A Tale of Two Cities: Meet Lyra Baroque Orchestra’s Internationally Acclaimed Artistic Director, Jacques Ogg
Tuesday, August 16, 2016 at 5:55AMInterview and photos by Susan Schaefer
Jacques Ogg artistic director of Lyra Baroque Orchestra lunches at the Birchwood Cafe
Europe’s sophistication in Minnesota
Ask most classical performers where to find the most “sophisticated audiences” and likely Europe will be the reply.
"Not so,” answers Jacques Ogg, artistic director of the Twin Cities’ Lyra Baroque Orchestra. He finds Lyra’s Minnesota audiences “robust in quality.”
The quest for such quality of appreciation is not mythical. Just this past Sunday a StarTribune front-page story cites the Minnesota Orchestra’s music director Osma Vänskä’s desire to prove their chops in front of “the sophisticated audiences of Europe.”
Luckily, the less well-known Lyra Baroque Orchestra has been providing continental classiness for Minnesotan audiences for 15 of its past 30 years under the astute leadership of Jacques Ogg, the celebrated Dutch Baroque maestro, who hails from Maastricht, the Netherlands.
Ogg not only lends his own virtuoso reputation, but regularly brings acclaimed European and global guest artists to elevate each performance.
Renowned worldwide as a soloist, conductor and ensemble performer, for years he was a member of one of the world’s leading period-instrument ensembles, the Orchestra of the 18th Century directed by the late Frans Brüggen, and has performed in Baroque orchestras in numerous other countries.
Fono Forum, Germany's largest music magazine, named Ogg’s CD of Bach's Goldberg Variations one of the finest recordings of this work, and his discography is equally impressive, including over 60 recordings with labels such as Philips, Sony, EMI, Deutsche Harmonia Mundi, and Glossa.
A Renaissance on the River
Highly sought after as an instructor, Ogg is a life long harpsichord professor at the Royal Conservatoire of The Hague, one of the world’s foremost institutes for early music with students from all corners of the globe. His fame as a pedagogue takes him annually to such locations as Korea, Brazil, Spain and Argentina, to work with students who avidly seek his teaching talents.
Ogg and Destrubé introduce Baroque Instrumental Program at Ultan Hall, UMN
And now many of these students will converge upon Minneapolis annually in August to attend the international Baroque Instrumental Program, an intensive summer music course co-directed by Ogg and his longtime colleague, Canadian violinist Marc Destrubé, that attracts the best and brightest national and international students and professionals for Master’s Workshops.
Ferguson Hall, University of Minnesota School of Music
Thanks to longtime Lyra Baroque Orchestra collaborators, Immanuel Davis and Tami Morse, the program is now transplanted to the University of Minnesota’s Music School in Ferguson Hall on the West Bank. For decades this intensive program was hosted in Vancouver, Canada, but a recent change in administration sparked a relocation yielding a positive impact for the Twin Cities metro region and the university.
Early Music Cosmic Alignment
Bringing the Baroque Instrumental Program to the Twin Cities in August leverages another Early Music phenomenon – the Twin Cities Early Music Festival started by local harpsichordist Donald Livingston three years ago.
Says Ogg, “These two programs greatly benefit and enhance each other. The Twin Cities Early Music Festival is an admirable enterprise bringing together groups from near and far to present a series of concerts that compete with other international festivals. And the faculty of the Baroque Instrumental Program and many of the professional students will play concerts during the three-week extravaganza.”
Baroque Instrumental Program students perform Antonie Dornel at Ultan Hall, UMN
Baroque (approx. 1600 to 1750) composers, musicians and philosophers believed in celestial harmony and a cosmic relationship between music, mathematics and science and began writing and performing a style of music designed to serve their societies – to entertain and to elevate the senses.
Ogg’s sensibilities and talents for defining the general character of a piece, and in phrasing, articulation and ornamentation are legendary for bringing out “the emotion, the multi-faceted life of the wonderful repertoire” of this inventive age of musical development – a period know for the likes of J. S. Bach, Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach, and George Phillip Telemann to name a few. Lyra musicians use actual instruments (or replicas) and techniques known through scholarly documentation.
Lyra rehearses at the Baroque Room, St. Paul
“My goal is create interesting programs that touch the soul of the listener,” Ogg explains.
The exquisite acoustics and intimacy of Hamline University’s Sundin Hall, where Lyra regularly performs, combine perfectly facilitating the celestial harmonies to touch the listeners’ souls.
Childhood twist of fate
Ogg’s Maastricht childhood was not traditional due to his family’s Protestant roots. The city sits in the predominately Catholic province of Limburg which limited choices his for basic school. By happy accident his school rented rooms from a music school and so his early love of music developed due to a twist of fate.
As early as age six he stayed after school to learn from what he calls “not an exceptional but a thorough early musical education called solfège – to read and sing from notes – a French/Belgian system not learned in the north of Holland.”
From these humble roots, the young Ogg was introduced to an incomparable way of reading 17th and 18th century music that has contributed to his special talents in the field – his ability to read notations as they were written, thus making his interpretations closer to the way the music was intended.
A second twist of fate is that his harpsichord teacher, Anneke Uittenbosch, “came from Amsterdam every week to teach in Maastricht. She was tall, lovely, elegant and I was simply awed!”
It was Anneke who was responsible for his introduction to this authentic way of reading and practicing. Jacques explains that she played according to methods that were not the standard for teaching at that time. “When you can do this,” he attests, “your playing gets more lively and telling.”
Later, Ogg moved on to the Amsterdam Conservatory from which he graduated in 1974. There another master of “playing according to the original sources” tutored him, Gustav Leonhardt. After three years with Anneke and four with Gustav, Ogg passed his exams for playing and teaching harpsichord, and thereafter, his career soared, teaching in the Dutch cities of Groningen and Hilversum, until 1977 when the director of the Royal Conservatory in The Hague called and the rest, as they say, is history.
Ladies and Gentlemen – Meet the Baroque Boys
During the past weeks, as the Baroque Instrumental Program students filled Ferguson Hall with the celestial sounds of harpsichord, flute, violins and viola de gamba, a troupe of internationally acclaimed classical virtuosos dressed more like the Beach Boys than classical maestros haunted the hallways.
The Baroque Boys: Marc Destrubé, Jacques Ogg, Jaap ter Linden, Wilbert Hazelzet
These faculty members – Marc Destrubé, violinist, Wilbert Hazelzet, flutist, and Jaap ter Linden on viola de gamba – are also prominent recurring guest stars of Lyra Baroque Orchestra and Ogg’s lifelong friends and colleagues.
Ogg met Hazelzet “when studying in Amsterdam. I worked and lived in a small museum – the wine museum!! It was a beautiful 17th century building two blocks from the Dam Square, with one 'noble room' where the wine merchants would meet once a month, and which was occasionally rented out for special classy events,” he adds with a twinkle in his eyes.
“Well, a lady celebrating her 60th birthday asked me to give a concert with a small ensemble, and she was especially fond of the flute. The week before I had heard a concert around the corner in the Waalse Kerkwhere Wilbert Hazelzet played. I found out where he lived and invited him for that 'gig'. Now we can look back on nearly 47 years of collaboration, concerts from Argentina to Seoul and innumerable places between, and about twenty CD's!”
He soon came to know Destrubé and ter Linden through the vibrant Dutch Baroque scene.
Where to find local performances throughout August
On Friday, August 19that 8 pm, Sundin Hall, Hamline University, Lyra presents “Bach & His Heroes”, an intriguing program of music by the master, J.S. Bach, and by those whose music he admired. For the rest of the lively and reasonably priced performances through August 28th, please check the Twin Cities Early Music Festival website.
Venture out and discover that European musical refinement resides in right in our own backyard.
Postscript: Maastricht to Minneapolis: Meeting the Maestro through Merrell
Jacques Ogg and reporter, Susan Schaefer enjoy time at the Birchwood Cafe
It was as unlikely a meeting as one could imagine.
During Easter 2008 I was living in Maastricht, the Netherlands and hosting my family for our Easter supper. It wasn’t any meal. My beloved Dutch husband, Martijn, was dying and I was desperately trying to keep myself together as I prepared for what I knew would be his last Easter. I so wanted him and his family to have a flawless experience, yet with the strain of this occasion I somehow had forgotten some vital ingredients necessitating a trip to our local supermarket, the Albert Hein.
It seemed everyone had the same idea. The Easter shopping lines seemed miles long. During those final days of Martijn’s life, I worked hard not to cry in public. Best not to make eye contact with anyone, so I stood in the long queue gazing at the floor when I noticed a pair of my favorite shoes on the feet of the person in line in front of me.
Striving to keep up my humor, in very poor Dutch I asked this person where he had purchased his shoes, and in perfect English he said, “Schuler Shoes!”
I shot back: “Miracle Mile?” And soon we were chatting and smiling about this astounding coincidence. Jacques Ogg, the man in Merrells, was the Artistic Director of Minnesota’s Lyra Baroque Orchestra!
Over the coming weeks this brilliant Baroque harpsichord master became a most generous friend, hosting my husband and I for dinner and a private concert at his magical home, surrounded by his vast fruit bearing gardens in a small village just outside Maastricht. The world knew Ogg as maestro; I know him as friend.
Susan Schaefer can be reached at susan@millcitymedia.org.
