Monday 11 August 2014

Beautiful Music Resounding

No, I didn't make it back to the Festival of the Sound.  But, in a way, I guess I did.  This afternoon I headed to The Church of the Holy Trinity in downtown Toronto to hear another recital by the Cheng2Duo, the sister-and-brother piano-cello team which I first heard at the Festival less than a month ago.

If you read my remarks about their performances in Parry Sound (Performers or Musicians) you will know that I was very impressed by the interpretive power and musicianship displayed by pianist Silvie Cheng and cellist Bryan Cheng.  To that I have to add the natural manner and articulate delivery of their introductory remarks before each work.

This recital began, like the one in Parry Sound, with Beethoven's Cello Sonata No 4 in C Major, Op. 102.  Again, as before, the wayward improvisatory character of much of this music was aptly presented.  I especially enjoyed the folk-dance character of the allegro vivace in the finale, a theme that could easily become too pompous for its own good.  The crisp unity of the two instruments was most notable in the several places where the notes are practically ripped off, leaving an echoing silence before the music resumes.  The Holy Trinity Church has a much more resonant acoustic than the Stockey Centre in Parry Sound, with an   echo decay of a couple of seconds, and the Cheng2Duo sensibly lengthened the pauses to let the sound die right away before continuing.  This did the music no harm, and was probably just what Beethoven heard in that inner ear of his mind as he composed it.  The resemblance to the similar echoing pauses in many parts of Bruckner's symphonies was striking.  Silvie Cheng's playing was remarkably clear even in Beethoven's densest, thickest writing.

Next we were given the Cello Sonata in C Major, Op. 119 by Prokofiev.  This work is completely new to me, and immediately joined my "music shopping list".  As in other masterpieces from the latter end of Prokofiev's life, we have to take account of the impact of the Zhdanov decrees on Soviet composers.  Prokofiev was especially successful in circumventing the strictures of Soviet realism, while still producing music of worth and substance, as this Sonata clearly proves.  In the second and third movements there is more than a hint of the sardonic humour so common in this composer's work.  I get the sense that he was actually tweaking the noses of the Kremlin's uncultured bureaucrats, so subtly that they would then be exposed to the charge of being too dense to get the joke!

The Cheng2Duo performed this music with power and insight.  The long singing cello lines in the first movement were a delight.  The sardonic element in the two latter movements was clear without being overt, and the dance-like rhythms of the scherzo were again clear and crisp.  One passage in the first movement really caught my attention, as the piano went deep and dark while the cello rose to the heights, clearly catching the ear of the audience.  Also notable was the power of Bryan Cheng's pizzicati in the second movement -- they have to be strong to be heard against the heavy-duty piano writing, and these went well beyond strong into the realm of "savage"!

The third work on the programme was Paganini's Variations on One String on a Theme of Rossini.  Now, since it was by Paganini, it was plainly written for the violin -- but curiously for the lowest string, the G string.  Frankly, I'm just as glad not to hear it in that form.  The low strings in all the string family have a dark sound that, on modern instruments, is apt to waver between growly and gravelly.  But translate it to the high A string of the cello, and voila!  The music sings clearly, aptly proving the oft-heard assertion that the cello sounds more like a human voice than any other instrument.

Meanwhile, what of the poor pianist?   Paganini was a first-rank virtuoso and plainly did not intend to share the glory with any such lowly creature as his accompanist.  I've actually played one or two works of this genre, and the piano part is apt to be a monotonous string of oom-pah-oom-pah march chords or oom-pah-pah waltz rhythms.  This particular piece isn't quite that bad, but still....

But no fear.  Bryan Cheng triumphantly surmounted the technical challenges of the writing, coaxing some quite extraordinary sounds out of his instrument in the process!  His high harmonics were particularly impressive for beauty of tone, as these are apt to become squeaky and squealy when executed at high speed.  As for Silvie Cheng at the piano, she miraculously invested even the most boring accompaniment passages with musical beauty and interest.  Fascinating performance!

The encore was the Duo's own arrangement of Libertango by Astor Piazzola.  As Silvie explained it, Bryan first became dissatisfied with the various cello arrangements of this work on offer and created his own.  Silvie then had to rearrange the piano part to match his thinking!  The performance was aptly slow and seductive in the opening, bursting into fiery rhythm at the main theme and finishing with an accelerating coda to a breathless, explosive finish.

This recital was recorded by the CBC for later broadcast on In Concert and I would certainly urge you to keep an ear open for that broadcast.  The Cheng2Duo digs deep under the virtuoso fireworks to find the inner life of each work in their varied repertoire.  While they certainly display impeccable technique, there's much more to good music than that and this pair of artists have a great gift for coaxing the music off the page and into vivid life.

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