Last night, Handel’s Hercules had just come to an end with a rousing chorus when a large screen descended above the stage of Koerner Hall. As the audience, still seated, looked on with curiosity, the screen went sky-blue and a blast of Vivaldi’s Four Seasons boomed out in the hall. With this dramatic flourish, Tafelmusik Media made a “deus ex machina” arrival in the musical world.
Here is the short video that was shown.
Here is the short video that was shown.
There was a time when this sort of initiative might have been called a “vanity project,” or when the production and sale of recordings was thought to lie outside the competence of mere musicians. But these days it’s considered admirably entrepreneurial for a musical organization to take its destiny in its own hands in the realm of recordings, downloads, streaming and other electronic formats.
And in Tafelmusik’s case, many of the orchestra and choir’s recordings are currently in the hands of others, such as Sony and the CBC. Faced with the unhappy likelihood that out-of-print Tafelmusik recordings were likely to stay that way forever, Toronto’s foremost baroque ensemble has made the re-issuing of older recordings a high priority for Tafelmusik Media. As I left Koerner Hall, I was given a bag containing reissued CDs of The Four Seasons and the Brandenburg Concertos, and also a DVD of Tafelmusik’s Galileo Project. (These discs will be officially released for sale in the spring.)
Of course, Toronto’s Tafelmusik is by no means the first orchestra to start a do-it-yourself record label. But it’s charmingly ironic that this kind technological self-reliance is being so warmly embraced by an ensemble that plays music composed before electricity was harnessed. In some ways, Tafelmusik is as modern as anyone.
© Colin Eatock 2012
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