Sunday at the Festival was a day for remembering, not with sadness but with great gratitude. Both concerts on this day were memorial tributes to old friends, gone but a while since, yet treasured in memory -- the one for contributions to the Festival in particular, and the other for contributions to the art of choral music across Canada.
The afternoon concert was a memorial to Charles W. Stockey, the lead donor whose generous contribution led to the construction of the magnificent hall which the Festival now uses.
This concert was given by the New Zealand String Quartet, making their twelfth annual appearance at the Festival. For anyone who loves good chamber music, this Quartet should be a do-not-miss on your musical bucket list. There's a special quality of unanimity, a special kind of energy, and a uniquely high level of innate musicality which informs their every performance. As I have observed in past years, this is due in no small measure to the fact that they play standing, with the cellist seated on a riser to bring him up to his colleagues' eye level. Thus, they can and do get closer to each other than would be the case if all were seated.
We're very fortunate indeed that this remarkable ensemble chooses to spend a full week in Parry Sound every summer, allowing us multiple opportunities to enjoy the full power of their artistry.
On this occasion, they led off with Haydn's String Quartet in C Major, Hob.III:57. Haydn played just as big a role in the evolution of the quartet form as he did in the parallel evolution of the symphony, and completed 67 quartets in all. As with his 104 symphonies, so (I suspect) the same will be true here, that there isn't a suspicion of routine or a hint of tedium in any of them.
In the case of this C Major work, the originality comes in the form of phrases with unusual and asymmetrical phrase lengths. And then there's the finale, which leads off in a slow tempo. This automatically raises expectations of a short introduction to a conventionally fast movement. However, this slow, singing, almost hymn-like theme is developed at great length. When the fast tempo finally does come, it proves to be very short -- barely a minute long at a guess -- and the slow tempo then returns to bring the quartet to a placid yet elevated conclusion.
In all of this music, the New Zealand Quartet gave a fine performance in their best Haydn style -- not eschewing drama where it was needed, yet always remembering the smile on Haydn's face and in his music, most of which maintains a genial temper.
They followed this with a favourite masterpiece of the Romantic era, the famous Andante cantabile from Tchaikovsky' String Quartet No. 1. This beautiful singing tune with its contrasting middle theme is given throughout with the strings using their sordines (mutes), and thus playing with an inward, almost withdrawn tone that contrasted neatly with the open-air briskness and joyfulness of the Haydn.
After a pause, they were joined by clarinetist (and Festival Artistic Director) James Campbell for the perennially popular Clarinet Quintet in A Major, K.581 by Mozart. Campbell gave a spoken introduction to the work, highlighting with musical examples from the players, before performing the entire work. I've always loved this piece, but it always feels funny to me to hear it in the full flow of summer. That's because of the finale, a theme and variations. Near the end, this drops into a slow tempo and the clarinet melody which carries that variation always has a kind of autumnal feeling for me, a feeling that it would sound best with coloured leaves swirling in the wind outside and a good big mug of warmed cider at my elbow in front of a roaring fire -- or something of that kind.
At any rate, these five musicians -- who play together year in and out -- gave a sprightly reading of this evergreen work, highlighting all contrasts within a fine overall view of the structure. Lovely music making in the classical chamber repertoire which is this Festival's central repertoire.
On Sunday evening, the Elmer Iseler Singers took the stage with their Music Director Lydia Adams and the Canadian Brass in a concert designed as a tribute to Elmer Iseler, the man long known as "the Dean of Canadian choral conductors."
The programme was selected to include favourites of Elmer's, works which he edited for publication, works which he commissioned, and a few more recent works which Adams felt reflected his tastes in music. That last concept made my eyebrows go up slightly because of my own awareness of how we wish certain tastes and attitudes on people from our past, and may do so erroneously. But in this case I felt that her guesses were more than likely on target.
Out of such a long program of over 20 selections, I can only take the time to comment on a few which particularly moved me. The three excerpts from Eleanor Daley's Requiem certainly fell into that category. I remember attending the work's premiere at the Festival many years ago, and finding it enjoyable, but it didn't create a strong impression on me at that time. Rehearing three sections of it now, I find that it is wearing better than I might have expected and certainly creating a stronger and more favourable impression with the passing of the years.
The Baroque selections with brass were all splendid, and the sound expanded well in the Stockey Centre's high-pitched roof space. The two spirituals were excellent too, with crisp diction ensuring that all the text, no matter how rapidly delivered, came across clearly.
In a category by itself was Hussein Janmohamed's Nur: Reflections on Light. This work was written for this choir. The eighteen singers dispersed themselves around the hall. As conductor Adams swept her hand in a slow circle around the space, voice by voice they joined in with their individual parts which they then repeated ad lib until the conductorial hand swept around again, indicating a shift to the next section. The text consisted solely of the word "Nur" ("Light"), and the resulting waves of sound enveloped the audience in a shimmering cloud of sound that indeed seemed to pulse and glow with light. As the music reached its climax I became more aware of two individual voices closest to my seat on one side of the hall but they faded back into the general sound again as the volume dropped back down. A seat in the exact centre of the hall would have been a huge advantage for this piece! But I definitely found it engrossing and somehow very gripping, even though this description may not sound so.
The second half began with a short panel discussion of memories of Elmer including Adams, James Campbell, Chuck Daellenbach, and Jessie Iseler (Elmer's widow). I was sorry that Adams confined herself to moderating the discussion as I'm sure her long professional association with Elmer would have given her insights shared by no one else present. But the others all spoke entertainingly and with point and purpose.
This is a good time to mention that the large overhead screen displayed a lengthy slide show of Elmer Iseler's career and performances throughout the evening. I once had the privilege of singing under his direction for one year in the Toronto Mendelssohn Choir and this slide show, including faces familiar and places familiar, greatly heightened the impact of the evening for me. It was a remarkable trip down memory lane, and there were undoubtedly others in the audience who shared that journey with me. I know it was a journey shared by many of the performers, who were sneaking glances at the screen throughout the evening whenever they were not actually playing or singing!
The musical selections in the second half included a number of British and Celtic folk song arrangements. These are always fun to sing but I find them less interesting to listen to as the melody's the thing in folk music, and it has a way of vanishing in the parts of any choral arrangement.
But no complaints about the concert's finale. The full forces joined in The Hour Has Come by Srul Irving Glick. This gripping piece was originally composed as the finale of a thirty-minute choral symphony of the same name, commissioned by Elmer and the Toronto Mendelssohn Choir and first performed by them (and published) in 1985. I have never heard of any performance of the full work since then, but the final movement has taken on a continuing life of its own and with good reason. Even in the authorized reduced version for choir, piano and brass quintet (and with an added clarinet part for the long solo line at the introduction), it made a huge impact. The poem, by Carole Leckner, sings of "brothers and sisters... sisters and brothers" and finishes with the affirmation that "The hour has come for love."
There are two moments in the music when the choir, singing in monotone, suddenly blossoms into eight parts fortissimo, a stunning and exhilarating effect. This is particularly true the second time when the brass join in. The total wave of sound at this point grew so powerful that I almost looked around the hall to see where the extra voices were coming from!
This final work also gave me food for thought in another direction. This programme included two works, one by a Jewish Canadian composer, and one by a Muslim Canadian composer, which in their different ways stepped over or set aside sectarian boundaries and differences. I don't know if Glick and Janmohamed, two men from very different generations and backgrounds, could have been comfortable to shake hands and greet each other in person, but somehow I think that they have managed to do just that in their music. That was a powerful and uplifting thought to carry with me as I left the hall at the end of an amazing evening.
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