This week in Canada, there was a "paper fight" between Jeanne Lamon, music
director of Tafalmusik and Pinchas Zukerman, music director of the National
Arts Centre Orchestra in Ottawa on the Globe and Mail(a national paper in
Canada).  They are arguing about period and modern performance of baroque
and classical music.  Jeanne Lamon challenges Zukerman to have a fight on
stage by performing baroque music with their own point of view and let the
audience judge for themselves.

Also, on CBC Radio 2 Take Five program, the host started this fight on
the radio already by playing the Four seasons from both Tafalmusik and NAC
orchestra asking the listener to vote for their preference.  The results
shows that Tafalmusik and Lamon won this battle by a majority(1600+ votes
vs 600+ for Zukerman).

Below is the letter Ms. Lamon wrote in reply to Zukerman's comment on
period performance.

   So, Mr. Zukerman, you want a fight? How about a battle of the bands?

   Jeanne Peterson LAMON
   Monday, April 3, 2000

   Recently in these pages, the new maestro of the National Arts Centre
   Orchestra, Pinchas Zukerman, uttered what I can only take to be
   fighting words.  If it's a fight he wants, I'm more than happy to
   take him on.  In an interview with The Globe's Robert Everett-Green,
   the renowned violinist/conductor declaimed his "disgust" for what is
   called the period-performance movement, calling it, and most of the
   people who play it, "complete rubbish." This is tantamount to calling
   computers disgusting and their users rubbish when it is obvious to
   everyone that they represent the accepted tool for doing business in
   today's world.  Likewise, period instruments and performance practices
   have become today's standard for performing music of the 17th through
   early 19th centuries.

   After several generations of performing music from all eras as if it
   were cut from the same cloth, many musicians have come to understand
   the wisdom of simply taking music on its own terms.  This means that
   Bach is not Bruckner, Vivaldi is not Stravinsky and Purcell is not
   Vaughan Williams.  The music of Bach and Vivaldi does not sound better
   performed with a huge orchestra playing instruments the composers
   would never have known any more than Brahms's piano works sound better
   on a harpsichord.  Perhaps these baroque composers would have adored
   the large symphonic orchestras of today had they heard them, but
   they, in fact, did not know their sound.  They wrote for the forces
   they had at hand and their music is best served by those same numbers
   of musicians playing those same instruments.  And it does not matter
   if Bach would have preferred a piano to a harpsichord.  It only
   matters that he never saw or heard one and that he, in fact, wrote
   his keyboard works for harpsichord or organ.  It would be absurd to
   suggest that his musical creativity suffered from this deprivation.

   When speaking of artistic things, one can speak only of evolution,
   not of progress.  Today's musical instruments are not better or worse
   than those of previous times, just as acrylic paints are not superior
   to oils.  They are only different.  Aesthetic tastes change to reflect
   the times and societies.  These differences between centuries and
   musical styles are something to celebrate as a sort of artistic
   multiculturalism.  We do not wish to make of 300 years of music one
   sound palette and one voice.  To celebrate the diversity of our
   musical heritage, we period performers embrace as many aspects as
   possible of the composer's uniqueness.  We use the instruments he
   had at hand in the appropriate numbers.  We try to play in the sorts
   of concert venues he had at his disposal.  We study what sorts of
   performance conventions were in vogue at the time and apply them to
   the expression of the music, all in an effort to make the music come
   to life.

   This is a philosophy of music-making that has taken the world by
   storm.  In the almost 30 years that I have been performing primarily
   baroque and classical music on period instruments, I have witnessed
   a revolution.  We early-music types have evolved from being the
   beatniks of the musical scene to selling more CDs than those made
   with modern instruments.  We have won the respect and love of audiences
   and critics around the world, with many of the best-selling classical
   recording artists coming from our midst.  Conservatories everywhere
   are incorporating historical performance as part of their required
   curriculum.  Toronto's Tafelmusik has performed on the best series
   in the best halls world-wide, being one of the first Canadian
   orchestras, for example, to play at the Musikverein in Vienna.

   There are very exciting and creative cross-fertilizations of modern
   and period performers taking place around the globe.  YoYo Ma has
   recorded Boccherini concertos on a baroque cello with the Amsterdam
   Baroque Orchestra.  Nikolaus Harnoncourt of Vienna's Concentus Musicus
   has recorded Mozart Symphonies with the Concertgebouw Orchestra.
   Sir Simon Rattle has conducted the Age of Enlightenment Orchestra,
   one of Britain's foremost period orchestras.  Mr.  Zukerman's
   predecessor Trevor Pinnock, who made his fame in the baroque performance
   world, directed the NACO for several years.  Tafelmusik has shared
   the stage with the Toronto Symphony in a very successful and interesting
   program which alternated the two orchestras.  Where has Mr.  Zukerman
   been for the past 30 years, if not hiding his head in the sand? It
   would seem he'd rather not be confused with too many ideas or thoughts
   about music.  How else could he make the outrageous statement that
   he had not changed his interpretation of the Four Seasons in the past
   25 years!  Remember T.  S.  Eliot's famous line about life being but
   a preparation for the final, exquisite closing of one's mind.  It
   would appear that Mr.  Zukerman's has closed prematurely.

   Yes, I'm itching for a fight!  As the music director of Tafelmusik,
   Canada's baroque orchestra on original instruments, I would like to
   challenge Mr.  Zukerman and his NACO orchestra to a musical duel.
   Why don't our orchestras share the stage, alternately, play some
   baroque music in our respective ways and let the audience judge for
   themselves? Wouldn't it be great fun, and informative at the same
   time, for them to hear a Bach orchestral suite or Handel's Watermusic
   played by these two orchestras, one after the other? We could call
   the concert the Battle of the Bands.  How about it, Mr.  Zukerman?

   Jeanne Lamon is the music director of Tafelmusik.

"Raymond Chan" <[log in to unmask]>