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These days, too few people grow up with several generations living under one roof, although there is much to be said for it. It provided my mother Lotte and father Alexander with the day-to-day support that was so necessary as they built careers from the ground up: teaching, performing with the Montreal Symphony Orchestra, and growing the McGill String Quartet into what eventually became the OCM (Orchestre classique de Montréal).
I was introduced to the violin when I was about three years old and Lotte (way ahead of the Suzuki method) organized weekly concerts for my collection of stuffed animals, which all wore bowties for the occasion. She made learning fun, and I took to it with enthusiasm.
She would occasionally appear at the door of my primary-school classroom with skis and boots in hand, to take me out on a day trip to the Laurentians. It was unorthodox, for sure, but it instilled in me a passion for living life to the fullest and one that continues to influence my life to this day.
Lotte started becoming my father’s most active agent in 1948 when she organized the first of several annual European tours. Alex conducted and played both his own music and that which they brought with them, introducing Europeans to Canadian compositions by Claude Champagne, Jean Vallerand, Sir Ernest MacMillan, Oscar Morawetz and John Weinzweig.
The tours were taken at my parents’ own expense, predating any possible sponsorship by yet-to-exist arts councils. During these junkets, they were introduced to many great European musicians such as tenor Peter Pears (life partner of Benjamin Britten) and oboist Eugene Goosens, composers Gustav Holst and Vaughan Williams, and conductors Sir Thomas Beecham and Malcolm Sargent. Lotte’s consummate knowledge of French, German and Italian certainly helped and together they made a dashing couple.
I gather that they must have missed me (I was a mere four years old during their first trip and stayed behind with my grandparents) because, when I was 11, I was invited to come along with them. Denis was accorded a similar privilege when he was eight and accompanied them on a trip which included Israel. Taking us separately was an ingenious trick of parenting on their part because it allowed each of us to participate in our respective trips with their undivided attention.
Mine included attending a London Promenade Concert at Royal Albert Hall, when my father shared the podium with Sir Malcolm Sargent performing his Royal Tribute. Little did I realize that I would, one day, conduct a concert in that same hallowed hall as Principal Conductor of the BBC Welsh Orchestra.
In 1942, cellist Lotte won a position in the Montreal Symphony and joined her husband, who was Concertmaster and Assistant Conductor of the orchestra. Her position with the Montreal Symphony, and its successor orchestras up to today’s Orchestre symphonique de Montréal, continued until she reluctantly retired at age 65, which was obligatory at the time.
The orchestra drew famous guest conductors including Sir Thomas Beecham, Pierre Monteux, Charles Munch, Leonard Bernstein, Joseph Krips, Otto Klemperer, Leopold Stokowski, Arthur Rodzinski, George Enescu and Igor Markevitch, many of whom happily accepted Lotte’s invitations to dinner in our modest duplex on Earnscliffe Avenue, where she soon developed a reputation for her abilities in the kitchen. The same was true of the parade of famous soloists who also found themselves at our family table. Those evenings presented Lotte with ideal opportunities to introduce Alex’s compositions, which resulted in many international performances of his works, and enabled her to invite the esteemed musicians to solo with the McGill Chamber Orchestra.
Through it all, Lotte called herself simply “Public Relations.” In fact, until her untimely passing during the ice storm in 1998, she and her right-hand secretary, Mme. Lise Charette, ran the whole operation from the dining room table at 5459 Earnscliffe. This address continues to house the offices of the orchestra and that very dining room table is now my office as Artistic Director!
Lotte was an expert negotiator and influencer with a very hands-on style of management and marketing. She used her considerable charms such that, when Place des Arts was built, the McGill Chamber Orchestra found a home as resident orchestra of the Théâtre Maisonneuve and you can still find a bust of Alexander Brott in the Mezzanine Lobby.
Watch for the third instalment of Boris Brott’s remembrance in the next issue of LSM. The first installment appeared in the February/March 2022 issue.
This page is also available in / Cette page est également disponible en:
Francais (French)
