The Calgary Philharmonic Orchestra (CPO) is the home to approximately 65 world class musicians, and Robert Penner is one of them. Penner fortunately happened to be the father of a very good friend, and having been overwhelmed by the grand majesty of the CPO like in the Wonder of Chopin concert and the Mozart and Salieri concert, I felt very privileged to be given the opportunity to interview one of the extraordinary members.
Penner sits in the section of First Violins and is a man of seasoned experience, having joined back in 1983. This year will be his 28th season with the orchestra, so Penner knows quite a bit about the challenges and joys to playing the violin, especially when it comes to the large audiences in the world class concert halls. But his initial attraction to the violin and his dedication has been an interesting journey, even right from the beginning, hailing from Winnipeg, Manitoba, and growing up in New Brunswick, Ontario and Manitoba.
“My parents are Mennonites… [So] there’s a strong choral tradition of congregational singing and if you go to a Mennonite church, they all know how to sing for harmony, and so I grew up hearing hymns and harmony. More than that, I was musical in a fundamentally early age- my parents tell me I could carry a tune before I could talk, so there’s a way music was my first language and the words came later.” But, with a glint in his eyes, “there’s something very vocal about the violin, [and] that of all the instruments, it’s the closest to the human voice.”
Music, Penner believes, expresses the deepest parts of him. He sometimes won’t be able to find the words to express himself, but can only be felt by experiencing and hearing music. At 17 years old, playing Brahms’ violin sonata in G major, the piece became his outlet for what was going on in his life. It was a deeply satisfying experience, and Brahms continued to be a role model throughout Penner’s his music career because of the complexity of Brahms’ music. “[He was] always trying to reach for something higher, so there are elements of power struggles and resolution that I find very satisfying.”
His various travels with the Calgary Philharmonic Orchestra have been astounding, having played across North America, including in the famed Carnegie Hall. He has also toured across Europe, playing with the orchestra in Austria, Switzerland and France, with the highlight of the tour having entered the very famous concert hall in Vienna, the Musikverein. “It is a very old concert hall,” Penner explains, “and so to go into that place with such a deep musical tradition was very very special.”
As the question arose to share a favorite memory playing with the CPO, Robert Penner smiled as he tried to extract a favorite experience out of many, (as one does accumulate many good memories over a span of 28 years with the Orchestra) and he decided to share his favorite concert with me. So far, it had the Bernstein MASS, written by Leonard Bernstein, and performed it with the previous music director, Hans Graf. It was “just a special kind of night,” Penner enthusiastically reminiscences, “[I] was just so completely awed with [Hans Graf], [as] it was a huge, complex production, with the full orchestra, plus a choir, plus soloists, plus staging, and there he was, [in] all this swirl of sound, and was absolutely in command, and there was something there that really struck me.”
However with the violin, as with any instrument, there’s a lot that you have to get right before even beginning to sound good. “The first thing people notice is that, compared to the guitar, there are no frets. The violin is very easy to play out of tune, [as you have to] be listening constantly and to know what pitch you need in your head, and also when you are playing with a bow. The bow is really complex piece of technology… how evenly [the bow] can play and learning how to play all of that [combined] takes quite a long time.”
So when does a musician know he’s playing well? For one, Penner loosely explains, there are very obvious technical things when playing music – playing the right notes, playing the right rhythm and playing the right tune. Then a musician must play the appropriate style the music pertains to, as music was played in differently in different periods, so a tremendous knowledge of music history takes some experience. “[The CPO] plays a lot of big band stuff, Broadway tunes, and the whole orchestra swings those 8th notes.” But to gain a deeper understanding, he describes music as if a window to the soul, as “whatever the composer was trying to express about life of the human condition is what they put into those notes, and so, to be able to perform at the highest level, you align yourself with that and bring it out, so those listening can go ‘oh there’s something special there I cannot put into words, but it’s really special.’” He says a musician must be playing from the heart to the heart.
Outside of playing for the CPO, Penner was previously the webmaster for the CPO, having a huge influence in its design and maintenance. Also interested in alternative healing, he has taught introductory Shamanism at the Wild Rose College, and has been writing his own compositions, with a CD project on the back burner, to just express himself individually on the violin. He has also been recently influenced by the Aboriginal spirituality in Calgary, their connection to the land, and having been going to the Black Foot Sweat lodges and participating in Native sun dancing, it has deeply affect him spiritually.
What does Penner love about Calgary? “Just the expansiveness of the landscape…the weather, I love the sunlight and seeing clear skies, which is much more preferable to me than living out on the coast where it’s either rainy or cloudy.”
Visit the the Artist Spotlight and the official website of the Calgary Philharmonic Orchestra to learn more about Robert Penner and the CPO!
what an awesome article! It really gives an insight into the lives of professional musicians. =D I enjoyed every paragraph of it.
Thank you! The career of a professional musician is very interesting!