Oregon Art Beat; #1009; Portland Baroque Orchestra

It's your scatter from October to November and December and March and May and it's, I mean, that sounds like almost a full season. Yes, but I don't do all of it, no, I mean, I, you know, we've got some, we've got this Alex Wyman coming, who I ran into in Montreal, I think is very talented, a very nice guy, very natural musician, we've got Paul Goodwin coming back, who's been here several times and he's a, he's a specialist with wind repertoire mainly and slightly later repertoire and I think the orchestra loves him and the audience knows him. And then we've got Richard Egar and I are sharing the last concert of this 25th season and that'll be really nice to get on stage with Richard because he's a fantastic musician. We're going to wait for a moment. So actually, let's begin by talking about what sets you apart and that is the equipment you choose to work with. So what's your preference, recumbent or regular bicycle? Important, regular because there's too many hills.

Oh, okay. Reconvents are really wonderful because there's no pressure on your wrists if you're a violinist. You know, it's one of the problems with cycling is you can get tendonitis from leaning forward and so the, well, the recumbents that I have, the handlebars are high and you just drop your arms down and it's much easier on your wrists. But they're not good for hills. No, they're horrible. Oh, okay. It's all, the physics is all wrong. Okay. While we are talking about equipment, let's talk about instruments and the form of equipment. I have a feeling that's what you thought I might be asking. Yes, I did. But I can talk about both. Help describe for the layperson who really is unfamiliar with the differences in instruments other than what they've probably been exposed to in elementary school band. What the difference is between the violin or the fiddle you play and the violin they hear somebody

in the symphony playing? Well, I always start this off by saying that the violin that you hear in the symphony now is nothing like it was when it was born. Why? How so? Well, especially the older instruments. Obviously, there are modern instruments which are made and immediately played by people in the symphony orchestra. But, you know, the famous makers of Marty, sort of areas, Gwanarius, Testory, they're all the instruments were more like the instrument that I play and I would say the overriding difference for me personally is the fact that they're strong with pure gut strings. Your symphony player will have a steel e -string. My e -string is pure gut. Your symphony player will have an A and a D string wound with aluminium that might be gut inside, but in fact probably not, probably

something synthetic. My A and my D string are pure gut, no metal. My G string is wound, it's gut and it's wound with silver, but it's wound in an old fashioned way with modern machines can wind the strings very, very smooth. The old fashioned way wasn't so smooth, so they have a bit more buzz and rattle. So, the actual sound of the strings is not so glossy, it's not so bright, I would say it's not so hard, it's not so loud, that's also a very important part. It has a more mellow flavour, I like to say it's nutty, sounds a bit nutty. Maybe it's a little bit kind of vegan, in fact it's sheet gut. It's the sort of, you know, people were used to make fun of people who played only music

because they said they all wore Birkenstocks. And there is an element of that, you know, we are a little bit purist. We'd like to go back to earlier values and a simpler way of playing and without, you know, we don't use a chinrest, we don't use a shoulderrest. If you take those off any kind of instrument, you will find that the sound is very different. Anything that you add onto a violin colours the sound, and a chinrest, you know, it's a piece of wood, okay, but it usually has two little pieces of metal, and those pieces of metal resonate like hell, and colour the sound and make the sound more metallic. And these shoulderrests, they rest against the side of the ribs. The ribs of the violin are very thin, so they can vibrate a lot. So as soon as you put something that's clasping the ribs, you're stopping those bits of rib

from vibrating. And so the whole instrument is not so free. In order to compensate for that with modern, with what I call the modern setup, they use a heavier bow, they use higher tension. But the instrument, as it was first made, it had gut strings, it had a different bridge which wasn't cantilevered back, it had a fingerboard, the neck was closer to straight. So there wasn't so much tension, the fingerboard was shorter, the tailpiece was simpler, there were no adjusters, you just did it all with the pegs. It was like a kind of simplified instrument. And the bow was, I think, far more beautiful, it was much more bow -shaped, it was outcurved. And it's like a rapier, it's like fencing, they're so light and precise, and they don't have that hatchet head, they have what we call a swan head, which in some cases is almost just a

point. So you really do feel like you can almost start fencing. And the music you generate with it, it sounds like you don't mind a little, as you say, buzz and rattle. Well no, buzz and rattle is awfully good. If you've got a very, very, very loud instrument, like a trombone or a timpani or a trumpet even, the sheer volume will cut through. But with a violin, the really great instruments have a very beautiful sound, but they also have a kind of shimmer, it's a little bit of edge. It's colors in the higher partials. That makes that sound carry. And so one of the ways that the baroque instrument can compensate these 17th, 18th century violins in their original condition, how they compensate for not being so loud, is a little bit of buzz and rattle articulation sound, which

makes me clear, makes me carry. What you'll find if you have a concerted baroque instrument like five, six instruments, it's partly the way they're playing, it's partly the way that the instrument's sound. But you'll hear all the individual parts, whereas with modern instruments, you won't hear that so clearly, it gets muddy. It sounds like a hulk and a mush of mousse, chocolate mousse mixed up with sort of high -fat yoghurt, I would say, you know, it's all kind of a bit thick and gloppy, and you don't get that. You get a leaner sound. Yours is a low -fat symphony. Yes. Non -fat. Ah, even better. Yes. Well then, if you start with the basic of non -fat, and then you add a little bit of fat, my goodness, you notice, you know, you really appreciate it. So, if you add a little bit of vibrato in the non -fat musical diet, adding the vibrato is like a little bit of schmaltz, schmaltz being the Austrian, the German

word for fat or grease. So, a bit of schmaltz, and then you notice, if you put, if you lava schmaltz on everything, you don't notice anymore. So, somebody coming to one of your concerts for the first time is going to notice that this is not as loud a performance as they might have thought, going into a classical performance. Yes. Yes, it's not going to be so loud, but it will be clearer, and those outward -curving bows mean you get this articulation. I can't do it so well, because I'm not a wind player, but what you hear is, every note you can hear the beginning and the articulation between every note is much clearer. So, it's more lively. When you want to have lively music, I think it's much more lively with these instruments because of all that articulation. And I understand that when you perform the Baroque music, you're standing. Yes. And most

people are not expecting that either, you know? No, one of what we find is that when people stand, they're more expressive. They play out more, they communicate more. Also, something about maybe the sense of rhythm that they kind of dance around even on stage, they engage the audience more, they play better. And it's only a little orchestra. I mean, if you had a symphony orchestra all standing up, 14 first violins, they're all dancing around. It'd be terribly distracting, but with a little orchestra, four or five first violins, it's fine. It's good. It's more than fine, it's good. So, you enjoy dancing as you play? Yes. Yes, I do. Now, did I read that you originally wanted to go into rock and roll? Or is that just something you thought about briefly? No, it was not something that I thought was possible when I was younger. I mean, I started playing violin when I was six. And by the time I was 12, because

I came from this big family, and we weren't very wealthy, to say the least. You know, when you have a big family, the parents like to say, oh, he's good at this, so he can do that, and she's good at that. And so by the time I was 12, they said, well, she's talented in music, so she can be a musician. And I was a violinist, and so that was, and I went off to conservatory when I was 16. But I loved pop music, and I loved Eric Clapton and Jimmy Hendrix, and I loved guitar solos. In fact, I mean, probably unlike most people, I would sort of suffer listening to the vocals, so that I could listen to the guitar riff in the middle, because I just loved the guitar riff. And I've got a nephew who's studied violin a bit, and now he plays the guitar, and he's always saying, oh, the violin's stupid instrument. But one of the reasons he can play the guitar so well is because he played the violin, and I could have been a guitarist, and I would have liked to have been Eric Clapton, because I think he was fantastic. And one of my favorite songs all time is Politician,

which has, I think, Eric sort of triple or quadruple tracking, and it's just so raunchy. I mean, I think I bring a certain wildness to my rock music performances, which is the wildness of somebody who could have been a rock musician. But probably if I'd been a rock musician, I'd be dead. Sounds like, because as many projects as you have going on, surely you can invent yet another one, and somehow manage to play with Eric Clapton. Well, it's a nice idea. I haven't got time to focus on that at the moment. Describe the goal I gather is to sound the way the music sounded when it was written, 300 plus years ago. That's the goal, but it's crazy. Of course, we don't really have any idea what they sounded like. Nobody got the MP3 player out and made a quick recording. So it's all

done by detective work. It's forensic detective work. We look at pictures, we read the books, we examine old instruments, we examine old strings, we examine old bows, we measure thicknesses, we do everything that we possibly can to try to figure out how they approach music and what instruments they play, to try and recreate what they did. But we actually have no idea if it's right or not. But I think that one of the great things about the early music movement is it has breathed new life into classical music generally, because it's been a fresh view. It's sort of taken off the layers of interpretation which grew over 200 years. And it's kind of freed

people up. I feel that the conservatories ended up teaching everybody how to play the violin. And this was the way you played the violin. No matter whether you were in Moscow or New York or, you know, Munich or Amsterdam, there was a kind of standard way. That's so, it's kind of stagnant. It's not your style. Well, no, and it's not even very historically correct for any period up until the Second World War. You know, if you listen to recordings of violinists, early recordings, you can tell who's playing the violin by their sound, by their vibrato, by the way they shift, by the way they phrase, you know, every violinist had their own character. And that's what it should be. You should be able to hear a personal voice. And I think what early music did was, because it threw away all these

preconceptions, it gave us instrumentalists a chance to find our own voices. And that's been very liberating. Sounds like you're both a purist and a rebel. Yes, you're right. I think that's true. And what you describe about the forensics, I mean, that sounds like the launching pad of a new BBC show. We call it CSI Monica. Yes. Yeah, it'd be better than CSI Miami, which isn't so good anymore. What's the difference between a fiddle and a violin? None. Absolutely no difference whatsoever. I've seen some reference to saying you play the fiddle. And I've seen others that refer to a violin. And I just wondered, what do you call your own instrument? I call it the fiddle. Yes. Because I often, you know, improvise a lot of stuff. The music I play

is a skeleton. Broke music is not fully notated in the way that late 20th or 21st century music is notated. It's really the bare bones. And I'm allowed to not only add expression in dynamics and articulation, but I can actually add notes. And so maybe I feel as if I'm closer to the folk tradition. But in fact, there is no difference. It's just the difference between a fiddle and a violin is all up here. In some circles, the audience to whom classical music appeals. It's been rather small compared to the overall population. How do you describe the people who gravitate to your music? Are they from the classical audience? Or are you bringing in others who realize they're listening to something that's... I'm thinking that the people who are not exposed as much to classical. And when they hear the name, they think boring, stayed. Exactly. And

are you bringing any of them into the tent? Well, you know, I hope I am. And I certainly feel that Portland Broke Orchestra has an audience of people who are certainly not coming just to be seen at the concert. Or because it's the fashionable thing to do or to show off their new gown or to drive up in their Mercedes or whatever. I mean, I think we have a very loyal following of people who love what we do. And they're all sorts of people. They're garage mechanics and professors and probably, you know, postmen. And I think that's because we play music in a very, very lively manner. And people come away from our concerts having gained something, you know, gained some energy or gained some spiritual insight. I think that we give real pleasure to our audiences and we really

communicate with them. For me personally, that's terribly important. I want the music to jump off the stage. I want the music to really grab people and take them on a journey. Whatever journey that is, that music takes them. But it's very important that they're not really kind of just sitting there twiddling their thumbs, but that you stimulate their imagination and they come with you on the journey through the music. And so I'm very much hope that we are bringing people in. And I know that in previous times I don't know whether we do it so much now, but we used to give away tickets to people who we thought might be interested and people often, very often, if they came to one concert, they come back because they say we've never heard anything like this before. So why Portmond? How did you land here? Well, it is an accident of history, which is that I was the concert mistress of the Amsterdam Baroque Orchestra for eight years. And the director of the Amsterdam

Baroque Orchestra was Tom Kotman. And he made a connection with a chap, a Dutchman who lived in Vancouver, British Columbia, who used to run a summer course. So from 1981 to 1989, I used to teach every summer in Vancouver, BC. And all the guys and girls from the West Coast came up and studied with me. And so the people in Portmond were very fanatic, as people in Portmond often are. They were very determined. They were going to start a Baroque Orchestra. And first of all, Tom Kotman was their kind of artistic advisor, but then they finally decided they wanted to have an artistic director. And they thought of good old Monica, who they had all taken lessons from for this was like in 93 or 94, can't remember. And they remembered me, and actually I came up here and I did a kind of

audition project. But it's all dates back to 1981. And now you're going into what season? This is going to the 25th, yes. Not with your involvement with the orchestra, but with the orchestra, yes. And you know, I have to salute those only members, David Kerf and the violin shop, Laura Cunningham, Holly Stern, Sue Jensen. I mean, they used to do, what do they call them? Are they called potlant dinners, or do they? And then they would do all those silent auctions. And they were so fanatic and they had such a lot of energy and they got it going. And it's kind of a miracle. Well, it's hard to keep a group like this, solvent. Yes. I mean, financially. This is just a woman upstream here. Yes. Well, we've had our ups and downs, but luckily now we have Tom

Cerello and he's very good. And he keeps his eye on the ball. And we're fine financially. And that's, thank God. And how does the music coming out of the Portland Baroque Orchestra compare or differ from other Baroque orchestras? Since we know you've had experience with a number of them. Well, I think I learned quite a lot from the Portlanders in terms of really bringing a lot of energy. I would say that the Portland Baroque, even in the very early days, always had this tremendous energy and desire to communicate. And I learned a lot from working with them. I think probably when I first started, I was a little bit more European and everything had to be correct, which is not a bad thing. And maybe everything had to be more smoothed out or more

sophisticated. But I think hopefully I haven't lost the sophistication, but I think raw musical energy, raw musical energy is what you get from rock music. And we see how popular that is. That appeals to the majority of the world, raw music. And there's a place in Baroque music for a certain rawness. Is there anything else you'd like to add? Tom, should I add anything? I don't know about something great. I appreciate it. There's no screw there. That's the original way of a... Absolutely arc. Where's the arc? You can see that it's more like a bow and arrow. A modern bow has an ink curve. It's not a huge arc curve. The

Renaissance bows would have been really like this. So how old is this bow? Well, this will probably be a late 17th century. It's a copy. It's a late 17th century. But I mean, you know, I can't just... On guard to shake. I'm no match. And that's a very nice head. And it's very light. And you know it was a Portlander who just won the gold and fencing in the Olympics. She did. She won the gold last time, too. Two in a row. That is amazing. But it's very light. It is. It means you can move quickly. You can place fast enough in a way that a modern bow just cannot. They cannot get... They cannot just move that quickly because it's so much heavier. And this... Thanks. This is a Joseph Albani violin, 1707. He was the son of the more famous Matthias Albani. And it was made in Botsano, which is a Tirol. In...

1707. In what country? Well, it's now Italy. No, Italy, OK. God knows what it was in 1707. Botsano. It might have... Well, of course Italy didn't exist. It was... It could have been Austro -Hungary. It was a Tirol, anyway. His father's very famous. And this is a very similar violin to his father's model, which means it's actually a kind of 17th century model. It has quite a high arching, which gives it a kind of trebly voice. It sounds a bit like a boy soprano. But what you see here is that it's a very simple tailpiece. There's just holes for the strings. You're not the strings, and then you thread them through. As opposed to... Oh, well... What did modern violins have there? Well, I haven't played one for so long. I don't know. Sometimes they have screws. If they've got some metal strings, they'd have screw attachments on all four.

Or they certainly have holes and slots, which makes it much easier to put the string in and to hold it. You have a bigger hole to put the string through, and then you let it slide up the slot, and it holds it very strongly. But these are just holes. And then the bridges are different kind of design, and it's lower. The fingerboard shorter. The neck is shorter and fatter, because, to a certain extent, you hold it quite a lot with your hand. You don't grip it with your chin that much. There's no... I don't use a shoulder rest. I don't use a chin rest. So it's very simple. You know, it's just... And there we are. Got E, got A, got G. Sorry. Look at that again. Got E, got A, pure got D, which is quite a thick string. And then I have a got G, which is wound with silver.

But some of my young colleagues who are very, very fanatic, they're almost like Plymouth Brethren, when it comes to strings. They use pure got G, which really look like rope. They're quite hard to play. But for like early 17th century music, probably they had all got. So this instrument is 301 years old? Yes. Yes. And it's doing fine. Yes. Marvellous. And that's your preferred instrument? Well, I have two preferred instruments, and my other preferred instrument is in the shop, because when you travel with something 365 days a year, all over the world in different climates, and you know, different places, sometimes you knock the corner off, and the, you know, the varnish comes off where you've perspired on it

during concerts, and the ribs have come unstuck here, because there's too much tension. Anyway, so the other violin, which is my kind of, I call it my Flemish or Dutch violin, it comes from further north, and it's bigger than this, and it's only about 250 years old. That one's having its 250 year service. Only 250 years old. So I tend to use this one for 17th century, and that one for 18th century. It makes a bigger sound. It's easier to play with other concertos and Bach concertos on that one. But this is lovely for smaller ensembles. Thank you very much. Todd, do you need any more close ups? In technology, I think existed from the middle of the 17th century, and there's certainly paintings where you see the silver bottom

string from the 1680s, 1690s. You actually see that in the paintings over there? Yes, it's very art. It's very obvious. I'm mistaken. It could not be an accident. Can point out the string again, please. Yeah, this top string, e -string, pure gut. E -string, pure gut. D -string, even, pure gut. They usually make those by taking two or three thinner strands and blending them together. Looks thicker. Yes, to make it thicker. And this, I choose to use a gut string wound with silver. Some of the purest kids actually use a pure gut G string, which is about twice as wide as that D string. It looks like a piece of rope. It does make a recognizable pitch sound, but it's very hard to play, and you can't play it very fast. Because the thick of the string and the harder it is to get the damn thing to respond to the

articulation. But this really is the reason why it sounds so different than gut strings. Can you point out the different ones down in this area? It's a little bit better lighting down there. Okay. This is... Huff her down. Halfway in between. Yeah. All right, where is she? Right there. Okay. Top string, e -string, made of pure gut, whereas on a modern violin, the Oregon Symphony, that would be made of steel. And this is a string pure gut. In the Oregon Symphony, that would be either gut, or most likely, some synthetic core wound with aluminium. D -string, pure gut. In the Oregon Symphony, again, either gut, or synthetic core wound without aluminium. The G -string is a wound string because from like 1650, they had the technology to wind strings. So this is a gut string wound with silver.

Okay. Mark, but the chin rest? Yes, that's right. Yeah, go ahead and point that out again, but show us. Yes, I don't use any chin rest. So actually, I didn't make this mark, but somebody before made this mark, I guess. If you're using your chin, you just put it straight on the instrument. And this is what they did right up until the 19th century. The chin rest was an invention of spore. And he apologized. He said, I'm so sorry. I put this ugly lump on the violin, but I really needed, because he was a virtuoso, and he'd fly up and down in octaves, and he said he needed to hold it better. And finally, enough, his chin rest wasn't even on this side. It was across the tailpiece. And then I also don't use any shoulder rest, and that is a very much a 20th century

invention. I use a piece of chamois leather rolled up, which some of my colleagues call my cannelloni. And I just fit that under my clothes. And that's all I need. And actually, I much preferred, whenever I pick up a modern violin with the shoulder rest. Who said that shoulder pads were out of fashion? I don't know. Yes, exactly. Shoulder pads, yes. You mean clothing shoulder pads, yes. Yes, exactly, yes. You can keep that fashion statement going forever. Yes, yes. I hate the rigidness of when you have a shoulder rest, because you can't move the instrument around at all. It's kind of fixed, fixed, fixed. I much prefer being able to change the angle. It gives you more freedom. And the thing is that because nothing's touching it, or relatively nothing's touching it, it resonates better. Because these are very thin. You can hear that they're very thin by the sound

of it. They're paper thin. And that means that they can flex and resonate. So if they're pinched by a shoulder rest, it stops them from resonating. Can you tap it again, but say nothing? Do you mind giving us a few notes? Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay.

Okay. What was that? That was John Com Kiss Me Now. It's in the version which is published in the division violin in London in 1884 with divisions by Thomas Boutser. That's just the melody. Yeah. It's beautiful. Thank you so much. Okay. We are very much looking forward to October when we get to actually be here for one of your performances. Oh, good. Yes. We will record it. It's great that you can help us.