A Musical Divide, Bridged
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Version 0 of 1. LONDON THERE was a time when period-performance specialists had a point to prove and were the ayatollahs of the music business. Armed with hot lines to the long-departed souls of Mozart, Handel, Bach and all earlier composers, they told you how this music had to go. And it invariably had to go with old, not modern, instruments: recorders, valveless horns, theorbos, violins with gut strings and Baroque bows. Now things are more relaxed. The gulf between the worlds of old and modern instruments is not so deep, and a new breed of “historically aware” conductors is crossing it, trying to be true to period with whatever orchestra they are given. Harry Bicket is a prime example, crossing back and forth relentlessly. On Friday Mr. Bicket opens a revival of Mozart’s “Clemenza di Tito” at the Metropolitan Opera with the company’s conventional forces. In February he brings his own old-instrument band, the English Concert, to Carnegie Hall for a concert performance of Handel’s “Radamisto.” And in April he returns to the Met for a new David McVicar production of Handel’s “Giulio Cesare,” imported from Glyndebourne. Mozart and Handel are his specialties (although he doesn’t like to be called a specialist), and he has conducted plenty of both in the United States, among them Handel’s “Rodelinda” at the Met; Mozart’s “Nozze di Figaro” and “Entführung aus dem Serail” at New York City Opera; Handel’s “Partenope” at Glimmerglass, his “Agrippina” at the Santa Fe Opera and his “Rinaldo” at the Lyric Opera of Chicago. Add in Mr. Bicket’s other work at the Aspen Music Festival, Tanglewood and the New York Philharmonic, and his life looks focused on America. But he was born and lives in England. And it was at his home in northwest London — an apartment bought from the stage director Nicholas Hytner, who now lives across the street — that I asked him what it was like for a conductor to juggle period bands and mainstream orchestras. “It’s not for everyone,” he said. “But I grew up with modern instruments. I spent five years at English National Opera with Puccini, Wagner and contemporary repertoire. I know the issues on both sides of the discussion.” And what are the issues? “They begin with different mind-sets,” Mr. Bicket said. “Modern players are taught to play precisely what’s on the page, and within an inch of their lives.” “But period players would go nuts if I started telling them how long or short a note should be, because they’re more like jazz musicians,” he continued. “They’re used to swinging a rhythm and not so tied to the score, which in the 18th century was more like a sketch, without too much information. You’re lucky to get tempo markings or dynamics. You won’t be told what’s accented or what a rhythm really is. “A modern orchestra wants to be told all this and write it in their parts. But I try to get them <em>not</em> to write anything in and play like a string quartet: to listen to each other and, if someone takes a rhythm a certain way, to imitate it. That demands trust. And if I’m with an orchestra for the first time, it doesn’t always make for a beautiful marriage. As soon as you say, ‘Let’s play around with this rhythm,’ it sounds like your section won’t be playing together, which isn’t something an orchestra like the Met aspires to. But it’s a process you have to endure to get the result.” Of course the players have to want to do these things. “If they’re doing it begrudgingly,” Mr. Bicket said, “it’s never going to be good music making.” But resistance, he added, is diminishing. “When I started out, I remember giving an orchestra a few general ideas about style and articulation, and before we’d even played a note, the concertmaster said out loud, ‘Well, that’s not the way I learned to play the violin.’ End of discussion. Things have changed since then. Most players are more open and more curious.” Mr. Bicket’s own curiosity grew through what he acknowledges was a roundabout route. Born in 1961 in Liverpool, where music meant the Beatles, he went to Oxford as an organ scholar, spent time at Westminster Abbey (where he played for the ill-fated wedding of Prince Andrew and Sarah Ferguson) and occasionally freelanced as a keyboard player with Baroque bands. But his interests were eclectically unorthodox. As he recalls, processions from the west door of the abbey up to the high altar took 10 minutes, which was perfect for the Prelude to Wagner’s “Meistersinger.” He played jazz clubs and ballet classes, and coached singers in his spare time. And he eventually left the abbey to join the music staff of the English National Opera, soon becoming chorus master and working on every opera that came his way. When chances to conduct came up, he took them, with a growing expertise that focused on the Baroque and Classical periods. And his break came in 1996, when William Christie fell ill during the first run of the most celebrated Glyndebourne staging of that era, Handel’s “Theodora.” With direction by Peter Sellars, a cast led by Dawn Upshaw and Lorraine Hunt Lieberson, and the pristinely period Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment in the pit, it attracted international attention. And when Mr. Bicket stepped in as the substitute conductor, some of that attention fell on him, leading to, among other things, an invitation to assist James Levine at the Met the next year. His first task there was to help with the Jean-Pierre Ponnelle production of “Clemenza” that he conducts again on Friday. And he recalls a potentially awkward initial meeting at which Mr. Levine told him, “Harry, I know your background, and everything I do with this piece you’re probably going to hate, but just bear with me.” That is what happened. “We were coming from two different traditions,” Mr. Bicket said, “mine period, his modern. And his idea of Mozart was of course big house, with a ravishing sound that works wonderfully at the Met, and I totally admire it. But that said, it’s not my way. So when he got ill and asked me to do the next revival, I changed a few things. Carefully. And each time I go back, knowing the players better, I guess I push it a bit further.” Still, all the pushing in the world won’t surmount the elements of compromise in big-house, modern-instrument Mozart and Handel. “One of the first things you do in period-style performance is reduce the number of players,” Mr. Bicket said. “because you can’t have the freedom with, say, seven desks of strings that you can with three. But in a space like the Met, that can sound puny. One thing we do is raise the pit, to try to get the conversation you need between instruments and voices in the recitatives. But you’ve still got to send the sound to the back of a nearly 4,000-seat auditorium.” On the period front Mr. Bicket took over the English Concert four years ago, and it was a surprise appointment for someone whose history had veered toward the vocal rather than the orchestral world. During those four years English Concert recordings have been largely voice related, with big-name singers making discs of opera arias, although that, he said, is for commercial reasons. “Nice as it would be to do another Vivaldi concerti disc, which we’d play wonderfully,” he said, “would it pay? And would we sell enough tours on the back of it? Probably not. These are tough times for a British band like ours that doesn’t have the state support a lot of our competitors have, especially in France.” Next year the English Concert, founded by the harpsichordist and conductor Trevor Pinnock, celebrates its 40th anniversary. “Trevor Pinnock was saying to me recently that the problems we face now are the exact opposite of the ones he faced four decades ago,” Mr. Bicket said. “Then there were very few period bands, and no one thought they were good enough. Now it’s accepted that they’re good, but there are probably too many.” That said, the English Concert has focused on reinventing itself in the last few years, recruiting fresh, young talent and, as Mr. Bicket insisted, “playing as well as ever, if not better.” The 40th-anniversary plans include a high-profile series at Wigmore Hall in London, more operatic CDs and the Carnegie “Radamisto,” the first in a three-year annual series of concert versions of Handel operas. The operas, with what Mr. Bicket calls “fantastic casts,” will also be performed in London, Paris and Vienna. “I only wish we could record them,” he said. “But that would take a six-figure sum we don’t have.” Meanwhile Mr. Bicket is pursuing his avowedly nonspecialist career, conducting Bizet’s “Carmen” at the Lyric Opera of Chicago, Dvorak’s “Rusalka” at the Houston Grand Opera and works by Stravinsky, Bach and Anna Clyne with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra. “I truly don’t like the limitations that go with being thought of as a period conductor,” he said. “And I don’t actually thrill to the English Concert being called a period orchestra. The fact that we use old instruments shouldn’t put us in a different category to anybody else. The issue isn’t period or modern. Good or bad is all that matters.” |