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Grant Llewellyn’s back in Boston, this time as music director of the Handel & Haydn Society

BY TAMARA WIEDER

THE HOLIDAY SEASON just isn’t complete without them: the Handel & Haydn Society’s signature performances of Messiah. After all, the organization has been presenting Handel’s masterwork for 148 years now. But this year, the performances get a fresh look — or at least a fresh face — from new music director Grant Llewellyn, who picks up where 15-year Handel & Haydn veteran Christopher Hogwood, now conductor laureate, left off. But although Llewellyn, a native of Tenby, South Wales, is a new presence on the H&H scene, he’s a familiar face in Boston, having completed a conducting fellowship at the Tanglewood Music Festival in 1985 and a stint as assistant director of the Boston Symphony Orchestra from 1990 to 1993, under now-outgoing music director Seiji Ozawa. In addition to his new H&H role, Llewellyn’s 2001-’02 season includes engagements with the BBC National Chorus and Orchestra of Wales; the Nova Scotia Symphony Orchestra of Halifax; and 12 performances of The Magic Flute with the Opera Theatre of St. Louis, plus debuts with the St. Paul Chamber Orchestra, the San Antonio Symphony Orchestra, the Brooklyn Philharmonic, the Honolulu Symphony Orchestra, and the Alabama Symphony Orchestra.

Q: How does it feel to be working in Boston again?

A: Well, it’s very much like a homecoming for me. If there’s any one place in the world where I would choose to spend time, if it’s not going to be in Wales, it would be Boston.

Q: Why?

A: Well, we lived there as a family, a younger family, about 10 years ago, when I was assistant conductor with the Boston Symphony. And you know, it’s a very child-, family-friendly place, and the Boston Symphony, with whom I was working then, were also very hospitable, and I just got a wonderful feel for the arts community and physically for the place. It feels very comfortable and welcoming and yet dynamic. I mean, it’s not somewhere that one sort of sits back and relaxes too easily — it’s challenging, and I like that.

Q: Is Boston a good classical-music town?

A: Oh, it’s the best.

Q: How do Boston audiences compare with audiences in other cities?

A: Well, I think they’re knowledgeable, which is a challenge in itself for performers. They’re not easily satisfied, which is great — it means they’re demanding. With the Handel & Haydn Society, I feel that I’m very much on the spot, and coming in the wake of Christopher Hogwood, I really need to do my homework before I get up on stage in Boston, otherwise I’ll get shot down in flames. But they’re incredibly supportive and generous when you do well.

Q: How closely will you be working with Christopher Hogwood?

A: Well, physically not that closely, but in this day and age, that doesn’t mean anything. We’re in contact regularly by phone, and e-mail in particular; we both do e-mail as we travel around the world. He’s a fantastic source of advice and encouragement and information. He’ll certainly be coming to the Handel & Haydn Society regularly; he’s our conductor laureate, and the perfect person, really, to play that role, and still very active performing himself, as well as researching.

Q: Talk to me about Messiah. Is it true you’ve only conducted it once before?

A: Yes. It’s a landmark piece for any performer, whether conductor, singer, instrumentalist — and I’ve done the two latter roles, as both singer in various guises, various choruses, and as a cellist and keyboard player. But I have to say that as a conductor, it’s not a piece that you approach lightly, even though it’s performed here, there, and everywhere every season. I suppose it’s probably fair to say that if anything, I’ve probably avoided it, by and large. Mainly because it is so often churned out, and it can become so much of a repertoire piece for organizations that you just sort of get on the treadmill and get off at the end. I’ve been present at too many of those Messiahs myself. So it’s not a piece that you approach lightly.

Having said that, it’s a piece that when you do get the opportunity to perform it, such as with Handel & Haydn Society, then you should jump at it with both hands. I know that H&H performs it year in, year out, and I’m anxious that it should never become stale; I mean, it is an evergreen work of art, which deserves to be recreated and reinvented year after year. So I’m embracing that tradition of Handel & Haydn willingly; I’m sort of coming to it, I’d like to think, with fresh ears. Certainly it’s not a piece that’s had a chance to go stale on me — I’ve hardly conducted it. But it’s an enormous challenge, and it’s one of those situations where you come in as a conductor working with players and singers who have performed it no doubt many, many more times than you have, and I always find that a peculiar challenge. I mean, at times it can be a little bit unnerving, because there will be corners that they have turned many times, and I’ll be turning them pretty much for the first time. So you’ve gotta think on your feet and be pretty quick, but arrive at that first rehearsal with pretty strong ideas and convictions. So we’ll see.

Q: How do you entice people who may go to theater or movies or even ballet, but who’ve never been to a classical-music performance, to come?

A: Well, what I would say to them is, a lot of what they love about theater and drama in general, whether it be the ballet, whether it be the straight stage theater, no matter what form, even the cinema, we have to offer all those same ingredients in the concert hall — and more, of course: we’ve got the extra added ingredient of live music. But when you’re looking at music on the scale of Messiah, it really is everything: it’s theater, it’s drama, it’s comedy, it’s tragedy, all rolled up in one, and you put that on the stage in a glorious hall like Symphony Hall in Boston, and, frankly, it’s the best night out you could possibly want. That’s my opinion, and maybe I’m biased, but I love theater and ballet, and the cinema as well, and of course they have their own unique ingredients, but I really do feel that when you’re coming to Symphony Hall to see something like [this], that scale of oratorical performance really has a kaleidoscope of ingredients to entertain.

Q: What’s a great night out for you, when it doesn’t involve music?

A: Oh, well, I had a pretty good one the other night in Halifax, when I went to see my first hockey game. I mean, I love sports.

Q; You’re a soccer player, right?

A: Yes. I don’t know if that’s so much present tense now as past, or imperfect, or whatever those tenses are. I’m certainly an imperfect soccer player. I did play just last Saturday and sustained the latest in a long line of injuries. But I do love soccer; I think it really is a beautiful, beautiful sport. And again, it has many, many parallels with my music performance; I think the soccer stage and the music stage are not a million miles away, in my reckoning. But having said that, I had such a thrilling time at the hockey game the other night in Canada, and that too is a fantastic theater for performance. So yeah, that would probably do it for me, if I’m not in the theater itself.

Q: What are your thoughts on the BSO without Seiji Ozawa?

A: It’s hard to imagine, isn’t it? I mean, I was there as his assistant, and there’s a whole tradition, a whole institution if you want, that has been modeled on him and around him and by him for the last however many decades, and Tanglewood perhaps even more so. So it’s hard to imagine, but it’s a fantastic organization, it’s resilient, it’s got tons of talent throughout its ranks, and, of course, with James Levine they’ve got a serious heavyweight music director there. It’ll take time, obviously, for him to put his stamp on the organization, but if anybody can, he can. As for Seiji, he’s still very much alive and kicking, and I don’t think people should rule him out of the Boston music scene. I’m sure he’ll be back, and I think we owe him an enormous debt, and I certainly do personally; he was a wonderful mentor and guide and friend to me in the years I was an assistant, and continues to be — I was speaking to him from New York just a couple of days ago, and he’s still a bundle of energy and ambitions. As far as Boston is concerned, obviously that is a chapter that is now behind him. I don’t say that we’ll be licking wounds so much as just rejoicing, I hope, in what he has brought to the city, and kind of love and respect him from afar.

Q: You’ve got an incredibly busy season planned with engagements all over the country. What are you most looking forward to?

A: Yes, I’m pretty much on the road for the next six, seven months or so. I think Messiah is pretty much top of my pile at the moment. Of course the Handel & Haydn season is very much top of all my priorities at the moment, so each and every concert is going to be as important as the last, really. So that’s going to be our challenge: to make every night, whether it be Messiah or whether it be a smaller-scale Baroque program in Jordan Hall, for instance, to make it a real event. That’s absolutely top of my pile. And yes, I’m thrilled to be conducting elsewhere around North America and Europe and the world, but I have to say, when you fly into somewhere for a week and you’re in and out of town literally in a matter of days, it’s a very different kind of music-making engagement to really getting inside an organization and getting to know not just the staff and players and instrumentalists at Handel & Haydn, but to really get to know your public. And that’s what I’m really looking forward to doing in Boston.

Handel & Haydn Society’s Messiah is performed at Symphony Hall, Boston, on December 1, 2, 7, 8, and 9. Call (617) 266-3605. Tamara Wieder can be reached at twieder[a]phx.com

Issue Date: November 29 - December 6, 2001

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