Boris Brott sings Flanders & Swann's Ill Wind

Boris Brott sings Flanders & Swann's "Ill Wind" to the tune of Mozart's Fourth Horn Concerto at a celebration of . Philippe Menard conducts the National Academy Orchestra of Canada at McMaster University, Hamilton, Canada to celebrate the donation of the Boris Brott Archives to its library.

Toute une journée (What a Day), by the MCO

Excerpts of "Toute un journée" (What a Day)
Composed by Maxime Goulet www.maximegoulet.com
Performed by Boris Brott and the McGill Chamber Orchetsra www.ocm-mco.org
Filmed during the premiere by Patrick Peris on May 9th 2011 www.patrickperis.com

What a day, a four-movement work for string orchestra, outlines the parallels between a day and a life, as if one were the microcosm of the other. The first movement "Joyful Morning", embodies a busy morning and a child coming to life. The second movement, "A Long Day at Work" is characterized by the accumulation of many repeated motifs representing the daily hours spent at work or in school. "Tête-à-tête Evening" is a duet between the solo violin and solo cello accompanied by the orchestra. The melodic dialogue symbolizes a romantic evening or the life shared by a couple. The last movement, "Serene Night", uses all the melodies from the previous movements. Like a dream at the end of the day or at the end of a life, it offers a retrospective. To better stimulate the auditor's imagination, lighting effects and small objects are incorporated to the piece, such as an alarm clock and the beginning of the day, a punch clock at work, a pendulum clock at night... The piece is dedicated to The Beatles and and their song A Day in the Life.

Brott’s storied legacy takes root at Mac

Boris puts his baton down... momentarily to sing Flanders & Swann's Ill Wind, sung to the tune of Mozart's Fourth Horn Concerto

by Leonard Turnevicius

Special to the Spectator 

Want to know everything there is to know about Boris Brott’s career? Well, now you won’t have to go any further than Hamilton’s McMaster University to find out.

Last night, a ceremony held at Mac’s Convocation Hall formally marked the university’s reception of Brott’s donated archives.

“My hometown is Hamilton now. I’ve lived here for over 42 years,” said the Montreal-born Brott in an interview with The Spectator. “It was McMaster who gave me my honorary doctorate (in 1988).”

Brott explained that there had been offers from other institutions such as the University of Calgary, as well as Ottawa’s Library and Archives Canada which house the papers of his late father, Alexander Brott. Yet, when the call came from McMaster about his archives, Brott accepted at the drop of a hat.

“I wanted to have close touch also with what I was giving,” said Brott. “There are several books that I want to write, and I’ll do the research at Mac.”

Among his archives is correspondence with some of the crème de la crème of the classical music world from the 1960s onward: Leonard Bernstein, Pierre Monteux, Aaron Copland, Benjamin Britten, Isaac Stern, Mstislav Rostropovich, Jean-Pierre Rampal, Leonard Rose, Glenn Gould and many others.

Brott’s sizeable archives also consist of numerous recordings, photos, posters, and files dating from his early life as a child prodigy to the present. As such, they cover literally every facet of his international musical and entrepreneurial career including, of course, the years 1969 to 1990 when he led the Hamilton Philharmonic Orchestra.

“Both my mom (Lotte, who passed away in 1998) and dad were pack rats,” said Brott. “And they did teach me to keep everything. And I did. But it was just getting scary, to be quite frank, with all of this stuff at my home. I thought, ‘What if there was a fire? What if there was a flood?’ It was just too valuable to have that (happen).”

Brott began delivering his archives in lots to the university about eight or nine months ago. Archivists at Mac’s William Ready Division of Archives and Research Collections are currently cataloguing the material. Brott also hopes to one day gift his very large library of scores as well as about 50 of his children’s concerts scripts to Mac.

Last evening’s event was emceed by Hamilton native and TVO host Steve Paikin and included the requisite official remarks and thank-yous from Mac librarian Jeff Trzeciak, and president Patrick Deane. Professor emeritus Dr. Alan Walker, an internationally acclaimed scholar and biographer of Franz Liszt and Hans von Bülow, spoke on Contemplating Boris Brott. Also on hand were Brott’s wife, Ardyth, two of their three children, David and Alexandra, plus mother-in-law Betty Webster, staff from the Brott Music Festival, and more than 150 invited guests.

But all was not dry, formal back-patting. Brott and his National Academy Orchestra performed the final movement from Mendelssohn’s Fourth Symphony, nicknamed the Italian, an obvious tip of the hat to the country where Brott’s opera conducting career is currently on an upswing. That was followed by the instrumental version of Alexander Brott’s Cradle Song composed for Boris in 1944, the year of his birth.

Pianist Valerie Tryon, a longtime musical collaborator with Brott and perennial guest at his summertime festival, performed Chopin’s Andante spianato et Grand polonaise accompanied by Brott and the NAO.

Thereafter, Brott ceded the podium duties to NAO apprentice conductor Philippe Ménard in order to sing (yes, you read that correctly) Ill Wind, a Flanders and Swann drollery set to the last movement of Mozart’s Third Horn Concerto. F&S’s lyrics, “I practised the horn and was longing to play it but somebody took it away,” served as a witty wink at Brott’s French horn playing days.

Brott’s archives will be available at McMaster’s Mills Memorial Library alongside numerous other international and Canadian collections.

Leonard Turnevicius writes on classical music for The Spectator.

leonardturnevicius@hotmail.com