Conductor sees real role as challenging singers to soar

VICTORIA, BC — For conductor Peter Butterfield, great art is at once static and moving.  “It’s a changing thing, it’s like dunes in a desert,” he said. “I think by definition, it’s a journey every time.”

That’s what gives some classical works – like Bach’s 18th-century Mass in b Minor – their staying power.

Overnight, different elements of the piece, which he’ll conduct Saturday as director of the Victoria Philharmonic Choir (VPC), seem to shift. A section that seemed extraordinary one night may seem mundane the next. But something in another section might reveal itself in a flash of clarity for the first time.

Butterfield, who estimates he has performed the Mass 12 to 15 times as both a conductor and a tenor, says it has the unusual quality of giving him something different every time he hears it.