{"id":16278,"date":"2013-11-27T08:38:13","date_gmt":"2013-11-27T13:38:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.ludwig-van.com\/?p=16278"},"modified":"2013-11-27T09:10:35","modified_gmt":"2013-11-27T14:10:35","slug":"tonight-and-tomorrow-conductor-edward-gardners-blind-dates-now-include-the-toronto-symphony-orchestra","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.ludwig-van.com\/toronto\/2013\/11\/27\/tonight-and-tomorrow-conductor-edward-gardners-blind-dates-now-include-the-toronto-symphony-orchestra\/","title":{"rendered":"Tonight and tomorrow: Conductor Edward Gardner’s blind dates now include the Toronto Symphony Orchestra"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Edward<\/a>
Edward Gardner conducted the Last Night of the Proms at Royal Albert Hall two years ago (Chris Christodoulou\/BBC photo).<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Edward Gardner, making his local d\u00e9but with the Toronto Symphony tonight and tomorrow, describes the relationship between a conductor and orchestra as, “a chemical thing.”<\/p>\n

“Sometimes it clicks and sometimes it doesn’t,” he continues, adding that Sir Colin Davis used to refer the first contact between baton and players as “a blind date.”<\/p>\n

Clearly Gardner has the right combination of attractive traits, because wherever the 39-year-old goes, orchestras and opera companies want him back.<\/p>\n

Like Canadian Yannick N\u00e9zet-S\u00e9guin’s, Gardner’s career arc looks more like a rocket launch. And, like N\u00e9zet-S\u00e9guin, Gardner can’t seem to say no. His schedule is packed with guest visits around the world — all the while working as the music director at English National Opera (since 2007) and the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra (since 2011).<\/p>\n

Gardner built his reputation as a fine opera conductor — so much so that he is also in demand at the Met now — but is equally at home in the concert hall.<\/p>\n

He justifies his crazy travel schedule by saying that he’s looking at finding a better balance between opera and concert work.\u00a0“I’ve done a hell of a lot of opera in 10 years of [professional] conducting,” he says. “Orchestras around the world have different personalities, and, so far, I haven’t had a lot of opportunity to get to know North American orchestras.”<\/p>\n

Gardner says the first half hour of rehearsal is “a seminal time” with a new orchestra. When I suggest it might be closer to the first 30 seconds, he laughs and admits that might be true, too.<\/p>\n

The Toronto Symphony often introduces new guest conductors with lighter repertoire. Not so with Gardner, who jumps into the deep end with Gustav Mahler’s Symphony No. 1<\/em>, the “Titan.” Coincidentally, Mahler was known primarily as an opera conductor — and he clearly brought some of that sensibility to his symphonic compositions.<\/p>\n

“There is a great innate sense of drama” in the First Symphony<\/em>, says Gardner. He, like many people, wonders why the composer never wrote an actual opera.<\/p>\n

They round out the quasi-operatic connections in this week’s Toronto Symphony programme, we get the Prelude to Richard Wagner’s Die Meistersinger<\/em>. The guest soloist is trumpeter Alison Balsom, playing a virtuosic Trumpet Concerto<\/em> by Johann Nepomuk Hummell.<\/p>\n

Besides wanting to explore the sounds and dynamics of different orchestras, Gardner is also interested in delving deeper into the symphonic canon — like Mahler and Brahms and Bruckner.<\/p>\n

Gardner didn’t follow what we think of in North America as a conventional path to the podium. Like Canadian Opera Company music director Johannes Debus, Gardner was first immersed in music as a church chorister (at Gloucester Cathedral) and entered the opera work through the rehearsal-room door, as a r\u00e9p\u00e9titeur at the Salzburg Festival.<\/p>\n

Yes, he does have formal musical schooling, but he learned the real craft on the job, at the piano as much as wielding a baton. And so the traditional repertoire of the symphony orchestra is not necessarily something he is intimate with.<\/p>\n

I ask him how it’s possible to travel so much and also learn new repertoire. He replies that an opera conductor actually has quite a bit of time to study once a production is up and running. “There is always space between performances, in the evenings and on free days,” he says.<\/p>\n

So now we know how he likes to spend his spare time.<\/p>\n

For all the details on the Toronto Symphony concerts on Wednesday night and Thursday afternoon, click here<\/a>.<\/p>\n

And here, as a particularly impressive introduction, is Gardner leading the Radio Filharmonisch Orkest of Holland in Sergei Rachmaninov’s Symphonic Dances<\/em> at the big hall of the Concertgebouw in Amsterdam two years ago:<\/p>\n