Bryan Wagorn took advantage of the best that Canadian musical education had to offer. As a result, the world of opera is his oyster. For the past 10 years, he has served as an Assistant Conductor at The Metropolitan Opera. The demanding position entails duties similar to those of a rehearsal pianist. The title of Assistant Conductor, however, can be a little tricky to puzzle out. Clarity comes from thinking of a pianist with this job as being a support to the conductor of any given production.
In other words, Wagorn is an opera conductor’s assistant. He coaches singers in their roles. He plays piano for rehearsals until the orchestra gets involved. As Assistant Conductor, moreover, Wagorn frequently goes above and beyond, for example, playing in the pit during performances when a score calls for one keyboard instrument or another. The more you research this Assistant Conductor’s job responsibilities, the more job responsibilities you learn he has.
Many highly accomplished singers esteem Wagorn’s extraordinary talents as a collaborative pianist. Stars with whom he has appeared in recital include Joyce DiDonato, Anthony. Every last detail in the piano part, even a languorous left hand broken octave, is palpably shaped with intelligence. The introduction’s dense chords in sixteenths are sensitively, seductively voiced. As Sierra evokes the poem’s emotional chiaroscuro, Wagorn’s piano seems to breathe, phrase, and feel with her as one. The final image in the text is of fountain shimmering under silvery moonlight; and as Wagorn plays the postlude with its echoes of the opening sixteenth chords, one realizes that these sixteenth figures are ethereal tone painting, aural representations of the nocturnal, luminous fountain.
