A LEGACY OF CHORAL MUSIC
Iwan Edwards conducts last concert
Iwan Edwards was speaking from the house he and his wife, Undeg, had occupied since 1979 — 14 years after their arrival with two toddlers in Lachine.
“I came here for a period of two years originally,” Edwards explained in an accent that seems to have lost little of its lilt over the decades. “The job I had at the time was the behest of the department of education at Aberystwyth University.
“The dean had suggested to me the possibility of doing some research work on teaching music in a bilingual society, comparing Wales with Quebec.
“I started on the work, but there were people who would ask me to conduct this choir or that choir. Gradually, that work was put to one side. I got so busy with conducting, there just wasn’t time anymore.
“I mentioned this story to the members of Concerto Della Donna the other day. They said, ‘ Well, now you can take out your notes and finish it, you’ll have lots of time.’ ”
Yes, Edwards makes his final appearance as a conductor Sunday afternoon with this allfemale choir, which will itself disband after the occasion. The prospect might seem a little solemn on the face of it, but with CDD alumnae assembled to say goodbye and a valedictory Christmas recording for sale, the atmosphere is sure to be upbeat.
As it should be given Edwards’s long and varied career as a conductor and educator, roles he was always ready to intertwine. After 14 happy years at Lachine High School, he headed downtown to the Fine Arts Core Education ( FACE) school in 1979, building a music program that made singing part of the curriculum rather than an extracurricular option.
The results were so successful that FACE was presenting scores as ambitious as the Mozart Requiem. The FACE Treble Choir became the natural choice for OSM repertoire requiring children’s voices, such as Liszt’s Dante Symphony in 1981 and, most notably, Mahler’s Eighth Symphony under the baton of Charles Dutoit in the Montreal Forum in 1984.
But back to Lachine, where Edwards was asked in 1972 by some locals to found the St. Lawrence Choir. Many were already members of the Montreal Elgar Choir, which Edwards himself served as an interim conductor for a season.
“I said of course, not imagining for a moment what kind of a catastrophe that would create,” Edwards recalled. “All of a sudden, I was being accused of stealing singers from the Elgar Choir, which wasn’t the case at all. It was just a convenience for people on the Lakeshore.”
At any rate, the St. Lawrence Choir supplanted its feeder group as the dominant anglo choral society on the island, eventually moving its rehearsals and performances downtown and, of course, welcoming francophones.
Most remarkably, the SLC became the amateur component of the OSM Chorus after Dutoit appointed Edwards chorus master in 1986, travelling to Carnegie Hall and participating in such blockbusters as Berlioz’s Les Troyens and Orff ’s Carmina Burana in the OSM’s glory years with Decca. The former release, Edwards’s favourite, won a Grammy in 1996.
Dutoit and Edwards got along famously – and intuitively. “He had this enormous trust and gave me so much room,” Edwards said. “I always made sure they ( the choristers) were prepared, not with one tempo but several tempi, so that he had a flexible instrument to play with.”
One of his early Dutoit assignments was Handel’s Messiah in 1986. As the opening approached, Edwards asked for a consultation with the maestro, to which the latter consented only after several requests.
“He said, ‘ What can I do for you?’ ” Edwards recalled.
“I’m preparing Messiah for you, and I’d like to have some idea of what tempi you would like to take.”
“He said, ‘ Messiah? That’s the end of December. I can’t think about Messiah now.’
“I said, ‘ That’s not going to help me very much.’
“‘ Well, didn’t you prepare last year for Christopher Hog ... what was his name ... Hogwood? Do it like that.’
“You’re not going to conduct it like Christopher Hogwood!”
“‘ Oh, so you do know how I’m going to conduct it?’
“That was the end of the conversation.”
Edwards remained on tenterhooks until the rehearsal. One can imagine his relief when Dutoit gave the following simple instructions to the orchestra: “Can you hear these choir articulations? Copy them.”
The workload was formidable. More and more grades got into the act at FACE. Nor was the St. Lawrence Choir silent. By 1989, Edwards felt he needed a break. But the following year, the people at McGill felt they needed a professor to take charge of the choral program.
Edwards did not decline. Nor did he say no to the Ottawa Choral Society in 1992. That position put him on the highway just about every Wednesday.
He was never one to compensate for a heavy workload with light repertoire. Handel’s Judas Maccabaeus numbered among the SLC presentations, and Elgar’s The Dream of Gerontius was one of the works Edwards led for McGill. In 1996, he brought the SLC and the Ottawa choir together for a 270- voice performance of Brahms’s A German Requiem.
All this while meeting the many demands of the OSM position. No one was more appalled by Dutoit’s public falling out with the orchestra in 2002. Edwards drafted his own resignation but reconsidered, more or less for the sake of the SLC.
“They were part of the OSM Chorus,” he said. “I didn’t want to take that away from them.”
Kent Nagano arrived in 2006 and soon decided to restructure the chorus without the SLC. Edwards resigned for real to allow Nagano to find a successor, a process that took some time.
Meanwhile, he had started two new choirs, the Choeur des enfants de Montréal — coaching children being his highest calling — and Concerto Della Donna.
Both the Choeur des enfants de Montréal and the SLC have survived the difficult process of de- Iwanization. Many choristers find it hard to sing for other conductors. The women of CDD preferred to call it quits.
Edwards’s powers of inspiration are well known. “Iwan can get expression from a stone” is how one former McGill music dean has put it.
For Edwards himself, the decision to retire is not easy, even at 77. He will remain available as a consultant. The prospect of having more time to travel to Wales and Australia ( where one of his two sons lives, the other being in Toronto) is appealing.
The threadbare condition of music in public schools is one source of regret.
“There are aspects of children’s personalities which need to be triggered,” he said. “Imagination is one of them and the second is emotional development through the arts. I am a firm believer in that.”
The conductor takes heart in the determination of parents to find and build choirs for their kids. And the adult choral scene in Montreal is as robust as ever.
“Particularly on the French side, the way that choral music has proliferated over the last 49 years, it’s just amazing,” Edwards said. “There are conductors who are coming out from Sherbrooke and other places, all looking for things to do. So they create choirs.
“It’s a healthy choral scene. Whatever your niche in choral singing, you’ll find it without too much trouble at all.”
Once And For All, the farewell concert of Iwan Edwards and Concerto Della Donna, takes place on Nov. 30 at 4 p. m. at St. George’s Anglican Church. Go to www.concertodelladonna.ca.
REDPATH HALL WON’T BECOME A READING ROOM
This just in: McGill is planning to demolish the McLennan Library and erect an opera house.
Well, unfortunately not. But a mad plan to turn Redpath Hall into a reading room seems to have been abandoned.
After a town hall meeting on Nov. 11, the library powers released a statement that included the following shift to reverse gear:
“Redpath Hall is now and needs to continue to be a space enjoyed by everyone. … At this point, we want to confirm that it cannot, and will not be a dedicated reading room.
“It serves numerous uses now and will in the future and options will be explored with different university constituencies to best serve all of the community’s needs.”
There is clearly some wiggle room in that final sentence. But given the public uproar that the decommissioning of Redpath Hall as a concert hall ( and study space for organists) would create, I predict no progress on this file.
Which, of course, still must be closely watched.