Pinchas Zukerman in Edinburgh, where he made a rare address to the audience. conducting the National Arts Centre Orchestra during a recent performance in Edinburgh.Fred Cattroll
The scene was a field of tall, poppy-wearing luminaries, nodding in polite conversation to Prince Charles as Canada's National Arts Centre Orchestra came to the Royal Festival Hall in London on Monday night for a concert that is one of the highlights of its tour of the United Kingdom.
As the Royal Patron of the tour, Prince Charles added a certain frisson to the crowd at the reception beforehand, as he swept into the room, looking resplendent as a piece of expensive furniture, all tucked in, shiny-shoed and brushed down; festooned with appropriate bits of decoration – a poppy on his lapel, a jaunty poof in his breast pocket. Galen and Hilary Weston, who out-glammed all the women there in a neckline-plunging, long black gown, hovered nearby. They are co-chairs of the tour's international advisory committee, having donated generously through the W. Garfield Weston Foundation. Gordon Campbell, Canadian High Commissioner to the U.K, and wife, Nancy; Mark Carney, Governor of the Bank of England, and his wife, Diana, who also served on the committee; and George Lewis, Group Head RBC, the lead sponsors of the tour, and wife, Leanne, were among the crowd.
The theme of the NACO's five-city, 10-day tour, its first to the U.K. in 20 years, is the "healing power" of music, designed to commemorate the First World War centenary. But since they arrived on Wednesday last week, landing in London as news of the shooting rampage on Parliament Hill came in through e-mails from colleagues, who were under lockdown for most of the day, there has been an added poignancy as the tour also became a tribute to Corporal Nathan Cirillo and Warrant Officer Patrice Vincent, the soldiers who died recently in acts of violence in Ottawa and Montreal.
Throughout the tour, with stops in Edinburgh, Nottingham, London, Salisbury and Bristol, Christopher Deacon, managing director of the NACO, begins each performance with a short speech not only noting the 66,000 lost Canadians soldiers in the First World War but also the recent tragedy.
In Edinburgh last Thursday, the NACO's first tour date, the performance was particularly moving. "I don't speak from the stage," Pinchas Zukerman, music director, conductor and virtuoso violin soloist of the NACO had told me recently. "I speak from my fiddle. And I have done since I was seven." But that night, moved by the violence of the day before, he did both. Zukerman turned to the audience at the end of the performance in a rare spoken address. He briefly drew attention to the events in Ottawa, saying that the best way he knows to express gratitude "to a life and people and to peace is through music." He then led the orchestra in an encore performance of Serenade for Strings by Elgar. Earlier, as part of the planned program, he had played Bruch's Violin Concerto on his prized 1741 Guarneri del Gesu to a standing ovation.
"This tour … reminds us that evil is no good," Zukerman explained in an interview earlier this fall, when the focus was just on the centenary of the Great War. Music is "a wonderful mental, medical drug" for healing and remembrance, the Israeli-born former child prodigy said. This U.K. tour is Zukerman's last international one as its music director. He will step down at the end of the season after 16 years. In an interview backstage at Edinburgh's Usher Hall, his wife, Amanda Forsyth, principal cellist, announced that she will leave the NACO this year as well.
"It's like jumping off a cliff, " she said of the decision. "It's a new beginning. I will miss my orchestra life," she said, adding that she and Zukerman, who recently celebrated their 10th wedding anniversary, will continue with their busy, international solo careers.
The mood backstage in Edinburgh was one of contained excitement. Private funding totalling roughly $800,000 through the National Arts Centre Foundation is the primary support of the trip. "These tours are no longer possible if not successfully funded from the private sector," said Peter Herrndorf, who has been president and CEO of the Crown corporation for 15 years. The theme of the First World War centenary was "important to donors and sponsors," he explained.
NACO patrons – "our groupies" as one NAC employee affectionately called them – come from across Canada. They accompany the orchestra throughout its tour, which includes various ancillary events such as a performance by a brass quartet at the Canadian war memorial in Green Park, London. In Edinburgh, they were treated to haggis canapés at a reception upstairs while Zukerman and his orchestra performed a sound-check rehearsal in the Beaux Art concert hall. When he instructed them to play certain sections of the pieces from that night's performance schedule – works from Vaughan Williams, Beethoven and Canadian composer, John Estacio – they did so, as if the music were some gorgeous, velvet cape they could simply pick up off the floor, swing over their shoulders to parade around the stage, and then drop again, just like that.
In London, they performed with the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, of which Zukerman has been principal guest conductor since 2009. The collaboration "symbolizes that we understand one another," Zukerman noted. It was the only concert of the tour with two choral-orchestral works, Beethoven's Symphony No.9 and A Ballad of Canada by Malcolm Forsyth, Amanda Forsyth's late father who emigrated from South Africa to Canada in 1969.
"This was Dad's last piece," she told me. "It kept him alive." He died of cancer three years ago but was able to travel to Ottawa for the premiere from his home in Edmonton. The ballad, written as a "thank you to Canada for helping him become the musician he wanted to be" according to Zukerman, who worked closely with him, contains poetry from In Flanders Fields by Canadian First World War soldier and physician, John McCrae. "I feel that I am very much the ambassador of my father's music now, " Forsyth said, noting that he had written several cello concertos for his only child, including Electra Rising, which won a Juno in 1998.
Tonight, in Salisbury – described by Herrndorf as "the emotional heart of the tour" – the orchestra will perform in the 755-year-old Salisbury Cathedral, the best example of English Early Gothic architecture in the U.K. The Cathedral's construction, revolutionary at the time – built in one generation, between 1220 and 1258, using 70,000 tons of stone – was the inspiration for Ken Follett's popular book The Pillars of the Earth.
Its imposing size and spire allows the Cathedral to be seen from a distance across the plains, which is where 30,000 Canadian soldiers came to train before being sent to fight in France 100 years ago. Among them was McCrae.
During his tenure, Zukerman, who came to the NACO in 1999 from the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra, has been a charismatic leader. Aside from music, his great passion is education, having initiated the NAC Young Artists Program, now part of the NAC Summer Institute.
"When we travel, we also give classes. A good 30 to 35 players [in the orchestra] are teachers, and they teach master classes, individual classes, so when we arrive in a city, we don't just play. We go to conservatories, the music schools. We plant seeds in these places," he said.
Now 66 and a grandfather – he has two daughters from his first marriage to flutist Eugenia Zukerman – the world-celebrated musician, a violin protégé of the late Isaac Stern, has no plans for retirement. "If I retired, I don't know what those people [at NAC] would do. I have committed to three years of concerts," he exclaimed exuberantly. He and Forsyth, who is 48, are a formidable musical team, both exuding a passion as strong as a gale-force wind when you come into contact with it.
When they travel, they bring their prized instruments on board the airplane in executive class. "I carry mine on my shoulder and put it in the overhead compartment. Amanda has to put her cello upside down, sitting in a seat, with a seat belt. You wouldn't put a child in the hold, would you?"
Backstage in Edinburgh, they shared a dressing room. "Pinchas is the best role model and musician. He is the God of the violin and viola. It's very affirming to play together so much," she told me. "We have this telepathic understanding."
She called out to him when he disappears behind a small divider in the room. "We're a team, aren't we, honey? Like Sonny and Cher! " she joked.
"Yes, you're Sonny. I'm Cher," he retorted.
She shot back: "Then I guess I will have to get you a wig."
The National Arts Centre Orchestra concert at Salisbury Cathedral will be broadcast on CBC Radio 2 on Nov. 11 and on CBC Television as part of its Remembrance Day coverage.