Grace Notes

An Interview With Filippo Ciabatti

DONNA REILLY

DR: Next season’s programs look wonderful. But I’m curious. How do you decide what to include in a program? What do you look for? How do you build audiences?

Well, that’s a great question. I think the answer depends on many different factors, so I’ll try to list a few. First of all, you need to realistically look at what you can do budgetarily when you build the program. You have to have in mind what the audience has been exposed to in the years before. You want to pick something the audience will respond positively to, so that that there is some sort of name recognition in what you’re presenting. Because, even if you want to do something slightly more off the beaten path—especially in concerts that have a big budget and big artists involved—you always pair it with something that people will recognize. Because you can’t educate people on something new if they don’t show up. So I think a variety of things need to be taken into account when you decide what goes into a program and a season.

 
Do you ever worry about running out of old favorites?

Ha! No. There are always old favorites that you can’t get tired of. I’m not worried about that; there’s a lot of great music out there. And, you know, sometimes you need to present something to the audience like we did last year with L’Allegro; something the audience won’t be so familiar with. But because of what you build—the quality of the music you’re presenting, the quality of the musicians, and more popular concerts the rest of the year—you’re convinced that people will actually respond to it in the end, and they have.

Well, they certainly do respond. I think it’s safe to say that we’re all going to show up for whatever you put on. 

Until we’re not bringing the quality of what we’ve brought before. Right? As we say in this business, “You are only as good as your last concert.”  So it’s important to maintain the spirit of the ensemble and the quality of what you do, believe in what you present, and do it at the highest possible level every time. But, yes, there is definitely a sort of trust from a big part of the public that they will probably like what we present, or at least find it interesting enough. I’m always amazed at the fact that people do take a part of their day, dress up or put a coat on, and drive a certain distance, buy a ticket, and come. It’s a great gift, and we should never take it for granted. 

I have to admit, when I saw Messiah on the first program of the new season I thought, “Oh, no. Not the Messiah again.” But audiences don’t seem to tire of it. 

Well, first of all, I think Messiah is a great piece of music. It really is, and not just because it’s familiar. There are familiar pieces of music that aren’t so great, but this is really a great one. Messiah is one of Handel’s finest works, musically speaking. And there are two things that I think people might find interesting in the way we’re presenting Messiah: one thing that’s unusual is the way we’re going to present it. We’re going to do the complete Messiah, which is something that’s rarely done. “Complete” means the whole Messiah, which is a long piece. There’s a lot of beloved, wonderful music in there that’s not usually presented. And then we’re going to do the old-style version Messiah, with choral ensembles and step-out soloists also singing different choral parts, which will  give our choir a big boost. And then—maybe most unusual of all—we are doing Messiah at a season when it’s not usually presented. It has become a tradition, especially in Anglo-Saxon countries, to perform Messiah around Christmas time, which is a wonderful tradition; there’s not only nothing wrong with that but I think it’s a fantastic thing to celebrate. But Messiah isn’t really a Christmas piece; it would be more of an Easter piece if we really thought about it. But even beyond any of that, it’s a great story and a great piece of music. Handel was interested in the drama of it. So, by presenting this at an untraditional time, maybe we can refocus the attention of the audience away from the traditions connected with Messiah, and onto the actual piece as an integrally-complete, musically and dramatically deep work of art. 

One more question about Messiah: Are you prepared for the audience bursting into song during the Hallelujah Chorus? A lot of us have sung it many times.

Well, I think people would enjoy just listening to it, with the great ensemble we have. But, you know, any enthusiasm is good enthusiasm, I guess.
 

On another subject, which I’d like you to really go into, what is your vision for Upper Valley Baroque?

Well, UV Baroque is expanding. It’s expanding at lightning speed, and we’re only approaching our fifth season. How much bigger this ensemble has grown, and how much support this ensemble has gotten during these past four years is remarkable. So we’ve gone from being a sort of local group, trying to understand if there was a place for us in the community, to becoming professional—going from three offerings to five offerings a year. The chamber concerts have become an integral part of next year’s programming, with really top-level musicians—our soloists come from all over. And now, beginning next season, we’re going to have our first full-time Managing Director in place, which is a huge step for this organization. Finally, we have this very ambitious next season in front of us. So I think from now on there is only more growth ahead for us. My vision is, that with all of these moving parts and all these  people who are bringing energy, we can rise to a level of national recognition and reputation. But we will continue to have very strong local ties here. I mean, Upper Valley Baroque exists and lives in the Upper Valley and for the people of this area. 

You know, we talked a lot about Messiah, but I feel like it’s worth saying a few words about the season in general. We will have three main concerts, each concert rotating around one of the great composers of Baroque. We have Handel and the complete Messiah, and we have Vivaldi, and all of Vivaldi’s Four Seasons with our concertmaster Suzanna Ogata as soloist. But we also begin the Vivaldi program with Nola Richardson, the fantastic soprano, singing some of Vivaldi’s sacred cantatas. So we’ve got Handel, we’ve got Vivaldi, and we’ve got Bach, around Easter time, with a huge performance of the Easter Oratorio and  the Magnificat. And then we have two chamber concerts. One is going to be a premiere of newly-discovered works by Baroque composers. The second one, which I will personally curate, is going to be a concert of Italian madrigals, with a small vocal ensemble and a theorbo. We’re going to really dig into this fantastic music by Monteverdi and others, performed by a very high level group of professional singers. It’s going to be a great fifth season. We think our audience will like it as much as we do.