Leonard Turnevicius: How classical music has pivoted during the pandemic
It's as easy as one, two, three.
You know how it goes.
One step forward, two steps back.
That's the pandemic waltz, hmm-da-da, hmm-da-da.
It took the world by storm in 2020, and its notoriety continued to know no bounds in 2021.
Ah yes, 2021. It looked as though we'd begin the year in a cultural coma due to a provincial emergency and stay-at-home order. But better safe than sorry. So, with live, in-person concerts still a big no-no, online digital programming continued as musical groups tripped the light fantastic to the pandemic waltz.
Hamilton Children's Choir artistic director Zimfira Poloz and McMaster music professor Tracy Wong served as guest clinicians for the online United Lithuanian Children's Choir Project. The Brott Music Festival livestreamed scenes from John Estacio's Filumena" on its channel. The HPO's Vivaldi Festival and Rachel Mercer's 5 at the First Chamber Music Series took place online. Concert bands, choirs, and ensembles such as Stephane Potvin's Musikay also met, rehearsed and performed online.
By mid-May, it was two steps back as a two-week extension to the provincewide lockdown took effect. The HPO deep-sixed six yet-to-be-taped broadcasts of its 11-concert mainstage digital season, but followed up with one step forward in June, uploading four tile videos to its YouTube channel.
The BMF took one big step forward with its successful summertime drive-in bubble concerts. Three shows at the Ancaster Fairgrounds were sold out, two of them with more than 300 cars. And due to audience demand, a repeat concert was added to the slate out at Jordan Station's Sue-Ann Staff Estate Winery.
And speaking of summertime successes, add the Royal Canadian College of Organists Hamilton Centre's virtual Organ Festival Canada to that list.
Zula Presents also took one step forward with its Something Else! Festival of creative music/free jazz held outdoors at Bayfront Park in September.
The HPO took one big step forward on Sept. 25 with the long-awaited return to live, in-person concerts at FirstOntario Concert Hall albeit with limited seating, mandatory masking and proof of double vaccination.
Others followed suit. Soprano Adrianne Pieczonka's beautiful solo recital with pianist Robert Kortgaard inaugurated the sold-out Black Box Theatre in Vitek Wincza's Hamilton Conservatory for the Arts on Nov. 7. The BMF and Alex Cann's Bach Elgar Choir each performed Handel's Messiah" live twice. The Burlington Performing Arts Centre hosted numerous shows including the Canadian Brass, Denis Mastromonaco's Burlington Symphony Orchestra, and Sabatino Vacca's Southern Ontario Lyric Opera's first-ever seasonal concert which concluded with his top-drawer A Christmas Festival" medley. Over in FirstOntario Concert Hall, the HPO's holiday concert included the Ontario premiere of Abby Richardson-Schulte's Making Light" with R.H. Thomson and HCC chorister Mara Sweeney as narrators. And if your eyes didn't tear up with joy when Poloz's Ilumini Chamber Choir sang Nadezhda Averina's arrangement of Rachmaninoff's Bogoroditse Devo, raduisya" (Virgin Mother of God, rejoice) in Ryerson United in December, you were either flatlining or in the throes of the pandemic waltz's macabre ancestor, the Totentanz (dance of death).
But just when you thought it was safe to go out again, along came Omicron and skyrocketing COVID-19 cases. And presto, it's two steps back.
Rachel Mercer has already postponed the start of her series to Feb. 26 from Jan. 8. And the Salute to Vienna" show scheduled for Jan. 2 in FirstOntario Concert Hall has been postponed to 2023. Were Vienna's Waltz King," Johann Strauss, Jr., alive today, surely we'd be waltzing away the pandemic-masked, triple-vaxxed and two metres from our partners-to such gems as COVID Chronik" (COVID Chronicle) op. 268a, Corona Walzer" op. 262a, and Die ersten Impfstoffe Walzer" (The First Vaccines Waltzes) op. 261a. But we digress.
Among those we lost in 2021 were June Caskey, a noted piano teacher and decades-long fixture on Hamilton's classical music scene, who passed away on April 21, aged 85. The Hamilton-Halton Branch of the ORMTA is planning a fundraising recital for a scholarship in Caskey's name on April 3 in First Unitarian plus a memory book. Students and/or friends of Caskey wishing to share their memories may call Andrea Battista at 905-331-8701.
Happy New Year everyone, and stay safe as you dance the pandemic waltz in 2022.
Leonard Turnevicius writes about classical music for The Hamilton Spectator. leonardturnevicius@gmail.com