The Toronto Symphony Orchestra and Tafelmusik Baroque Orchestra Messiahs — the latter concludes today with its sold-out singalong blowout at Massey Hall, the TSO’s final performance is Monday night — have made me think again about period versus modern performance.

Baroque-style bow and violin, left, to moden. Photo courtesy of Danielle Rosaria Cummins.

This year, with the help of Nicholas Kraemer, the TSO tried to present a period-perfect version of Handel’s oratorio, using modern forces. Tafelmusik, like many of the finest period-instrument ensembles in the world, has been increasingly leaving period-pure thoughts behind, to explore how much a gut-stringed violin or a valveless horn is really capable of.

But this year’s dueling Messiahs reminded us of a lesson that so easily gets lost amidst nitpickings and debates: It’s about making a musical story — any musical story — as compelling as possible.

If musicians do that, their listeners won’t question the details — and they will give the connoisseurs plenty to think and debate about.

The back-page essay in the Winter 2011 issue of Early Music America is about young Japanese violinist Shunské Sato playing Paganini Caprices with gut strings and a “transitional” bow (a bit longer than what you would see Tafelmusik violins using for Messiah, but shorter than a modern bow).

Comparing this to the typical modern performance, Antony Martin writes, “Perhaps the most salient characteristic is the incorporation of heroics into a broader emotional spectrum than we are used to in these pieces.”

He means to applaud the period instrument, but what he’s really applauding is the musicality of the interpreter’s work, isn’t he?

Here’s a bit more on on Sato’s Paganini project, with the help of conductor/keyboardist Richard Egarr, followed by a performance of a Sonata by Archangelo Corelli:

John Terauds

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John Terauds

John Terauds, Editor-Emeritus of Ludwig van Toronto, is currently a Divinity student at the University of Toronto and a church music director. He joined the Toronto Star in 1988, was the classical music critic from 2005 to 2012, and continues as a freelance critic for the paper. He is the co-author of Roy Thomson Hall: A Portrait, a book written with Toronto Star Colleague, William Littler.

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