James Manishen: 60 Years with the WSO

Looking back over six decades with the Winnipeg Symphony Orchestra, what moment or performance stands out as the most transformative for you personally or artistically?

The active musical participation when I joined the WSO as a young musician in 1966 was a game changer in my career, musically and personally. I was a clarinetist fresh out of high school, a member of the all-city Manitoba Schools Orchestra and a bit of a classical music keener, you could say. I went to WSO concerts regularly but never thought I’d be sitting there at such a young age among professionals who comfortably got around their instruments while us students were still slugging away trying to make our instruments consistently sound as they should.

At that time my clarinet teacher was a lovely man and a splendid musician, Arthur Hart. He was the WSO’s first principal clarinetist (1948) and was nearing the end of his career. Just before he retired, my WSO opportunity came up through two concerts in November/December 1966 where the woodwind section needed a third clarinet.

The first was a Pops concerts (called Fanfare Concerts then) led by the legendary and famously demanding conductor of the renowned Boston Pops, Arthur Fiedler. My first notes as a “professional” were in Liszt’s Les Preludes, which opens with exposed woodwind that must be played perfectly in tune. The forensic Fiedler singled each of us out, carefully balancing the pitches to perfection. The second clarinet (me) ends the opening by resolving the harmonies on one note. I remember my thrill at getting it in tune, along with a comforting nod from the Maestro!

The second concert, a few weeks later was in the Classics series (both at the old Winnipeg Auditorium). Victor Feldbrill was conducting, mezzo-soprano Marilyn Horne was our soloist and the featured work was the Second Suite from Ravel’s Daphnis et Chloé. The second clarinet part is a beast, with rapid sextuplet notes played softly in the most awkward part of the instrument followed by a blistering fight to the finish in the metre of five. All went well.

Not long after, illness forced Mr. Hart to retire. Mr. Feldbrill probably thought that since I could handle Daphnis as I did, I could step in full time. As I was taking a science degree at the U of M, I juggled my course load around the rehearsal schedule and joined the Orchestra where I finished the 1966-67 season and played for the next two before leaving for New York to study at the Manhattan School of Music.

You’ve witnessed enormous changes in the classical music world. How has the Winnipeg Symphony Orchestra evolved during your time there, and what changes have been most meaningful to you?

The biggest change I experienced was when we moved from the old Winnipeg Civic Auditorium to the brand new Manitoba Centennial Concert Hall in January 1968. This took place right in the middle of my three seasons with the Orchestra. I played on the official opening concert of the new hall that Spring (Mussorgsky’s Pictures at an Exhibition plus music for the RWB), and remember that evening as if yesterday!

The venue an orchestra plays in is a critical element to the success of the performances and preparation. The old “Aud” was acoustically dead and dry (though I heard many great concerts in it!). When we moved into the new hall, it was like the scene in Wizard of Oz where the black and white image of Kansas turns into glorious technicolor.

The Orchestra sounded totally different: warm and yielding, with a full range of colour and dynamics ideally felt onstage and in the audience. Our Concert Hall not only had a beautiful sound but was spacious and quiet for the audience (though I never liked the absence of a centre aisle).

Performance-wise, our Orchestra circa 1968 could certainly deliver, but it was not as proficient as today’s WSO. Unfamiliar music took longer to learn, whereas our current musicians have come from highly competitive national and international auditions and can play virtually anything on short notice. They also play many more concerts than we did. Challenging ones too, what with New Music Festivals and very difficult live-to-movie programs among much else.

As artistic consultant today, how do you balance honoring the orchestra’s long traditions while helping it stay relevant for new generations of audiences and musicians?

Great music is timeless. This is an art that speaks through the ages and rewards us by helping us to sensitize ourselves to all that is. That stays with us after the music stops, and I think its aftereffects aren’t talked about enough.

Even though we play music by composers from several centuries ago, their range of emotions is no less human than our own and therefore no less relevant. What’s more, the famous definition of music as the “universal language” is the bottom line of Nature and thereby life itself. Rhythm is there even before we are born! But let me answer your question by stealing a wonderful quotation by Mendelssohn:

It’s not that music isn’t specific enough for words…it’s that it is TOO specific.

You’ve worked with many conductors and soloists over the years. Is there a collaboration or partnership that especially shaped your musical perspective?

There are so many, the majority of whom I heard live but didn’t actually work with. On the clarinet, my main influence was the great and longtime principal clarinetist of the New York Philharmonic, Stanley Drucker. My lesson with him when the NYP came to Winnipeg in 1967 led to my three-year’s study with his teacher Leon Russianoff in New York. Mr. Russianoff had been a pupil of the other legendary NYP principal clarinet Simeon Bellison. All three shaped whatever I could do on the instrument going forward.

I was in the WSO (again with Fiedler) when David Oistrakh played the Tchaikovsky Violin Concerto with us in December 1967. One of the greatest violinists of his time, he simply transported you.

Another Russian, Kirill Kondrashin, was equally renowned as a conductor and in 1976, he led the WSO in Shostakovich’s final Symphony, No. 15. Kondrashin knew Shostakovich and had premiered the composer’s Symphonies 4 and 13. Never have I heard our orchestra reach such a level of buy-in and execution. For years and to this day, us older WSO’ers recall this concert as one of the jewels in the Orchestra’s concert crown!

(Right: During a 1968 northern tour, James Manishen (circled) appears with conductor George Cleve (centre) and Concertmaster Arthur Polson (right, holding his violin case.)

After 60 years with the orchestra, what do you hope your legacy will be within the Winnipeg Symphony Orchestra and the broader Canadian classical music community?

Just as someone with unending enthusiasm for an art that never loses its freshness and ability to enhance one’s life. I say…try it, you’ll like it! And if a few do, I’m happy.

Mallory Gallant (she/her) is the Public Engagement Specialist with the WSO.