MT catches up with TSO Principal Flute Nora Shulman to chat about her upcoming retirement and the road ahead
When you’re the associate, you’re the associate, especially when you’ve been there 12 years,” Nora Shulman recalled. “You’re not the shining new thing.”
Nevertheless, the holder of the No. 2 flute job in the Toronto Symphony since 1974 was clearly a suitable candidate to replace Jeanne Baxtresser as No. 1 when the latter left for the New York Philharmonic in 1984.
So after a couple of years of unnecessary auditions, music director Andrew Davis (who was not then yet a Sir) quietly promoted this soft-spoken virtuoso to principal, a job from which she steps down this month in what can (if her recent alluring work in Charles Tomlinson Griffes’s 1918 Poem for Flute and Orchestra is any measure) be safely called peak form.
An alumna of the California State University at Northridge, Shulman studied with Luella Howard and Louise Di Tullio. “I definitely have the DNA of Louise di Tullio,” she says of this respected veteran of the Los Angeles (and Hollywood) orchestral scene. “When I hear her play I realize I am her offspring.”
Another influence was the English flutist William Bennett, who studied with the French master Marcel Moyse. Resonant, rich, full and open are some of the words Shulman summons when asked to describe the sonic ideal she inherited from her forebears.
Sound, of course, is not a singular thing.
“I strive very hard to control nuance in my playing,” Shulman says. “Learning to play the essence of a phrase, that might mean more urgency of sound or a faster vibrato. You want to navigate musically in a way that is rich and significant.”
Shulman has worked under five TSO podium taskmasters, starting with Victor Feldbrill, appointed resident conductor in 1973 after the death of Karl Ancerl.
There are no hard words for any of them. What about that disciplinarian, Gunther Herbig?
“We knew what to do, we had guidance, we had a sound that was very European in his hands,” Shulman said. “And he was very supportive of me personally.
“I remember his saying something so kind when it was still not clear how much he enjoyed my work. Unnecessarily kind!”
An interesting observation about a conductor who was not always the perfect diplomat in rehearsal.
Jukka-Pekka Saraste, who made his hatred of Roy Thomson Hall so public?
“Interesting guy, and we played interesting music with him.”
Peter Oundjian, leaving after next season and recently named conductor emeritus?
“He’s done a great job. It was very important for him to be hired when he was. He did a great deal for audience development.
“Audiences have a positive perception of him. He is affable. He will speak to them, and audiences like this.”
And Davis, the TSO conductor laureate who will fill in through 2019-20 while the music director search is extended?
“He was a newbie when he came the orchestra, a young conductor. But what an astonishing talent he was and is. He just got better and better.
“When he comes back, it’s really very magical. He has a strong relationship with us. As close to family as you’re going to get.”
And on a more technical note: “He has very expressive hands.”
When asked to name guest conductors of note, Shulman starts with the Teutonic titans Klaus Tennstedt (1926-88) and Kurt Sanderling (1912-2011). Living visitors she holds in high esteem are Thomas Dausgaard and Gianandrea Noseda.
While Shulman found Valery Gergiev’s notorious toothpick initially an “unsettling” substitute for a baton, she would not deny the depth of his insight. And if Erich Leinsdorf (1912-1993) could be unpredictable in rehearsal, the results in concert spoke for themselves.
“You have to accept and respect a conductor,” Shulman says. “Otherwise, you’re going to be at odds.”
Getting along with her peers has never been a chore. “I’m a team player,” she says. Shulman counts herself lucky in having sat for many years next to principal oboe Richard Dorsey – “that musical singer” – and then his stellar student, Sarah Jeffrey.
“I feel that we’re so tight,” Shulman says of her fellow woodwinds.
She has a close association also with former harp principal Judy Loman. The pair have made two CDs for Naxos.
Having served as second flute in the Denver Symphony before joining the TSO, Shulman knows the orchestral flute repertoire from three perspectives, of four, counting the occasional doubling job on piccolo.
A lot of playing means a lot of sonic pressure on the flutist’s right ear. Shulman has used a custom earplug for about 15 years to limit the wear and tear.
She still feels upbeat the classics. Beethoven’s Eroica is a favourite. Too bad, she says, there is so little Schubert on orchestral programs these days.
Remarkably, Shulman will be entering terra incognita next week when Oundjian conducts Kurt Weill’s The Seven Deadly Sins with mezzo-soprano Wallis Giunta as soloist. The TSO subscription season ends with Carl Orff’s Carmina Burana. That one she has done before.
Retirement does not mean the end of teaching, mostly in her home studio, but also at the Edward Johnson Building (Shulman is an adjunct associate professor of flute at the University of Toronto). More free time means more collaboration with Loman. Plus the opportunity to study the baroque flute.
However she continues her career, this player will surely be remembered as the quintessential TSO pro.
“Honestly, I don’t think I have the highest profile,” she says. “But my Naxos CDs, especially the Dance of the Blessed Spirits with Judy Loman, were well received. I still get emails, and that CD has been around!
“So I’m known. But I’m married. I had two sons and juggled that life.
“I know there are players who want to achieve and achieve and achieve. My personal ambitions never went beyond maintaining my work at the highest level. That was always my goal. And to have a family life.”
Brava.
#LUDWIGVAN
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