Kerry Stratton may have just gotten off a plane from Vienna the previous day, but you’d never guess it from the infectious energy with which he relates his recent musical exploits.
The Toronto-based conductor has been spending an increasing amount of time in Central Europe, but his heart – and family – is very much in Toronto.
He has returned home with a tantalizing musical treat in the form of the Vienna Concert-Verein, a 20-year-old ensemble of the Vienna Symphony Orchestra. Stratton says of his new association with these players “It’s been 43 years in the making, and it was the thrill of my life.”
The Concert-Verein is in Toronto as part of a vigorous touring schedule that includes Spain and Japan. “But Canada ranked first as the place they most wanted to visit,” says Stratton.
Tonight’s Toronto engagement at the George Weston Recital Hall includes hot, 30-something Italian guest pianist Roberto Plano, in a Mozart piano concerto, Schubert’s Symphony No. 5 and the Sinfonietta, Op. 48, by Malcolm Arnold.
This is part of a wider tour of Ontario towns this month under the umbrella of Stratton’s International Touring Productions. The conductor set up this booking company so that music lovers in smaller centres would have access to first-class live performances.
Stratton describes how, growing up in Belleville, he was lucky to hear classical concerts by touring musicians. “I sometimes wondered if I was the only 14-year-old interested in classical music. Now we go to some of these towns and I do it for the 14-year-olds who feel the same way I once did.”
The Viennese group’s tour includes Barrie, Orillia, Milton and, of course, Stratton’s old hometown of Belleville. Next year, he returns with a core ensemble of the Czech Philharmonic.
“I wish I could say everything was well planned,” says Stratton of his growing stature as a conductor. Rather, it’s been a question of following the music.
“I feel at home there,” he says of Vienna, the Czech Republic and Hungary. “It’s one of the few destinations where I don’t have to explain myself.”
Asked for an explanation, Stratton says that, in North America, “you are what you do. When people ask me what I do here, I tell them I’m a conductor. The usual reply is ‘Oh, that’s interesting.’ Then, a moment later, they ask me, ‘So what do you really do?’”
He says most North Americans, unlike the typical European, can’t imagine anyone being a conductor full-time.
Stratton and family – wife, and three children, aged 2, 4 and 18 – live in Thornhill. The frequent trips abroad can take their toll.
“I missed my daughter saying her first phrase ‘Where is daddy?’” Stratton says of the 2-year-old. “I also have a phone bill that could finance a small army. But it’s worth it to keep in touch.”
When in these parts, Stratton also conducts the Toronto Philharmonia, which is the resident orchestra at George Weston Hall. And he’s also hard at work building a salon orchestra.
“It’s black tie, it’s vermouth. It’s manners and grace,” says Stratton of the 21-piece band that will play music from the end of the 19th and beginning of the 20th centuries. The group, which so far has been playing at private functions only, has seven public concerts lined up for 2007. Stratton says he has had a ball finding old musical scores.
He found a treasure trove at the original Paramount Theatre in Los Angeles. “In a library on the third floor, they have stacks of original scores from the time of silent movies,” he says. “I pulled out one score, it said, ‘The newest hit from George Gershwin. $1′ – that’s $1 for the full score and all the parts.”
He calls his detective work “panning for nuggets.” His aim is to have several programs ready, including light European fare, North American music (“Porter, Gershwin, Jerome Kern”), songs by Noel Coward and a tango program as well as Christmas selections.
It’s all coming together, thanks to a broad network and his seemingly boundless energy. One wonders how much Stratton could accomplish if he didn’t have to contend with jet lag.
April 6, 2006
