John Robertson: Portraits
Centrediscs

Though composer John Robertson was born in New Zealand eighty years ago, he moved to Canada in 1967 and currently calls Kingston, Ontario home. Located on the northeastern end of Lake Ontario and some 240 kilometres east of Toronto, it's a bucolic city of modest size and population; best of all, its picturesque character lends itself perfectly to the kind of musical imaginings featured on Portraits. Robertson's one of those rare individuals who came to music circuitously. While he did study music in secondary school, his working years were devoted to the insurance business. Music was never far from his thoughts, however, as shown by the three years of private study he undertook in the mid-‘70s at the Royal Conservatory of Music in Toronto and the compositions he created for competitions and workshops along the way. Since retiring from his day job, Robertson's dedicated himself fervently to both writing music and getting it heard. In that regard, four Navona Records releases have helped spread awareness of his work, which encompasses symphonies, choral and chamber works, songs, and piano pieces.

If there's any justice, Portraits should raise his profile further. Issued on the Toronto-based Centrediscs label, the release presents six pieces performed with verve by the Bratislava Symphony Orchestra under the assured direction of conductor Anthony Armoré. A number are rooted in literature and myth, from the story of Cyrano de Bergerac and a work inspired by Timothy Findley's 1984 novel Not Wanted on the Voyage to the ‘dance of the seven veils' Salome performs with the head of John the Baptist on a platter and the saga of Orpheus and Eurydice. Included with the release are liner notes (in French and English) that provide background detail for each piece but in modest amount. Having oriented oneself to the general idea associated with each work, one's best advised to set the booklet aside and attend fully to the music, a choice amply rewarded by the high-level of craft on display.

Robertson eschews cheap theatrics and trendy gestures for music grounded in time-honoured values of melody, counterpoint, and symphonic form. The music's enriched throughout by his refined orchestrations and sensitivity to timbre. Consider, for example, how splendidly vibraphone and woodwinds combine during one of the opening piece's lighter passages. Robertson's first work for a large orchestra, Overture for a musical comedy Op. 15 inaugurates the release on a radiant note, the introduction regal but the tone thereafter light and the music spirited. Lilting dance sequences alternate with lyrical expressions as the piece makes its endearing case for nine beguiling minutes. While his Salomé Dances Op. 32 won't supplant Richard Strauss's iconic setting, there's nothing that says treatments by other composers aren't permitted. Common to both is a seductive pull to the music, even if Robertson's version is the less sinuous of the two. Also dance-based is the rousing four-minute “Overture” from Lady Jane – a fable Op. 66.

Cyrano Op. 53 is episodic, moving as it does from: first, the title character's attempt to win Roxanne's affection using the handsome but dim-witted Christian as a front; second, a battle resulting in the latter's death; and third, Roxanne's late discovery that it was Cyrano whom she'd loved all along. The title character's a soldier (Christian too) as well as an eloquent wordsmith, and to that end a martial character informs a few passages; elsewhere, romantic expressions reflect his ardour for his beloved. Drawn from a passage in the Findley book concerning a female crow who was killed by one of Noah's sons after she was caught attempting to stow away on the ark, The Death of Crowe Op. 30 offers an elegiac and tender requiem for the avian creature. The orchestra's clarinetist and harpist do much to express the solemn tone of the material, though the ensemble as a whole is equally responsible for the impression.

Premiered in 2015, the half-hour Orpheus – a masque Op. 64 advances through six parts that recount the love story of Orpheus and Eurydice, her death by snakebite on their wedding day, Orpheus's descent into the underworld to retrieve her, and Eurydice being pulled back to the world of the dead as the lovers attempt to return to the earth's surface. True to form, the “Overture” articulates themes that will re-emerge in various guises thereafter. Whereas a sense of wonder pervades the introduction, its mood dreamlike and fantastical, the second part's earthy in its focus on dances, though romantic also in its celebration of the pair's love. Urgency, intensity, and alarm inform the snakebite-focused third; by comparison, in the Weill-like fourth part the song associated with Charon, the boatman on the river Styx, is resplendent with soprano sax-led vocalizations. Appropriately, the final movement segues from joy at the pair's anticipation of returning home to sorrow at the tragic turn events take.

These richly imaginative portraits of various figures are rewarding indeed, though the album's of course more a portrait of Robertson and a fine one at that. Mention must be made also of the care and nuance with which the orchestra and Armoré render the composer's pieces, their attention to detail evident at every moment. Many a pleasure's to be had from exposure to this superb sampling of Robertson's work. The insurance business's loss is clearly the music world's gain.

November 2023