Intermezzi opens Ontario Scene with music and dance
Intermezzi opens Ontario Scene with music and dance
Johannes Brahms wrote 18 short pieces for the piano near the end of his life. The pieces are his intermezzi, although they are not classic intermezzi as they stand alone and do not connect two other pieces of music.
What they are, are some of the best things the great composer wrote before his untimely death from cancer at 63.
Clara Schumann, his great friend, said of three of them:
“In these pieces, I at last feel musical life stir once again in my soul.”
The Intermezzi also spark something powerful in the Canadian pianist and musical innovator Andrew Burashko. “These pieces are some of the most beautiful music ever written. I’ve always been totally enamoured of them.”
Burashko is the founder and artistic director of the Torontobased Art of Time Ensemble.
Twenty years ago, when Burashko was working with the Canadian choreographer Peggy Baker, they came up with a performance that mixed dance and some of the Intermezzi in the kind of multi-disciplinary performance that Art of Time has become known for.
“We started doing recitals together. I would propose music and she would choreograph a dance piece to them. One of the first pieces was set to four of the Brahms intermezzi.”
About a decade later, Burashko was approached by the National Ballet of Canada to be part of another performance based on several Brahms pieces, including three Intermezzi.
“It was fascinating to watch two completely different interpretations for the same music,” he said. That memory stayed with him and eventually the catalyst for the performance that will formally open the National Arts Centre’s Ontario Scene festival on April 29.
The evening consists of the older work by Peggy Baker, danced by Jessica Runge, and a new work created by James Kudelka featuring a company of eight dancers from Coleman Lemieux and Company including Evelyn Hart.
Today it’s quite commonplace to mix classical music with other disciplines, but it’s something Burashko has been doing for 17 years.
“When I started Art of Time, one of the tenets behind it was to build a bridge and attract a new audience to classical music. One way to do that was through another medium that connected to the music, but was more familiar to the audience, be it dance or theatre.
“Now a lot of people in the classical music world are waking up to the potential. For so long that world was just stuck in very rigid tradition. They never made any effort to connect it to anything that is relevant to people today. People don’t know how to approach it. They are intimidated by it.”
Today, classical performers’ existence is threatened, he says, and they are trying to figure out how to remain relevant as their old audience disappears. Why are they trying so hard? For Burashko, it’s about the thrill of a concert.
“There is something incredibly thrilling, and terrifying, something very powerful about performing in front of an audience. It pushes you to another level as a performer.
“I like to think my emotion translates to them. It is something that happens in the moment, whereas a recording is petrified for eternity, but a performance is different every time.”
For many years Burashko toured as a soloist, something he calls an “incredibly lonely existence.
“In the Art of Time, everybody I work with, 90 per cent of the time, are my friends of many years. It is less lonely working with others.”
But he doesn’t mind being on solo piano with this show.
“This is different. This music is so deep and close to my heart. I don’t remember the first time I heard these pieces, but they have been part of my consciousness for 35 years.”
He also notes that every player seems to find a different message inside the Intermezzi.
“These pieces are incredibly personal. Everybody’s version sounds different. You can’t copy someone else’s interpretation because the emotion won’t come through. It can be tragic instead of thrilling.”
In the Intermezzi concert, the dancers are the music in physical form. They give it depth and dimension, he says.
“I created Art of Time, more than anything else, as a vehicle for myself. I was driven by figuring out ways to turn people on to classical music, but ultimately I wanted to do whatever I wanted to do.”
That led to some lean times as Burashko took the road less travelled but, as Robert Frost would say, that has made all the difference.