some irony within irony here. Brahms lived his life without companionship, only with an endlessly yearning love for Clara Schumann. As he ages his works become increasingly inward, lonely, and final. I don't think Brahms's music is possible without sadness. Even the Second Symphony, one of his sunniest works seems filled, at its most beautiful moments, with an overwhelming awareness that this beauty will pass. This feeling of temporality adds beauty to this peace as well as sadness, but this sadness is somehow more real and satisfying, happier. So many levels of meaning, whispering like leaves in a summer breeze.
- Edwin Outwater |
The Virtuoso Piano
September 19, 2011: It's hard to play Liszt in the 21st Century. His pieces automatically take on a sense of irony that Liszt would never have intended. Today, we might call his music melodramatic, overwrought, or even (the dreaded) cheesy. That's because Liszt was using vehicles for his music that have become cliché in our time. We've heard his music in Flash Gordon TV serials, accompanied by the sight of model spaceships powered by sparklers. We've heard Liszt in the Japanese Noodle Western Tampopo (which I highly recommend) as a musical apotheosis of the perfect bowl of ramen. Let's face it: this music has been used ironically for a long time. But can we get beyond this? As listeners, can we tap into the Romantic Spirit? And don't we all really want that Romantic Spirit back? These artists, Liszt, Wagner, Schumann, Coleridge, Shelly, Keats, believed that Art was Everything, that the Artist was God, that Music was a Demon that Possessed You, that a Piano Concerto could Unleash your Deepest Fantasies. And they did, in those days. To play Liszt in the 21st century one must transport oneself, and believe in the music in a way that we don't today. One has to conjure the Romantic Spirit in a way that can't be made ironic or shrugged away. André Laplante can do this, and he will open our season playing both Liszt concertos, the dramatic, earth-shaking First Concerto, and the shockingly intimate Second. He is a true believer, and so am I, and so is our orchestra. Be prepared for your ironic distance to be burned away and to leave the concert infused with the Romantic Spirit. You'll be filled with Liszt-O-Mania.
- Edwin Outwater
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