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"Youd
better go hear Blanche Moyse," said my friend the violinist. "The musicians who
play for her say she's fabulous."
Since its rare to hear
any instrumentalist praise a conductor, I betook myself recently to a comfortable Upper
West Side concert hall called Symphony Space to hear the 75-year-old director of the New
England Bach Festival make her New York debut conducting nothing less than the Passion
According to St. Matthew," one of the most profound and difficult works Bach or
anyone else ever wrote.
Because Symphony Space is
among other things a neighborhood performing center, and because the New England Bach
Festival has at best a regional fame, it was easy to imagine that Mrs. Moyse might at best
have been little more than a Vermont piano teacher whose love of music was so irresistible
that she inspired everyone around her, even if she didnt have much conducting
technique.
Nothing could be further from the truth. though Mrs.
Moyse was in fact trained as a violinist and began conducting only by accident, when
problems with her bow arm forced her to stop playing in public. Her musical pedigree is
impeccable. She's the daughter-in-law of Marcel Moyse, a French flutist who died last week
at 95. His technique and musicianship were so exalted that young flutists pronounced his
name with reverence. More than that: After studying the violin in her native Switzerland
she lived as a teen-ager in the household of the violinist Adolph Busch. He was one of the
greatest chamber music players of his time and the brother of Fritz Busch, who was one of
the most important conductors in Europe. There she met the young Rudolph Serkin. who later
became both Buschs son-rn-law and one of the worlds great pianists.
So Mrs. Moyse developed her
musicianship among the most cultivated musicians alive at the time and went on to perform
professionally all over Europe. Wben she arrived in the U.S. after World War II she
became, with Mr. Serkin, one of the six co-founders of the Marlboro Festival, which, to
put it mildly, has acquired much more than regional fame. She returns there each year to
conduct, and by choice. "I had to have a career on my terms," she told an
associate.
Mrs. Moyse spends the rest
of her time teaching at Marlboro College and serving as artistic director both of the
Brattleboro Music Center, a highly professional comrnunity music school that she founded
in 1951, and of course of the month-long Bach Festival, which she founded in 1968. So her
Passion was more than competent. As the extraordinary soprano Arleen Auger says (she's
Mrs. Moyses favorite soloist, and sang that night at Symphony Space),
"Ive sung Bach all over the world, often with people who are considered the
best, and in my opinion no one is performing Bach any better than Blanche Moyse is doing
it in Brattleboro."
Indeed, no one alive could have conducted a more
selfless or assured performance. But that was only the start. It wasn't long before I
noticed that the 38 amateur singers whom Mrs. Moyse formed into the Blanche Moyse Chorale
did throughout the evening something most professional singers will do at most once or
twice in an entire career: They sang directly from their hearts, without hesitation or
forethought.
They did more. The "St.
Matthew Passion" is, among many other things, a great sacred drama in which the
chorus plays several roles: Jesuss baffled, sometimes anguished disciples; the mob
howling for his crucifixion; and even an assembly of faithful modern Christians (in
effect, they represent the congregation of Bachs own church, where the Passion was
first performed) reacting with grief, anger or profound awe to each turn of the timeless
story.
The Moyse Chorale performed
these roles with the precision and power of great actors, and with the humility of
believers who know that the story they're telling is more important than they are
themselves. Mrs. Moyses intentions had become their intentions; they were as much
her instrument as her violin ever could have been.
Later I ventured to suggest
that her generally excellent professional orchestra couldnt match the exalted
emotional response of her amateur chorus: her answer amazed me. "Thank God you
noticed that!" she cried, and at once I understood that shed trained her chorus
to be just as she is herself. She cares more for an ideal than she does for her own glory,
and so she wants everyone to know how short her performance falls; she thinks the music is
more important than she is herself. When she had to stop performing as a violinist she
felt that her life was ended. Now, as a conductor confronting what she calls "the
greatest values there are in humanity," she feels "humble," even
"embarrassed." She notes, of course, that she could do more with the orchestra
if she could rehearse it all year long, the way she rehearses her chorus. And she adds
that amateurs can in fact sometimes achieve greater subtlety than professionals simply
because they have to work harder. Many professionals, she thinks, wrongly feel no need to
be any better than they are.
But thats another
story. She herself is never satisfied. And if her skill, devotion and intensity in shaping
Bachs great religious drama leave her audience in tears, that, she says without a
trace of pride, is simply what the "St. Matthew Passion" deserves.
Wall Street Journal, November 5, 1984
Read my 1999 review of Blanche Moyse
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