By Landon Hegedus, UChicago Presents
In conversation with Tomo Keller, concertmaster of the Academy of St. Martin in the Fields Chamber Ensemble:
UChicago Presents:How did your relationship with the Academy come about?
Tomo Keller:In a very normal way, truthfully. I applied for the vacant Ensemble Leader position when it was advertised, and after I introduced myself, we had a session where we played chamber music together. They invited me to lead concert tours for two or three years, and then at the end of 2015, I believe, they offered me the permanent position, so altogether I've been playing with the Academy for six or seven years now.
UCP:The Academy’s founder, Sir Neville Marriner, had retired a few years before you joined the Academy as leader, though his influence still permeates the Ensemble’s music-making activities. Did he ever pass on any insight or wisdom, or inspire you in any way, that has influenced you as the Ensemble Leader?
TK: Oh, yes. Even when Sir Neville stepped aside and Joshua Bell took over as music director, he still played a vital role leading a lot of concerts and tours. That's how I met him – I think my first project with the Academy in 2012 was with Sir Neville, in Europe. Actually, I first met him long ago, more than 20 years ago. When I was a student in Vienna, I was a substitute of the Vienna Philharmonic, and I was playing in the Salzburg Festival that summer. He came in to do this concert, but I didn't know who he was – I mean, of course, I knew Sir Neville from recordings from when I was a kid, but I didn't realize that this was the same person [laughs]. It may have been his first concerts with Vienna, because he conducted a purely “Vienna Classics” concert with Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven. I still remember this concert very well, because he didn't do too much, actually – he let the music speak for itself, and let the orchestra play. It was one of the best concerts I've ever done sitting in any orchestra.
After that, I didn’t see him again for many years, until 2012. From then until 2016, when he passed away, I would do a couple events a year with him. I learned so much from him – as a human being, as a musician, as a conductor. It’s hard to pin down what, exactly, but just the way he worked on the music, the way he conducted with no fuss, no frills – simple in the best sense. He was over 90 years old when he passed away, but he had super sharp ears until the very end. He was incredibly open minded, always looking for new things, not for the sake of finding a “new thing,” but just because his eyes were always open. So I miss him a lot, yes.
UCP:As leader of the ensemble, you serve both as the de facto conductor and principal violin of the ensemble. Has this dual role always felt natural to you?
TK:Well, I came more from the world of the symphony orchestra, so that's different, of course – but I always wanted to downsize the group, so to speak. The great thing about the Academy is that you have all sides – you play concerts with conductors, with bigger bands or smaller bands; you do things unconducted; you work with many soloists, and some of them might direct the group; sometimes you have to do more, sometimes less; and of course, you have the chamber ensemble – you’re always in between roles, and that’s what I like. I still think that there's a big difference between standing up and conducting with score in front of you and sitting in the group and leading without a conductor. And, of course, the way you have to lead the project, the way you lead the rehearsals, is different – it's more like you’re one the group, and you’re just trying to figure out together what the score is about. That’s the great challenge, but also the great satisfaction.
UCP:The Mendelssohn Octet is arguably one of the most quintessential pieces of chamber music repertoire for strings. What’s your relationship to this piece, and what do you enjoy most about performing it?
TK: It’s pure love. That piece is just love and joy, and it’s light and it’s bright. And actually, when I applied for the position at the Academy, they invited me to play a chamber music session with the other musicians just to get to know each other. We were to play to Mendelssohn, but embarrassingly, I hadn't played it! [laughs] So I learned it and rehearsed it with some friends to go prepare for the audition. We had the session with the Academy musicians, and it was very different from what you would call an audition. Ever since then, I’ve only played with the Academy, but I’ve played it many times now. The great thing about it is, no matter how often you do this piece, it just doesn't lose any of the beauty. Many pieces you play after so many times, and you just get tired of them. But not from this piece.
It’s a real work of genius. Mendelssohn, for me, may be the greatest musical genius. Of course, there was Mozart before him, but Mendelssohn wrote the Octet as a teenager – and when he wrote this, I don't think there were many octets like this around. He writes in the preface of the piece that it should be played in an orchestral style, which is very different from what you might expect. Sure, there are only eight people sitting, but it's a huge piece. There are huge sounds coming out of that score.
UCP:Also appearing on the program is Sally Beamish’s Partita, which will receive its world premiere performances in October of this year. I understand that Beamish is also the Academy’s Composer in Residence – can you tell me a little bit about this piece, and about your experience working with the composer on developing/rehearsing it?
TK:Well, we more or less just got the score for that piece, so I can't tell you much about it, except this – it’s in three movements, and I believe the first movement is based on the Bach Partita in D Minor for solo violin. The second is a fugue, but it’s very slow; the theme is actually the same one that Mendelssohn uses in the last movement of the Octet, which itself is actually lifted from Handel’s Messiah. The last movement is a chaconne, so you have a theme and variations over the same harmonies.
To work on this piece, we’ll rehearse it with just the ensemble first and try to get to know it. Then we will meet with Sally and work on it with her, and then we will get together with some friends and patrons from the Academy and together with the composer, play through and talk about it. After that, then we’ll go to America to premiere it. We played another piece by Sally in the spring, written for string orchestra and some winds. It was great, and working with her was really natural. She’s known the Academy Orchestra for decades – her mom has been playing in the group, she has been playing in the group, so there’s familiarity. When we’re going through the music together, sometimes you change things – this articulation doesn't work, or the tempo has to be faster here, or whatever – and it was easy to work through that. So I’m expecting the same for this new piece.
UCP:The Chamber Ensemble of the Academy of St. Martin in the Fields was founded to more broadly encompass chamber music repertoire, in addition to works for orchestra. In that same spirit of exploration, are there any composers or works that you hope to delve into with the Chamber Ensemble in future seasons?
TK:Sure, there are many, many works – we have to be very practical about it, though. For instance, when we go to America we have eight string players. Of course, we want to play as much as possible for all eight members; if we play a quintet, then three people are sitting out. But for instance, in Chicago we’re doing the Korngold Sextet. That’s a piece which is fairly new to us that I would like to do more – and another piece that was written at the age of 17, in fact. Next year when we come to America with winds, we will do the Octet by Howard Ferguson, which most of us have not done, I believe, but it’s another wonderful piece. So yeah, we basically consider it from tour to tour based on what’s practical.
But speaking about the ensemble in general, the octet that makes up the Chamber Ensemble is formed form the first-desk players from the Orchestra, and so our experience playing together is very much shaped by how we perform together in the large group. It's quite different from a sextet or a quintet or a quartet that you are married to and play together with all the time in that formation.
UCP:Right. I’ve heard it said before that “all ensemble music is chamber music,” in the sense that chamber music strengthens one's ears and one's abilities to listen across the ensemble. It seems to me that having a chamber ensemble that is drawn from the principal players actually privileges the experience of performing the orchestra, too. Do you feel that's true?
TK:Absolutely. Take any conductor in any big symphony orchestra – as soon as things are not going well together, they’ll say “play chamber music.” And that just means be alert, play together, basically be on each other’s radars. It’s this intimacy of being in a so-called chamber – and of course, these days, you have quartets playing in Carnegie Hall, so it's a different world now than the world that Mendelssohn was living in. So yes, I absolutely believe in that fruition from chamber music to the orchestra or vice versa.
And in that sense, every music could be chamber music. The Beamish piece is called Partita, which is usually a piece for a solo instrument. I think that’s how the Baroque composers, especially Bach, used it; the partitas are written for solo violin, piano, or others. I believe she chose the title to illustrate how a string quartet could be seen as a single entity, like a “bowed keyboard,” as she describes it in her program note.
UCP:The Academy as a whole is known for its impressive body of recordings, and the thirty-plus recordings by the Chamber Ensemble are singular artistic achievements in their own right. Are they any new recording projects on the horizon for the Chamber Ensemble?
TK:There are, but not on the paper yet! In short, yes, but you have to be realistic. The landscape of recording has changed drastically since the 70’s, 80’s, 90’s. Also, for the Orchestra, we still do recording of course, but in a very different way and much less than before. It’s true not just of our orchestra, but for more or less every orchestra. There are many orchestras with in-house labels that produce live recordings; and then of course, you have the whole world of streaming. So yes, we have a few recording projects in mind, but we are not sure how to approach it yet, so we're discussing it at the moment.
UCP:The Academy of St. Martin in the Fields Chamber Ensemble has performed on the UChicago Presents series a number of times before, but I believe those all took place before you were a member. Have you performed in Chicago before?
TK:I don’t think I’ve played at the University – or in fact, in Chicago at all – so I'm really excited. On several tours I’ve traveled through Chicago, but never performed there before! I’m very much looking forward to this concert; it’s right in the middle of our tour, and we're not playing the Korngold Sextet very many times on this tour, so I’m happy we’re bringing it to this audience.