The Atlantic Flute Society

It is not every day, or even every decade, that one has the opportunity to perform the premiere of a new concerto.  I recently had that wonderful privilege.  In late January 2008 I found myself halfway around the world (literally!) preparing Canadian composer Heather Schmidt’s new Concerto for Flute and Orchestra with the St. Petersburg Chamber Philharmonic Orchestra and a conductor colleague from Memorial University, Vernon Regehr.

The history of this project is an interesting one, and fraught with almost as many twists as a cold war thriller.  In the early years of the 2000s, the CBC commissioned a concerto from Heather with me designated as the premiering artist.  There were also provisions made for the premiering orchestra, which was to be the CBC Vancouver Orchestra. Heather finished the work in 2003, sent me a copy of the score and flute part, and we waited.  And waited.  And waited some more!  In the time between the commissioning of and completion of the concerto there had been changes at the CBC in general and at the CBC orchestra in Vancouver, and this particular project was lost in those shuffles. 

Late in 2006 I contacted Heather and asked her if she would be interested in me trying to find another home for the concerto’s premiere.  She was, but required a release from the original contract with the CBC.  This was granted without difficulty, and I started my inquiries.  I had barely begun when serendipity stepped in.  In an amazing coincidence, it turned out that a friend and colleague at Memorial University, Vernon Regehr, had just received an invitation to guest conduct a concert with the St. Petersburg Chamber Philharmonic Orchestra, an orchestra with a mandate to promote Russian-American collaborations and to present new music.  He was thrilled to be able to include a world premiere in his programming. 

As I commented to one friend and mentor prior to my departure, I am constantly amazed at the places my musical life takes me.  The trip to St. Petersburg will undoubtedly remain a high point of my performing life for some time to come.  First, the piece I was premiering is an excellent work, one I can highly recommend to anyone (more on the music follows below).  Second, preparing the work presented some unique challenges to me as a musician.  Frankly, I was a bit nervous about this gig because there is no piano reduction.  This meant that I was busy trying to learn the sound of the work through the score alone and my own bad piano playing.  I was committed to performing the concerto from memory (there was really no reason not too), but wasn’t able to rehearse it with piano prior to going abroad.  The first time I would be hearing the piece would be with the orchestra in St. P, and I wondered just exactly how foolish I was to be doing the concerto from memory when I didn’t even really know how the piece sounded!  Those people who play concertos more regularly than I do wouldn’t worry about this as much as I did, but I’m a busy university professor and performer in other contexts and do a concerto gig about once every two years.  No risk, no reward, however, and I was convinced that the piece would be the better for my not having a part and stand in front of me.

The first rehearsal with the orchestra did make me a bit nervous.  The St. Petersburg Chamber Philharmonic is a young, freelance orchestra, and some of that youth and inexperience was a bit evident in the first rehearsal.  However, we had more than the usual amount of rehearsal time and, in the end, it was a very satisfying performance.  I did find myself wishing, during the performance, that I had had the opportunity to hear the orchestral part of the concerto sounding a little more the way it did in performance in, say, oh, the second rehearsal!  I found myself listening, sometimes, to new things I was hearing in the orchestra!  Nevertheless, it was a LOT of fun.  I had one obvious lapse in judgement during the performance (in addition, of course, to the small ones no one notices): I hit my flute on the stand of the first desk first violins during the cadenza (obviously I was moving around too much) and distracted myself terribly!

As I mentioned above, the piece itself is excellent.  It is three movements, neo-classic in its construction, with a discernable tonal center that is expressed through a quartal harmonic language heavily influenced by Bartok.  In other words, it’s interesting but accessible.  Heather’s writing is also very strongly rhythmic, which is always an audience pleaser.  The slow movement turned out to be just gorgeous, and the last movement a fun 168 bpm romp.  Any student comfortable with the standard concerti would have fun with this piece.  As soon as Heather completes a piano reduction I will certainly be recommending it to my students for competitions.  It’s scored for strings, two oboes, 2 horns and timpani; this chamber size orchestra scoring makes it very programmable, I think, and I myself am looking forward to more performances of the work. 

As if getting to perform a wonderful new piece in its first incarnation wasn’t enough, I got to do it in an extremely interesting city.  The conductor colleague I was travelling with and I were staying in an apartment just a few minutes walk from the Hermitage museum, in which I saw the famous painting of the three women musicians (one a flute player) by “Master of the Female Half-Length.”  I drank in the architecture and walked everywhere.  The best thing about St. Petersburg in January:  NO TOURISTS!  We also ate very good, very interesting food (maybe we just picked good restaurants?).  And, of course, It was SO much fun to meet musicians in another city.  The language barrier meant that I didn’t get to talk at length with any of them (except the orchestra manager Timofei, who was amazingly organized), but I did eventually get to talk to the young woman who played principal flute for the rest of the concert (no flutes in the concerto, of course).  Her name was Maria; I have unfortunately forgotten her last name.  She was an excellent player: great intonation, assured fingers, etc.  Her sound was dark, and not exactly what you might hear in someone who had studied in North America, but it was a good sound.  She had just been to New York in November to buy a new flute and was excited to find out that I played a Brannen.  She had just bought an Osten Brannen and was really loving it.  She had studied at the St. Petersburg Conservatory – a fact she told me with some embarrassment, which I found interesting.  I smiled and replied that that was true of all of us, wasn’t it?  That we tend to study where we are from.  I found her shyness about her studies interesting; I see it in Canadians, too, sometimes, when they confess they haven’t headed to the US for their studies. 

There were a few things about the whole orchestra mentality in St. Petersburg that I found interesting.  People were late; people missed services; and according to the orchestra manager, there is not the depth of wind playing expertise in the city for him to cease hiring the good players who let him down in this way.  I found this “lax” attitude very different from my own brief employment experiences in North American orchestras (including last year, while I was on leave from Memorial and played as a regular, contract member of the Augusta Symphony) – I certainly could have been replaced about twenty times over if I had been late or failed to commit to a full run of rehearsals on a regular basis.  Behaviour during rehearsals was also much less disciplined than we are used to in North America.  My conductor colleague nearly had a fit at the first rehearsal when he stopped...and people TALKED!  Of course, I’m speaking here of this particular orchestra, not orchestras in Russia in general.

All in all, it was an excellent trip, and excellent cultural experience and a very rewarding musical moment in my life.  My thanks goes out to all of my wonderful musical friends and colleagues around the world who offered me advice prior to my trip, both musical and otherwise (I didn’t drink the water...  :-)  ).

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