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February 26, 2010
Schoenberg to hockey
Turning Point offers a robust 2010 season.
DANA SCHLANGER
“It’s an exciting time to be with the Turning Point Ensemble,” enthused Jeremy Berkman, co-artistic director and trombone player, during a conversation with the Independent about this week’s concert co-presented with the Cultural Olympiad at the Vancouver Playhouse. There’s a sense of experimentation, adventure and opening of new horizons, a kind of cultural turbulence brought about by the Olympic arts festival, and the large chamber ensemble that is Turning Point is obviously thriving on it.
True to its mission statement of “increasing the understanding and appreciation of music composed during the past hundred years, linking the music of earlier times to the music of today through innovative programming and outstanding musicianship,” the ensemble has made inter-disciplinary explorations an essential aspect of their trademark programs.
Achieving the rare and elusive balance between a strong emotional experience and a feast for the intellect, Turning Point Ensemble programs often capture the historic arc, the multi-colored rainbow of elements that connect the various musics of the 20th century and help us understand how it flows into the 21st, through their vigorous commissioning of new pieces by Canadian composers.
However, it takes someone of the cultural calibre of the two co-artistic directors, Berkman and Owen Underhill (composer, conductor and professor at Simon Fraser University), to be so laid-back about their endeavors.
“The ensemble’s Son of a Chamber Symphony program on Feb. 24,” said Berkman, “[was] one of those evenings of masterwork substance that [left] you feeling that, for the price of one nice dinner, you got prime rib just right, a whole crab just caught off Tofino and a side of Saltspring Island lamb chops! Maybe it’s too much of a good thing, but this type of program doesn’t come along very often ... an Olympic program with each of the three pieces deserving of a spot on our podium.”
It all started when “Arts Partners for Creative Development granted us three big chamber symphonies to commission,” Berkman explained, “and so we decided to ask each of the composers we commissioned, John Oliver, Dorothy Chang and Rodney Sharman, to think about what are those composers and pieces that influenced them, in the sense that they would be honored to be sharing the program with and be really meaningful for them. At the same time, we’re also looking at bringing to the stage those 20th-century masterworks that no one has a chance to hear because they’re either written for a group bigger than a string quartet or smaller than an orchestra.”
They chose Arnold Schoenberg’s Chamber Symphony, written in 1906, in order to anchor this program with one of the seminal sources of all contemporary music. Described by Richard Kurth in the program notes as a “rollercoaster, where the listener experiences an exuberant and breathless ride,” this chamber symphony truly is a “turning point,” one of the moments in history when you can see the tide turn – in this case, the lush, post-Romantic, highly emotional style of Schoenberg’s earlier works (and of Gustav Mahler and Richard Strauss) literally retract into a sharp and chiseled piece of great energy, his most confident and joyous work. And since the Viennese public of the time was the archenemy of the modern composer, this first chamber symphony caused seat rattling, whistle blowing and ostentatious walkouts at its première.
It didn’t help that Schoenberg was Jewish at a time when Jews in Vienna were at the centre of culture but at the edge of society. Schoenberg went on to revolutionize western music through the “emancipation of dissonance,” leading to atonality and the development of Serialism, a new and very different theory of composition. No other composer has had more influence on subsequent generations, for decades to come.
However, in 1938, when the Exhibition on Degenerate Music opened in Dusseldorf, its Nazi organizers decreed that atonal composition was the product of Schoenberg’s “Jewish spirit.” By that time, though, Schoenberg had managed to find safety in the United States, where he remained until his death in 1951.
The works presented by Turning Point Ensemble together with Schoenberg’s masterpiece included American composer John Adams’ Son of a Chamber Symphony (2007) and B.C. composer John Oliver’s Five-ring Concerto (2010).
“What I had in mind,” wrote Oliver, “was to sonify the actual rhythms of the winter sports, to get at the viscera of ‘being in the sport.’ ” All three pieces are high-energy, buoyant, exuberant and intense. In keeping with the Olympic theme, the five movements of Oliver’s Five-ring Concerto that were performed are Curling, Speed Skating, Skeleton, Freestyle Skiing and Hockey.
Turning Point Ensemble’s 2010 season continues with Imprint, June 17-20, 8 p.m., and June 19, 2 p.m., at the Fei and Milton Wong Experimental Theatre in the new Simon Fraser University at Woodward’s. Visit turningpointensemble.ca for details.
Dana Schlanger is a Vancouver freelance writer and director of the Dena Wosk School of Performing Arts at the Jewish Community Centre of Greater Vancouver.
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