McGill Symphony Orchestra

It was a treat to attend this concert, the first of the season, by the McGill Symphony Orchestra at Pollack Hall at the Schulich School of Music. The new name for the music school is the result of a very large donation from the Schulich family that enabled the music school to build an impressive new building some eight or ten stories high. Previously they had to rent space in nearby office buildings for such things as the music library! Pollack Hall is in the old music building, very familiar to me as I attended as a student and worked as a lecturer there for a total of eight years. I have played dozens of concerts at Pollack Hall. Here is a photo of the orchestra onstage:

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Just moments after I took that photo there was a PA announcement that all photos, videos and audio recordings were prohibited in the hall! Pollack Hall is an excellent mid-size concert hall, nothing fancy, but well-designed and with good acoustics.

Here is the program from last night. I don't have my scanner with me, so I just had to take a photo of the program. Not sure why there is the weird distortion, but it is readable:

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There was one glaring misprint. Can you see what it is? The Symphony No. 4 in E minor, op. 98 is not by Robert Schumann whose Symphony No. 4 is in D minor and op. 120. No, this symphony is by Johannes Brahms and those are his dates, not Schumann's. Ironically, the last time I heard this orchestra, they were doing the Symphony No. 7 by Shostakovich, whose name did appear, but they had Stravinsky's dates by mistake. Guys? A little proof-reading maybe? These are word-processing mistakes, of course, created by simply pasting new information into an existing document.

The conductor, Alexis Hauser is an old-school Austrian maestro and a good one. He looks just a tiny bit like Nosferatu at times, but full of energy and he directs the orchestra assertively and precisely. At the beginning of the concert he gave the downbeat to the overture the instant he turned to the orchestra after bowing--a nice shocking effect. In the second half, he was on the verge of giving the downbeat when some talking erupted from the 4th row--he instantly whirled around and fixed the offender with a steely glare. This happened a couple of times before the offenders settled down enough to begin. I like this guy!

The orchestra played well--very well considering it was the first concert of the season and there had to be quite a few new members. You are only accepted by audition, just like in a professional orchestra. Indeed, there are probably several members who will be in professional orchestras in a year or two. The soloist in the Chopin concerto was Ilya Poletaev, born in Moscow, grew up partly in Israel and moved to Canada at fourteen. He has several degrees, culminating with a doctorate from Yale. He is Associate Professor of Piano at McGill and had many fans in the audience. Excellent player (why is it that every really fine pianist I have heard recently is originally from Russia?). He did an encore by Chopin, but I am not able to identify it for you, sorry! Poletaev is a sensitive, adroit, inwardly looking musician who has loads of technique. I'm just not a fan of the Chopin concertos!

The opening overture by Dvořák was well done, with lots of fire. I'm not a big fan of his orchestral music either--prior to the New World Symphony it is rather more sound and fury than anything else. The second half was devoted to the Symphony No. 4 by Brahms and they really showed their abilities here. Very fine playing apart from some balance problems and a little defective tuning. But easily the equal of any regional orchestra in Canada (and better than most). Here is the miracle: I'm not normally a fan of Brahms either, apart from the ballades and the Haydn Variations, but I thoroughly enjoyed this performance. It was warm, energetic, powerful--all those things that I suppose most people appreciate in Brahms where I usually hear great stretches of turgid dullness. So, congratulations to the orchestra and conductor.

Allow me just to muse for a bit. It is obvious to me that musical institutions vary widely in their quality and one wonders why. From the outside, to an untrained observer, all established musical institutions give the same impression of competence and quality. But the reality is quite different. If I had a couple of years I would love to criss-cross Canada doing an evaluation of the various schools of music from Dalhousie University in Halifax, Nova Scotia to the University of Victoria in Victoria, British Columbia. That's over 5,000 miles of music schools! I know a bit about a handful of these schools, ones I have taught at, but about most I am blissfully ignorant. What I have noticed is that different schools have a different geneology--genetic code if you will. How and by whom they were founded can have lasting effects. Certain administrators can be a blessing or a curse. What seems to happen is that a careerist administrator, i.e. someone interested just in their own career and not in musical values as such, attains a position of power and proceeds to hire faculty based on their career needs. This is not uncommon as career-oriented opportunists seek out positions of power. They hire their friends, other careerists, and create a shell of a music institution. It may look good, be well-credentialed and so on. But at the end of the day the solid musical quality just isn't there. There are horrible institutions, the leading ones in major Canadian cities, that are bad places to go for a music education. But this is not obvious from the outside! For whatever reason, McGill has escaped this fate. It is large enough that one or two unfortunate administrators will only have a minimal and temporary effect. There seems to be a critical mass of serious musicians in every area at McGill that constantly work for quality and against fashionable frippery. The quality of the McGill Symphony is a valid indicator of the quality of the school.

I write about McGill because I have known the school, from the inside and the outside, for over forty years.

I already have put up a clip of Alexis Hauser conducting the McGill Symphony, so let's have a listen to the Symphony No. 4 by Brahms. This is Bernard Haitink conducting the Chamber Orchestra of Europe: