Alexander Weimann’s musical instincts and sense of patriotism drew him to Canada’s national anthem.MARK MUSHET/Supplied
As part of a performance series for CBC Radio, Alexander Weimann proposed a piano-based tour of Western music using one song played in the style of nine different composers. It would need to be based on an easily recognizable melody, but which one?
A few choices for the Canadian audience come to mind: Leonard Cohen’s Hallelujah, Gilles Vigneault‘s Gens du Pays, Dolores Claman’s The Hockey Theme (to Hockey Night in Canada), the Weeknd’s Blinding Lights, Ian Tyson’s Four Strong Winds.
And while it would be a seventh-inning stretch to characterize its melody as a classic, the OK Blue Jays singalong by Jack Lenzand and Tony Kosinec is awfully popular with the ballpark set.
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Weimann’s musical instincts and sense of patriotism drew him to the country’s official national anthem − but hesitantly. “I asked the CBC if O Canada was too nerdy a choice,” the maestro recalls.
His concern was unwarranted. There is, in fact, no nerdy like CBC nerdy. Weimann, music director of the Vancouver-based Pacific Baroque Orchestra, performed improvised variations of Calixa Lavallée’s 28-bar march in the idiom of such hall of fame tunesmiths as Bach, Beethoven, Chopin and more.
Weimann later recorded the O Canadas for Canavian Variations: The Art of Improvisation, Volume 3, an album to be released this weekend. (The previous volumes are different improvised pieces on organ and harpsichord.)
He will perform the Canavian Variations on Sunday at Early Music Vancouver’s 55th anniversary summer festival, Bach & Mozart: In Endless Ascent.
Alex Weimann says the compositions are ‘designed as a fun, brief tour of four centuries of Western music.’MARK MUSHET/Supplied
For the nine variations, Weimann channelled eight composers − the ninth being Weimann himself − by improvising strictly in their respective techniques. (Not their styles, Weimann says, as style is “more a personality thing.”)
“I tried to take the technical limitations that Bach would have, compared to, say, Beethoven,” says the German-born conductor and keyboardist. “The harmonic rules, the polyphonic rules, I tried to take that quite seriously. I can’t even claim the pieces that came out really sound like those composers. I just wanted to take the compositional challenge seriously. Therefore, the pieces took their own direction.”
For the Johann Sebastian Bach O Canada, the direction included a chorale prelude and the mimicking of well-known models used by the Baroque master. The musical language of Bach’s son, Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach, resulted in an “almost psychedelic” variation befitting the late 18th-century Sturm und Drang movement.
The Mozart was an easy fit, as O Canada’s opening melodic gesture was likely lifted from his 1791 opera The Magic Flute. Mendelssohn was tougher: “It took a long time to fit all my ideas into his technique.”
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For Beethoven the melody was taken into the minor key, with the tune woven into dreamy arpeggios. “I knew his music, but I did a lot of reading to study the things he likes to do as a composer.”
The Chopin was a revelation for Weimann, in terms of learning how closely the musical language of certain composers is connected to improvisation. “Chopin’s writing is so intrinsically pianistic that one could say it is solidified improvisation,” he says.
Where arriving to the anthem in the tonal, late-Romantic manner of Russia’s Alexander Scriabin was a “laborious” challenge, composer Weimann’s variation using his own personal technique was, not surprisingly, “like an unplanned sailing into the blue.”
The picks of the composers were made “whimsically,” according to Weimann. Still, the variations cover a compositional evolution, beginning with Bach (1685-1750) and ending with Olivier Messiaen (1908-1992).
“It’s designed as a fun, brief tour of four centuries of Western music,” say Weimann, who teaches at the University of British Columbia.
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The choice of O Canada as the consistent melody was partly a personal one for the 59-year-old. He is married to Canadian violinist Chloe Meyers and gave up his German citizenship in 2015 when he took an oath to Queen Elizabeth II.
“Picking the anthem was a reflection of my adoption of Canada as my home,” says Weimann, also music director of Seattle Baroque Orchestra. “I’m very grateful to live here.”
Perhaps his most homegrown O Canada is the version improvised in the manner of Messiaen, the French composer who also happened to be an ornithologist. As such, the Messiaen improvisation features the voices of birds native to Canada.
Noticeably missing is the species Cyanocitta cristata. Don’t know Greek or Latin? Okay, blue jays.
Early Music Vancouver’s Bach & Mozart: In Endless Ascent, various venues, July 26 to Aug. 8