Excerpt from Chapter 4, In Search of Alberto Guerrero by John Beckwith

“A Great Piano Town”: The Five Piano Ensemble

The Swiss-born pianist and teacher Pierre Souvairan, a leading figure in the Toronto musical scene starting in the mid-1950s, used to say that the city as he found it when he arrived was a “great piano town. “ Before, during, and after World War II, Toronto offered a notable roster of senior piano instructors. At the Toronto Conservatory of Music, along with Guerrero, were Margaret Miller Brown, B. Hayunga Carman, Reginald Godden, Viggo Kihl, Weldon Kilburn, Lubka Kolessa, Ernest Seitz, and Paul Wells--Mona Bates ran a highly successful independent studio. All had distinguished credentials and produced outstanding pupils; several (particularly Godden, Kolessa, and Seitz) were, like Guerrero, active on the concert stage and in broadcasting. Pianists outnumbered other instrumentalists several times over in conservatory enrolments, and the city's reputation as a centre of piano manufacture, while starting to decline in favour of the radio and the phonograph, was still formidable (Heintzman and Mason & Risch, the two major firms, lasted into the early 1950s). The leading international piano soloists all included Toronto in their tour itineraries (Vladimir Horowitz made virtually annual appearances in Massey Hall during my student years, for example).

A curious phenomenon was the popularity of multiple piano concerts. Piano duo teams were of course common, not just in Toronto, with their arrangements from all areas of music literature. But how many cities in that era managed to cultivate both a five-piano ensemble and a ten-piano ensemble? Guerrero's long-time association with the former, in a period when he was also mounting intimate performances of off-beat solo repertoire, is a striking parallel to his emphasis on zarzuela composition simultaneously with his groundbreaking new-music efforts in Chile years before: producing music for wide popular appeal and for connoisseurs did not represent an either-or choice for him; both were desirable and important.

The Five Piano Ensemble made its inaugural appearance in 1926, and lasted until at least 1940. The Ten Piano group came into existence in 1931 under Mona Bates's direction, seemingly as a rival effort. Both teams had strong support from Toronto piano dealers, the former from Heintzman and Company and the latter from the T. Eaton Company, local representatives of Steinway and Sons. The appearance of a large assemblage of grand pianos on stage was arresting, the locales were huge (Massey Hall, Varsity Arena, and even the city's largest sports venue, Maple Leaf Gardens), and the repertoire of the Five Piano group featured spectacular arrangements of popular piano favorites such as Chopin's Polonaise in A-flat, and of orchestral standbys such as Strauss's Blue Danube Waltz and Chabrier's España: it was all well calculated to help sell instruments. A lengthy magazine article describes one of the first concerts and includes a striking photo of the group.

This event took place at Massey Hall on 27 April 1927. The performers were Nora Drewett de Kresz, Reginald Stewart, Viggo Kihl, Ernest Seitz, and Guerrero; Ernest MacMillan conducted. As became standard programming procedure, a series of arrangements was interspersed with solos by individual members. In this all-Chopin program, the arrangements included the two most popular Polonaises--in A-flat, Opus 53, and in A (“Military”), Opus 40, no. 1--and Guerrero's solos were the Impromptu in F-sharp, no. 2, Opus 36, and the “Black Key” Etude in G-flat, Opus 10, no. 5. For a concert in the same hall on 2 November 1927, the arrangements (should one rather call them projections?) were again all of piano originals, the only quasi-exception being Paganini's La chasse (originally arranged--for one piano only--by Liszt); solo offerings included Rachmaninov's Prelude in g, Debussy's Minstrels, Chopin's Waltz in e, op. posth. , and A Mountain Brook by the then-novel composer Cyril Scott. For Schumann's Carnaval, a reviewer noted,”[the five pianists] opened in unison, and also gave the closing march in majestic unison, and took turns in playing the other short sketches. “ Later concerts were not conducted.

At Varsity Arena on 22 October 1928, Scott Malcolm and Reginald Godden replaced Kihl and Drewett, and the program included La campanella (Paganini-Liszt) and the Chabrier. At Massey Hall on 23 November the same year, Liszt's Hungarian Rhapsody no. 15 and the ballet music from Rosamunde by Schubert were the featured group numbers. After their 15 March 1929 concert, which included Wagner's Ride of the Valkyries, the Scherzo from Mendelssohn's Midsummer Night's Dream music, and Strauss's Beautiful Blue Danube Waltz, a reviewer stated that the ensemble “has now become an institution in Toronto, and a popular one judging by the enthusiasm of the large crowds which attend its concerts. “ After the group's concert of 22 November the same year, the Conservatory Quarterly Review noted that “the Five Piano Ensemble . . . has evidently come to stay,” and quoted a Globe review of the event: “Repetitions, recalls and encores were past counting. The. .. synchronizing was extraordinary throughout. “

In Eaton Auditorium on 5 May 1932, four members of the ensemble (Guerrero, Nora Drewett, Scott Malcolm, and Viggo Kihl) joined a small string orchestra in a performance of the Vivaldi-Bach Concerto in a for four keyboards and strings; the conductor was Géza de Kresz.

The same four, joined by Godden, appeared in Maple Leaf Gardens, on 27 November 1935, with a larger component of transcriptions in their program: the Beautiful Blue Danube again, Tchaikovsky's “Waltz of the Flowers” from The Nutcracker, Rimsky-Korsakov's Capriccio espagnol, two Liszt pieces, and a five-keyboard version of Cyril Scott's arrangement of the Invention in F Major by J. S. Bach. As composed by Bach, this glittering little piece lasts about thirty seconds in performance; one imagines it on this occasion as the inflation of an inflation. (Less than a week previously, Guerrero had played the complete cycle of Bach's Inventions and Sinfonias in a recital at Malloney's. Somehow he managed to compartmentalize his opposing roles as Bach purist and multi-piano team member. )

The ensemble had given another concert in the Gardens on 24 April the same year, and in 1936 they were again heard twice, in Varsity Arena, the dates being 5 May and 9 November. On 5 May and 8 September 1938 they appeared at Varsity Arena, both times with the Toronto Philharmonic, the orchestra of the summer Promenade Concerts. The conductor, Reginald Stewart, was a member of the ensemble. On 5 May he led a performance of the Vivaldi-Bach Concerto in a, with his colleagues Godden, Malcolm, Seitz, and Guerrero, and then joined them in a group without orchestra (the Bach-Scott Invention in F, Liszt's arrangement of Schubert's “Hark, Hark, the Lark,” and Stravinsky's “Danse infernale”). At the 8 September concert, the Ensemble replaced an indisposed guest soloist on two days' notice, and offered two pianos-only groups, highlighted by the Mendelssohn Scherzo and Weber's Invitation to the Dance. A further concert in Massey Hall took place on 24 November 1939. For an engagement in London, Ontario, on 14 February 1940, the ensemble members were again Godden, Guerrero, Malcolm, Seitz, and Stewart, and the program included arrangements of Bach's Toccata and Fugue in d, the “Polovtzian dances” from Prince Igor by Borodin, and Debussy's orchestral Nocturne no. 2 (Fêtes). This is the latest date for which I have located documentation.

Guerrero was the one constant member of the ensemble throughout its approximately thirteen-year existence, which may indicate that he played a leadership or organizational role. The scores of the ensemble's arrangements have not so far come to light, if in fact they were ever notated. Intriguing questions remain: who was the arranger? Was the repertoire selected and arranged by some mutual process, or did Guerrero or one of the others make assignments? And was MacMillan involved at the start in arranging for the ensemble as well as conducting it? The ensemble and its brief popularity amount to an underexplored episode in the music annals of Toronto, in which Alberto Guerrero was closely involved.

When I bug Aaron Riches for his memories of the young James Edward Guthrie he met at Waverley Drive PS, he laughs: “Jim had the exact same haircut as he does now. He really looked the same. Jim hasn’t changed. I think he was born how he is.

“Of course…” Aaron tempers his amusement some. “Everyone grows.”

Three quarters of what would become Royal City met at this time, at Waverley. Both Aaron and Jim are Guelph-born. Simon Osborne, bassist for that band and player on most of Jim’s albums, moved from Ottawa in Grade 7.

Simon was into skateboarding and made friends that way after relocating. Through a skating friend he heard about this “cool guy from across the street” who had a Vision Psycho Stick and could do kickflips. “So I met Jim,” he remembers, “and he could do the kickflips that were described. And I thought Jim seemed pretty awesome, too.”

The earliest first Jimpression comes from Steve McCuen, childhood chum and collaborator on a hard-to-place project, Mandrills. In “Rap Song 2000,” Steve rhymes his memories of first meeting Jim: “I can remember being back in grade 3 / It’s in September—’82—it’s where I first met Guthrie… He sold his Mite-Y-Mite bike to my younger brother Mike / and told us how to ghost ride the damn bike.”

“I just remember getting huge laughs,” Jim recalls when I ask him about ghost riding, a trick where you leave a moving bike and it continues independent of you. “You did that and everyone’d be on the grass. If you could make a bunch of kids laugh by having skill enough to jump off your bike in such a way that it coasts silently… I was one of those kids who had, like, no confidence, but who had hand-eye coordination.

“And I could throw a rock,” he goes on, “Like, really far. Or straight up in the air and everyone would be like, ‘Holy shit!’ You couldn’t even see it anymore. And it would take 30 seconds to hit the ground. I remember moments like that. Just doing little things that gained immediate [attention].

“Even still… I went to the cottage with a few people [recently] and I pulled out the ol’ rock throwin’ arm, and I still had it. I always attributed it to a good, stout frame. And I have these whippy, elasticy arms. I think there’s a real kind of physics there. I think if you got somebody to measure my body, they’d be like, ‘This is optimal. These are the dimensions you’d use to build one of those David and Goliath slingshots.’

“I made one of those [slingshots], too. When I was younger I used to be really crafty and self-reliant. But the whole while I was trying to choke down a stutter.”

Two years older than Jim, Stephen Evans met Jim on the block. “He was about 12 or 13,” he says. “I think I remember him stammering a lot and being quite shy, but he was also very athletic. He was built like a little gymnast. He was an amazing skateboarder and he was an amazing breakdancer. Well, not an amazing breakdancer, but he spent time learning that stuff. He could moonwalk. I didn’t know anybody who could moonwalk.

“He moves so beautifully, this little man.”

But Stephen stresses that Jim was never a show-off. “I think he just liked devoting himself to learning something and seeing if he could pull it off.”

Jim’s character, like his music, is a unique balance of reservation and razzmatazz. He’s never been someone to trumpet a project, but the work itself, and his dedication to it, has always had such a visible aplomb that drawing attention is inevitable.

To hear it from Jim’s friends, the guy stood out in adolescence; to hear it from Jim, it was the opposite. “When I was younger,” he says, “I didn’t like being the centre of attention because normally, when I was the centre of attention, I was stuttering in front of a class. So I sort of learned being the centre of attention doesn’t always feel good.

“I used to think of myself as a bit of a Seabiscuit,” he says. “In as much as Seabiscuit is sort of a lame horse that nobody wanted. I wasn’t super book smart when I was younger, and I had that stutter, and when I was born my legs were all kinda twisted and turned in. I had to wear casts on my legs for the first little bit of my life. I was always just sorta short and runty. Now that’s all in the past, and I guess it was a big deal at the time. Now, when I put [those issues] under a microscope, they all seem like big little things, a great deal of who I was when I was younger.

“But I learned a lot from those early struggles and it sort of showed me how to adapt and reinvent myself over the years.”

Excerpt from Mapping Canada's Music: Selected Writings of Helmut Kallmann edited by John Beckwith and Robin Elliott

From the Chapter 15: Mapping Canada's Music: A Life Task

The Impetus

All I wanted was to gain more insight into Beethoven's personality. I had plowed my way through three volumes of his letters in Prelinger's edition1 and was now, in the summer of 1948, reading through the second appendix. There, underneath a letter to the composer from a visitor to Vienna, it stared at me in clear print,”Theodor Molt, music teacher in Quebec, North America” [“Musiklehrer in Quebec in Nord Amerika”], December 1825.

“A music teacher in Quebec in 1825, but that's impossible! ” was my immediate reaction. I thought the eldest of the teachers I saw around the Royal Conservatory of Music of Toronto, men born in the 1870s, surely belonged to the first or, at most, second generation of music teachers in this new country. 2 Yet here was someone by the name of Molt who taught in Quebec City a century earlier!

What was the story behind this man? Other Beethoven literature provided details about Molt's visit to the composer, and of these I will mention only that Molt, who had first settled in Quebec in 1822, returned there in 1826 with a Beethoven manuscript in his hands, the canon “Freu' Dich des Lebens,” WoO 195. Rather, what piqued my curiosity was the Canadian aspect of the episode. Although I had arrived in Canada in 1940 as one of some 2, 000 interned refugees from Germany and Austria, our camps were enclaves of European culture, for three years linked to Canadian musical life only by radio broadcasts of the Montreal and Toronto orchestras and recorded music programs. We knew little about Canada's history.

By the time I entered the University of Toronto in 1946 I had gathered my first impressions about current musical life. Although a strong wartime morale booster, music making had been downsized, but now that the nation had returned to civilian life it was raring to emerge stronger than ever. I heard a lot about music's future. Thus, in Quebec a series of state conservatories expanded or opened, in Toronto plans matured for a senior school with master teachers, a professional opera school, and a new course for future school music teachers. Composition teachers versed in contemporary idioms at last assumed university positions. Professionalism seemed just to arrive. Indeed there was a flurry, if not an explosion, of talent and activity. And what about the past? One didn't talk about that. In my three years of music history classes under three different professors, Canadian musicians, past or present, were never subjects of discussion or even mention. Anything of importance, as though by definition, had to take place in Europe or the United States. Music in Canada “had no past” apart from folksong, and in any case one was too busy to celebrate old heroes. True, the Hart House String Quartet of Toronto, and the Montreal Opera Company were memories of older music lovers; true, a Kathleen Parlow or a Rodolphe Plamondon had won acclaim abroad, but there had been a long succession of shipwrecked orchestral and operatic enterprises—backwoods enterprises typically led by organists who found themselves suddenly in front of an orchestra and who hated what little contemporary music they knew. Or so one was told.

Till the end of the war, music was taught at some dozen universities with curricula (at least in Anglo-Canada) perpetuating the time-honoured British system emphasizing complex tonal harmony, fugue and orchestration, but not teaching research techniques, contemporary idioms or much else useful for entering the profession. Little wonder that many young composers resented the conservative academics and part-time composers whom they identified with the age of Elgar or Tchaikovsky, instead placing Schoenberg, Webern, Bartók and Stravinsky on their banner. As if to confirm this negative view of the Canadian past, the CBC’s epochal Catalogue of Canadian Composers (1947) with its generous coverage of living composers disregarded almost all those who had died.

Beside the music teacher of 1825 with Beethoven's manuscript in his hand, one other signpost made me suspicious of this negative view of Canada’s musical past. My Baedeker's Canada of 1907 contained a number of city maps that displayed an “Opera House” in a prominent location, those of Hamilton, Ottawa, Saint John, Toronto, Vancouver and Winnipeg. 3 What cities, if any, had opera houses in 1948?

From the Chapter 17: At Home with the Kallmanns: A Schöneberg Family in the 1930s (1992/2001)

“Write him and he'll have to mend his ways”

It is early 1933. The grownups talk about very important matters. Serious, exciting matters. The Nazis have taken over the government. They plan evil. They lock up their opponents, they rule with orders and scaremongering, they are brutal and without mercy. Some people are sent to a camp (Sonnenburg I believe) where they are tormented and beaten. The greatest enemies of the Nazis are the communists, the objects of their fiercest hatred the Jews. But as organizers of parades and festivities—in this they are great, as even their opponents admit. “If Hitler is such a bad person, then write him a letter and explain to him how bad he is. Then he will have to mend his ways,” I as a ten-year-old advise my parents. Soon there is a day of boycott during which Jewish lawyers may not enter the law courts. “But, papa, if you simply walk up the steps to the law court, how can anyone stop you?”

The Notary Sign Is Stolen

One morning in 1933 or 1934 one of us notices that my father's notary sign with the Prussian eagle is missing from the railing in the front garden. Overnight it has been unscrewed and stolen.

Herr Engwicht Disappears

A portent of the dark future is a rather disquieting phone call from Mr. Engwicht, who up to this point in 1933 has given my father more work than any of his other clients. It is late evening and he calls from one of the big hotels. He has met some foreigners, possibly Dutch people, and they work out some grand business plan. Something very important and urgent. My father advises them lengthily over the phone. Engwicht and his people will either call back or come to us around midnight. My father waits for a long time. No further phone call. Did Engwicht explain later on? Was he going to mock my father, or did the contract come to naught? I know only that something was fishy.

The Law Practice Goes Under

Other Jewish lawyers are soon forbidden to practise; only those who fought at the front line in the First World War and those with many years of practice are allowed to continue in a limited way. 6 My father belongs to the latter, though he was not a combatant in the war. Now he represents only Jewish clients. The office secretary, Fräulein Fohgrub, stays another year or two; later we children sometimes have to help (e. g. , typing legal documents or expediting letters). Day after day the government law gazette prints new laws, laws which have simply been proclaimed without parliamentary debate, laws that trample on procedure and decency. My father is incensed. Jewish lawyers now form “cartels,” groups of four who meet on occasion and discuss events. Eventually my father is no longer allowed to plead before a judge, can only advise his clients. Then, about 1937 or 1938 that too stops. 7 For him, there is no other means of earning money, as he has now turned sixty-five.