A walk down fest’s memory lane

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 21/02/2018 (3002 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

The Winnipeg Music Festival turns 100 this year and the party’s already in full swing. I had the pleasure of attending its official centenary gala on Feb. 11 at the Metropolitan Entertainment Centre, showcasing some of the fine young talent in our community, capped by festival executive director Joanne Mercier leading us all in a bubbly toast to its next century of music.

The festival was conceived by the Men’s Musical Club of Winnipeg in May 1919 and this year’s event begins today and runs until March 18 at a variety of local venues. The festival is also publishing an archival book filled with facts, stories, anecdotes and lore culled over this past year from performers, audience members and volunteers asked to share their own trips down memory lane.

You can bet that I have my own tales to tell of the festival.

I can’t recall a time when I wasn’t aware of what is simply known as “Festival.” Since its inception as the Winnipeg Musical Competition Festival, the annual event has since morphed into a kinder, gentler version of its former self as a celebration of young talent. However, in those days, we were all feverishly vying for the top spot in our respective performance classes, armed with our musical weaponry of choice: painstakingly memorized Bach preludes and fugues, Beethoven sonatas or the granddaddy of them (for pianists), the lofty concerto class.

I take some pride that as a teenager, I was performing at least on some basic level complete, memorized first movements of works I’ve reviewed for these pages. If I’m writing about treacherous scalar twists, devilish left-hand passage work and fiery flourishes in say, Beethoven’s Piano Concerto No. 2 in B flat, it’s because my fingers have felt them, too.

The path to glory is pitted with many bumps along the way — and believe me, I met mine.

One of my wonderful teachers, Leonard Isaacs, once accompanied me during a Mozart concerto (and for the record, my dad Neil Harris, who regularly drove me to these classes, admitted only years later he experienced more terror than I did performing in front of a live audience). He proved his own nerves of steel when I inadvertently jumped the gun on one solo entry. Mr. Isaacs, performing his orchestral accompaniment part, leapt pages ahead in the score, covering my gaffe with nary a note out of place, that cemented early on my faith in miracles.

I used to regularly accompany singers, including one rising-star soprano set to perform Handel’s Rejoice greatly from Messiah in the Grade A class.

This would qualify her for the Rose Bowl trophy — no pressure there for either of us. As I settled confidently into my place on the piano bench, I suddenly realized to my horror that I couldn’t clearly see my music due to having inserted one contact lens inside out that morning.

However, I somehow managed to get through this baroque knuckle-buster like Homer’s Cyclops, essentially one-eyed, and no small part due to that nebulous gift of muscle memory that tested and perhaps honed that elusive quality of “grit” that I’ve been told over the years I seem to possess.

I fell head over heels in love with Johann Sebastian Bach during my early 20s. One of my proudest moments came during a Bach class, when I played his Toccata in G major, and quite well too, I might add. My “leave nothing on the stage” performance edged me closer to the Aikins Trophy, which goes to the festival’s best instrumental performance, but moreover allowed me to experience an utter sense of musical freedom that’s always been a personal highlight.

Believe it or not, I also competed in the vocal classes, encouraged by my singing teacher, Helga Anderson. Mrs. Anderson, one of the most positive people I have ever known, had drawn “smiley faces” all over my music to remind me to lift my facial muscles to produce a lighter, better sound — standard vocal technique.

Performers normally turn over their music to the adjudicator before venturing onstage. Needless to say, I had forgotten to rub out my happy-face-strewn score that elicited chuckles from the judge — even more so after I grimaced my way through my aria.

Or another time I performed in a solo piano sonata class — so desperately intent on performing a difficult piece by memory. I received a polite comment how it appeared that I had entered some kind of trance — staring, unblinkingly, into space over the piano in fierce concentration — also noted by the adjudicator.

But my earliest memories of the festival go back even further. In those days, choral speaking was all the rage; imagine if you will, a group of aspiring child elocutionists who would spend hours rehearsing spoken poetry in unison. For some inexplicable reason, one line has remained in my mind for years like an archaic message stuffed inside a washed-up bottle: “Hide your eyes from the fiery glow,” in which we would gamely clasp our hands over our faces to illustrate our point.

Although, I have a vague sense we were referring to popping corn, the truth ultimately doesn’t matter.

What does matter is that memories live on, the good, bad, riotously funny or profoundly moving and that is what “Festival” has always been about.

The thrill of seeing a young artist achieve her dreams; a group of (former) strangers bond through weekly rehearsals; or a pianist nail a tricky lick they’ve been struggling with for months have become their own gleaming trophies.

Those who remember the past are hopefully destined to recall it for many more years to come, as Winnipeg’s musical grande dame celebrates its past 100 years and looks forward to its glorious next century of memory making.

holly.harris@shaw.ca