Toronto is the only Canadian city with a dedicated, professional dance orchestra. In fact, there are only a half-dozen of these orchestras in all of North America.
And, as far as National Ballet Orchestra music director David Briskin knows, only the New York City Ballet and San Francisco Ballet ensembles match the National Ballet’s level of activity.
Briskin is on a mission to raise people’s awareness of how special this is, with projects like moving the National Ballet Orchestra out of the pit and onto a stage for a concert honouring the company’s 60th anniversary on Tuesday night at Koerner Hall.
- Classical Music 101: What Does A Conductor Do? - June 17, 2019
- Classical Music 101 | What Does Period Instrument Mean? - May 6, 2019
- CLASSICAL MUSIC 101 | What Does It Mean To Be In Tune? - April 23, 2019
“I’ve chosen pieces that reflected the artistic directors and their visions over the past 60 years,” Briskin explains of his orchestra’s mainstage début at the Telus Centre.
The programme features musical highlights from the National Ballet of Canada’s full history, from Alexander Borodin’s Polovtsian Dances and Leo Delibes’ Coppelia, through Swan Lake and the Nutckacker by Peter Ilytch Tchaikovsky, to Igor Stravinsky’s Firebird, Joby Talbot’s Alice in Wonderland and Leonard Bernstein’s West Side Story.
The music will come with big-screen projections of images from the company’s history, along with a narrative delivered by Colm Feore.
The programme concludes with the infectious Mambo, from Leonard Bernstein’s West Side Story.
“We were the first (ballet) company outside of New York to be given permission to do West Side Story, which, in the dance world, was a huge vote of support,” says Briskin. “It really demonstrated the confidence the rest of the ballet world has in the National Ballet, and how it has grown over the last five or six years.”
“It’s going to make for an entertaining and informative evening,” Briskin adds.
“From the Ballet’s beginnings, Celia (Franka) insisted upon having live music and a music director. This was part of the culture of the company, and its identity,” he says.
“This was the main reason that I came (to Toronto),” Briskin recalls. “It was because of the musical culture of the company. The orchestra was so good and so committed to what they were doing. There was the new hall, of course. The timing was all right.”
He says that there are dance companies for whom music always comes second to movement, something he calls, “an upstairs, downstais mentality.”
“I’ve worked for companies like that, and I’m not interested in that.” he says.
The National Ballet Orchestra has presented two concerts at the Richard Bradshaw Amphitheatre, and Briskin has also organized a side-by-side concert with University of Toronto music alumni since he became head of orchestral studies at the school in 2008.
Briskin says he would have loved to present Tuesday night’s programme as a recording, as well — either on the air or for a disc — but the financial side didn’t work out in time. “The next big goal for the orchestra is to do more recording,” says the conductor.
The orchestra will be heard on Romeos and Juliets, an upcoming hour-long CBC documentary on the making of the National Ballet’s well-received new Romeo and Juliet, choreographed by Alexei Ratmansky on Sergei Prokofiev’s intense music, last November.
To save money, the documentary producers had originally intended to use a pre-recorded soundtrack by an Eastern European orchestra. Briskin says he insisted that his orchestra provide all the necessary music for what was the company’s own production.
“We worked very, very hard with the CBC and the producers to make this happen,” says Briskin. In the end, they managed to record everything they needed in three hours. “It was a special morning, with all 50 to 52 members of the orchestra in the Glenn Gould Studio for the first time.”
Briskin says he frequently turns on Classical 96FM or CBC Radio 2 and hears ballet music played by orchestras from other parts of the world. “When you’ve got your own ballet orchestra in this country, we should be playing the ballet music that is being heard across the country,” insists the conductor.
“When you hear Swan Lake or anything else from our repertoire, you should be associating it with the National Ballet of Canada. That is going to be my next project for the orchestra.”
Tuesday night’s concert at Koerner Hall is a great start.
For program details and tickets, click here.
Here’s a promotional video from the making of this season’s Romeo an Juliet:
John Terauds
- Classical Music 101: What Does A Conductor Do? - June 17, 2019
- Classical Music 101 | What Does Period Instrument Mean? - May 6, 2019
- CLASSICAL MUSIC 101 | What Does It Mean To Be In Tune? - April 23, 2019
