Preview
GLENN
Blacklist Theatre Project
Starring Trevor Leigh, Phil Sarsons, Tim Koetting and Evan Rothery
Written by David Young
Directed by Kevin McKendrick
Runs September 14 to 26
Downstairs Hall (Epcor Centre)
Imagine producing a play about Beethoven and being able to consult one of the composer’s closest friends?
That’s almost how the Blacklist Theatre Project feels these days as it prepares to stage Glenn, David Young’s play about Glenn Gould. The little artist-run company has had the great fortune to be able to pick the brains of the legendary Canadian musician’s good friend and producer, who also happens to be a leading expert on Gould. And he also happens to live in Calgary.
John Roberts, the former fine arts dean at the University of Calgary and, more recently, jury chairman of the Honens International Piano Competition, knew Gould for more than 25 years, worked closely with him as a CBC music producer, and has since written a Gould biography and co-edited his selected letters. He also established the Glenn Gould Foundation and the Glenn Gould Prize. So who better to sit in on rehearsals and provide the actors and director with a real sense of the colourful, eccentric genius they are attempting to portray?
"John has been an extraordinary resource," says Kevin McKendrick, who is directing the play, which stars Tim Koetting, Trevor Leigh, Evan Rothery and Phil Sarsons. "He’s brought us into his home, and shown us videos and played us recordings from his considerable private stock of Gould memorabilia."
Roberts also knows Young’s play well, having seen it three times previously, including its debut production in Toronto in 1992.
The first time he saw it, he admits he wasn’t quite ready for it.
"It was very difficult for me, because I knew Glenn personally and I’ve also done an enormous amount of research on him," says Roberts, a charming, soft-spoken man. "I’ve had to learn to take three paces back and forget those facts, and appreciate that this is someone else’s concept of Glenn."
Now he considers Young’s play to be "extraordinary." No simple dramatic biography, it splits Gould into four distinct personalities – the Prodigy, the Performer, the Perfectionist and the Puritan – played by four different actors, and divides his life into 32 segments that parallel Bach’s sublime "keyboard practice" with which Gould is most famously identified.
"I think it’s a really bold thing to try to do – to have four aspects of the same person all involved with each other," says Roberts, "and then to mesh all this into a structure that comes from the Goldberg Variations."
Gould’s performances of Bach’s Goldberg Variations are, of course, among the greatest of classical recordings and Gould himself is one of the musical giants of the last half of the 20th century. Already a superstar in his lifetime, since his death in 1982, his stature has grown to mythic proportions.
In many respects, notes Roberts, Gould was ahead of his time. In 1957, at the height of the Cold War, he became the first western artist to play behind the Iron Curtain – and was rapturously received by Russian audiences. He foresaw the demise of classical concert-going and quit the stage in his prime, preferring to experiment in the studio.
But he also was, and remains, a controversial figure. He despised music competitions, so integral to the classical world, branding them "a blood sport." He dared to impose his own radical interpretations on the classical canon, which still galvanizes opinion. And he threw his personality totally into his playing, bent low over the keyboard, humming and singing away to himself, defying the formal boundaries set up between a piece of classical music and its interpreter.
"A lot of critics absolutely hated him, but he was extremely brave. He defied everybody and everything," says Roberts. "He saw the performer, not as an interpreter, but as a co-creator, and if he did things that were unorthodox, it was his right to do them. This upset a lot of people."
Roberts remembers the time that Gould had to play Brahms’s "Piano Concerto No. 1 in D minor" with Leonard Bernstein and the New York Philharmonic. Ten days before Gould left for Manhattan, he and Roberts drove into the country, took a walk and Gould revealed that he planned to play the majestic piece at an outrageously slow tempo.
Roberts was alarmed. "I said to him, ‘Do you realize how difficult it will be for an orchestra to play it that slowly? How will it hang together?’ And he said, ‘Ah… that will be the challenge!’"
His audacious performance elicited a vitriolic review in the New York Times, but since then other top pianists have played the Brahms D minor in even slower tempi. "Glenn was a trailblazer," says Roberts. "He had visions of how things might be."
Roberts, an Australian expatriate, first met Gould in the mid-1950s, when Roberts was an apprentice CBC producer in Winnipeg and Gould, already a phenomenon, came to town to play with the Winnipeg Symphony Orchestra in a concert recorded for broadcast.
"He played the Beethoven ‘Piano Concerto No. 1’ and he was received like Michael Jackson," recalls Roberts. "The audience went completely bonkers at the end, yelled and screamed – it was like a pop concert. There were lots of young people there."
Gould slipped into the control room before the performance and introduced himself to Roberts, then later invited him to breakfast the next day. They hit it off immediately. "We had a marvelous discussion," says Roberts. "He was so animated that he almost missed his plane."
Later, when Roberts was offered a position in Toronto, the friendship was cemented. Gould and his parents took the young Aussie under their wing, inviting him to their Toronto home for family dinners and holidays.
"His interest was way beyond piano music," says Roberts, recalling how Gould liked to sing and play operas solo after supper and started a Shakespeare club with his friends so they could do their own recordings of the Bard’s plays. Eventually they moved into improv, with Gould creating a repertoire of humorous alter egos. "He was a great ham," says Roberts with a smile.
The two men remained close over the years. Gould was a witness at Roberts’ wedding and, later, godfather to his son. And Roberts was at Gould’s bedside when the pianist died following a stroke at the age of 50.
"I arranged his memorial service, to which 3,000 people came, in St. Paul’s Church, the largest church in Toronto," says Roberts. "Eleven countries sent official representatives to his service…. It was just amazing."
In the two decades since, Gould’s global fan base has only continued to grow.
"I can’t think of a Canadian in the arts who has ever achieved the kind of fame that he has," says Roberts. "There are people who are absolutely obsessed with him. He has literally touched the lives of millions of people all over the world."
In conjunction with the performances of Glenn, Roberts will be sharing his memories of Gould and his videos and recordings of the musician during a public lecture at the Cantos Music Foundation on September 28. |
Copyright ©2004 FFWD. All rights reserved.