The Hudson Village Theatre, in collaboration with the Hudson Chamber Music Series, is pleased to announce a performance of The Missing Pages, a “chamber musical” written by and starring Tom Allen, on February 26 at 4pm in the Village Theatre, 28 Wharf Road in Hudson.

Tom has hosted a series of daytime shows on CBC Music, the latest incarnation of which is About Time, which airs weekdays from noon to 3pm. Long-time dedicated or even casual listeners know Tom as a wonderful raconteur who makes music come alive with his colourful and unusual anecdotes about the music, the composers, and the musicians.

This will be the third appearance of Tom and his troupe at the Village Theatre. They presented Bohemians in Brooklyn in 2015 and The Last Curlew in 2017. Tom has discovered an unusually intriguing story on which to base this show.

The hero of the piece is Theodore Frederic Molt, likely the only resident of Lower Canada to have met and talked to Ludwig van Beethoven. Molt was born in what is now the Federal Republic of Germany in 1795. He arrived in Quebec City in 1822 after he was conscripted into Napoleon’s army, serving as an accountant and assistant paymaster for his regiment and witnessing the slaughter at the battle of Waterloo as a bystander. In Quebec, he taught piano and music and founded a Juvenile Harmonic Society. In 1823 he married Henriette, the daughter of the prominent Quebec musician Frédéric-Henri Glackmeyer.

In June 1825 he sold off his musical instruments and furniture and returned to Europe to seek out his musical hero, Beethoven. There, he met musicians such as Ignaz Moscheles, Karl Czerny, possibly Franz Schubert and, more importantly, Beethoven himself. His conversations with the great composer were extensive enough that Beethoven wrote a short canon for Molt on the words “Freu Dich des Lebens” in December 1825 (performed as part of the show).

Because of the maestro’s deafness, he kept notebooks in which his interlocutors could write down their questions and remarks for him to read. Molt’s initial greeting to the composer is in the notebook, but the following four pages were ripped out. Hence the Missing Pages of the title.

The reasons for the disappearance of these four pages are a mystery. Was it out of anger? Was it to hide some sort of scandal? This gives an opening for Tom to imagine the conversations and the events surrounding them. The end result is a chamber musical that mixes classical music, history and original song.

The troupe was ready to take the show on tour in 2020, in honour of the 250th anniversary of Beethoven’s birth, but the pandemic intervened. Hudson audiences are fortunate to be able to see the show live in 2023. Tom plays the role of Anton Schindler, Beethoven’s first biographer. Derek Boyes plays Beethoven and Gregory Oh plays Molt. The cast also includes Lori Gemmell, principal harpist of the Kitchener-Waterloo Symphony Orchestra (and Tom’s wife), and Patricia O’Callaghan as Susannah Sotto, an unrequited love interest of Beethoven (for whom Beethoven may have asked Molt to compose some romantic poetry).

Tickets for the performance are available online on the Hudson Village Theatre’s website, villagetheatre.ca, for $39 plus tax. There will be a short meet and greet with the cast members in the theatre’s bar after the performance. Tom’s biography and information about his other chamber musicals are available on his website, tomtomallen.com.

Below are links to Hudson-related websites: