Recorder isn’t just for kids
Tafelmusik’s Alison Melville shows off the instrument’s virtuosic side starting Feb. 8
More little children’s fingers end up wrapped around recorders than any other instrument, but that doesn’t mean they don’t work for grown-ups — even professional musicians.
Toronto’s Alison Melville is making it her life’s work to show off the virtuosic side of the recorder. She even persuaded Tafelmusik Baroque Orchestra to devote an entire program to this much-heard but less often appreciated woodwind.
A Recorder Romp, featuring Baroque-era chamber music and concertos written by Georg Philipp Telemann and Antonio Vivaldi, gets its first performance at TrinitySt. Paul’s Centre on Feb. 8, running to Feb. 11.
The program begins with “The English Nightingale,” a stunning, lyrical solo piece from around 1600 by Jacob van Eyck that includes trills and warbles to test the skills of the most advanced recorder player. For Melville, the rest of the program is about playing well with others, and the longtime member of Tafelmusik and the Toronto Consort is enthusiastic about the result.
“The objective was to put together a program that was diverse and that showed the recorder in different roles,” Melville says.
“I like the fact that, in most of the program, I’m playing in juxtaposition with someone else; it’s not just a concerto situation.”
She quotes Glenn Gould describing the concerto as a soloist pitted against an orchestra. “I don’t think of it that way,” she corrects. “I love playing chamber music and I also like playing concertos when they are treated like chamber music.”
For Melville, the spirit of collaboration is key. “I like intimacy and the feeling of people really interacting with each other, being playful and leaving room for spontaneity,” she says.
If an opportunity to improvise comes up during the concerts, she and her Tafelmusik colleagues will run with it, making each performance a little different.
Melville will show by example how the recorder deserves a place alongside any of the other revered Western instruments. Although it has enjoyed a professional renaissance since the period-performance movement began two generations ago, there are still people who look at the recorder as child’s play.
“It’s a prejudice in the classical music world. Like all prejudices, it takes a long time to be shifted,” she says.
If a child finds his or her voice in playing the recorder, as was the case for Melville, “You have to do what you can and not care what people think.”
With this attitude, Melville ended up being a trailblazer at the Universi- ty of Toronto. She was accepted as a modern flute student; when she started there, she was told the recorder was not considered a majorworthy instrument. But she pushed back and, in the end, won a graduation scholarship.
“I remember being very touched and honoured at that point, because the graduation scholarship going to the female most likely to succeed in any of the performance programs, including opera, was given to me . . . There were people who clearly thought it was a legitimate instrument, which it is.”
To succeed, she says, “You have to be passionate about your instrument and the repertoire you’re playing, and you can’t imagine being happy doing anything else. That is how you’re going to lead a rich and meaningful life.”
Just like Melville’s, recorders in hand. Classical music writer John Terauds is supported by the Rubin Institute for Music Criticism, San Francisco Conservatory of Music, and Ann and Gordon Getty Foundation.