Alain Trudel
Alain Trudel, trombone, Patrick Wedd, organ At Yorkminster Park Baptist Church in Toronto on Sunday
Alain Trudel spends so much time conducting orchestras, it's easy to forget that he's also a first-rate trombone soloist. Trudel, who conducted a demanding program with l'Orchestre symphonique de Montréal just last week, came to Toronto on Sunday to refresh people's memories about his talents on his first instrument, and to play a brand new piece by Toronto composer Scott Good.
It can't be easy to lead one orchestra as music director (Orchestre symphonique de Laval) and run around the country conducting others (including the Toronto Symphony Orchestra next week) and keep your instrumental chops in shape. But Trudel is still a phenomenal player. He played a difficult and varied program for Mooredale Concerts without seeming to get anywhere close to his limits as a virtuoso. His warm buttery sound seemed effortless, and beautifully expressive in the many lyrical passages that came his way.
He reminded the audience at the start that all his pieces for trombone and organ were originals - meaning they weren't arrangements of pieces for some other, more usual combination. Well before the end of his recital with the excellent Montreal organist Patrick Wedd, the pairing of instruments seemed so natural that I began to wonder why more composers haven't used it.
I also had time to think about what happens to a trombone when it goes to church. The acoustic and the traditions of the place (in this case, the grand and resonant chamber of Yorkminster Park Baptist Church) not only flattered the instrument, they gave it an annunciatory character it doesn't necessarily have elsewhere.
That was particularly evident in Alfred Schnittke's Schall und Hall, in which Trudel, from the balcony, cast widely spaced pitches into a shifting prismatic series of organ chords; and in a Duo Concertante by Gustav Holst, which made amusingly persistent use of a phrase very similar to one of the principal leitmotivs from Wagner's Ring cycle. A chorale-based Hosannah by Franz Liszt gave the trombone an earnest supporting role, similar to that of a horn-blowing angel in a corner of a medieval religious painting.
Dzunukwa's Aria, a new piece by Scott Good, announced something else entirely, a kind of majestic bestial reality that the composer, speaking just before the premiere, linked to a "powerful ogress" of native legend. Good swiftly transformed the church's mighty Casavant organ into a mysterious generator of tones that at times might as well have been something from an electronic music studio. A very deep pedal tone introduced some murky chromatic rumblings in the bass end of the keyboard, followed by a broad fortissimo bark that seemed designed to scatter all the minor creatures in the forest. Trudel, armed with a plunger mute, entered with a truly primeval sound, like that of an animal calling from the deepest part of the woods. Even as the music became more angular, its feral quality remained fascinatingly strong.
All wind players are a bit challenged when it comes to finding solo pieces from centuries before the last one, and usually end up embracing things that aren't top-drawer. That fact of life brought us things such as Ernst Schiffmann's modest Intermezzo for trombone and orchestra, which worked a fanfare-ish theme into a thoughtful lyrical piece; and especially Alexandre Guilmant's Morceau Symphonique, a piece of flashy academic piffle.
Trudel deviated from his no-arrangements rule for one piece: his own solo version of Round Midnight, played with ample use of a multiphonic technique that had him singing a harmonizing note through the instrument while blowing the main tone.
Wedd showed off his powers as soloist in a couple of pieces by Flor Peeters and Olivier Messiaen ( Joie et Clarté des Corps Glorieux), the latter of which brought the Casavant's reedy bright colorations to a fierce peak in a series of trumpet-stop flourishes. He played the whole show with zest, precision and a fine sense of balance.