Outgoing VSO director talks tenure
As Bramwell Tovey enters his final season as music director of the Vancouver Symphony Orchestra, it seemed especially appropriate to chat with him about his parallel career — or, more appropriately, his parallel careers. One new enterprise was announced last week as Tovey has been named director of orchestral activities at prestigious Boston University.
But however dear music education may be to the maestro’s heart, there’s another, even more personal aspect of his career that holds a special place and that is his life as a composer. And it’s that particular avatar that makes a significant contribution to his final VSO season.
Tovey initially appeared reluctant to stress this particular side of his work.
“I wasn’t brought here (Vancouver) to be a composer,” he quipped in our recent phone conversation from Boston.
At first just a few pieces made it on to programs. Then, in 2012, a full concert version of Tovey’s opera The Inventor gave listeners a chance to really appreciate the scope, scale, and quality of his music.
The Inventor is at the heart of a new work, Time Tracks, to be heard alongside John Adams’ Absolute Jest for string quartet and orchestra in the VSO season opener.
The materials for Time Tracks are drawn from the opera.
“I wrote a proper trumpet concerto before The Inventor, Songs of the Paradise Saloon, based on a theme from the opera. There are also various orchestral interludes which swirl around the protagonist, so I decided there was material that could be used to convey this somewhat manic character,” said Tovey. “I premiered it in New Zealand last year, and I’m looking forward to doing it again. Now’s that it’s my last year, I can permit myself to open the season with one of my own pieces.”
Right at the end of the season will come another premiere, Tovey’s Shalimar Variations for Piano and Orchestra.
“A little while ago, I was reading an anthology about London, which included an excerpt about Soho and a begging woman who used to sing Pale Hands I Loved Beside the Shalimar by the side of the road,” explained Tovey. Kashmiri Song, to give the song its correct title, was composed by Amy Woodforde-Finden to a text by “Laurence Hope,” aka Adela Florence Nicolson.
“I began to think about these two women stuck in India, who didn’t know each other, and that was the germ of the Shalimar Variations, a modernist take on this piece written in 1902.”
A third important Tovey work, Ancestral Voices — a piece I consider to be one of the best sets of orchestral songs written in this country — will feature on VSO tours.
Just before its premiere at the end of last season, Tovey mentioned he might extend the piece beyond the four songs so beautifully sung by mezzo soprano Marion Newman.
“I had originally thought that I would write another four songs, perhaps not entirely about the
Canadian experience of reconciliation, but about other world issues,” said Tovey. “I was very touched and moved by the reception that the songs got. I wanted to add an instrumental prelude, but then I thought, why interfere with them when they’re doing so well on their on? So I’ve let them alone for now.”
Concertgoers here and in Whistler have already heard Ancestral Voices. Listeners in Kamloops, Vernon, Kelowna, Penticton, and Chilliwack will be able to sample it in a few weeks, and the piece will also feature on the VSO’s tour to the east in the spring.