Now I'm really running late, over a week behind schedule. I'm sure all my fellow FOTS fans are wondering where I got to! Then on Monday, the sun almost went out, and I figured it was a warning to get back on track -- but it still took 2 more days for me to get down to doing it.
Each year, the Festival of the Sound comes up with a new and different way to mark the end of the three-week Festival. It's usually something big, bold and spectacular, yet always musical as befits one of the premier music festivals of the country. This year, the anchor of the final grand concert was the National Academy Orchestra under the direction of Boris Brott, and the theme of the programme was "Last Night of the Proms."
Each year, the Festival of the Sound comes up with a new and different way to mark the end of the three-week Festival. It's usually something big, bold and spectacular, yet always musical as befits one of the premier music festivals of the country. This year, the anchor of the final grand concert was the National Academy Orchestra under the direction of Boris Brott, and the theme of the programme was "Last Night of the Proms."
Right away, the mind fills with visions of a jam-packed Royal Albert Hall with thousands of patriotic English men and women (and children) singing along at the top of their lungs while waving flags by the thousand. Well, it wasn't quite that spectacular, but still a rousing and enjoyable end to a splendid summer festival.
By tradition, the patriotic singalong always comes in the second half, but the first half is always a more serious programme with a major centrepiece work. This concert, true to tradition, opened with a lively performance of Felix Mendelssohn's third symphony, the Scottish Symphony. There's no question in my mind that the composer absolutely captured the feeling of Scotland, not so much as a place, but as a state of mind: mysterious, dramatic, lively, pensive and -- in the end -- standing tall and proud as an equal for any member of the family of nations. Well, I guess as a descendant of many generations of proud Scots, both Highland and Lowland, it's natural for me to feel that way. But along with that emotional link comes a boundless admiration for the skill with which Mendelssohn stated and developed his musical ideas, the orchestration in which he clothed them, and the overall result which perfectly illustrates the concept of the whole being greater than the sum of its parts.
The orchestra played the work with tremendous energy, the sound filling the hall to such an extent that one could easily have believed there were sixty players instead of less than thirty. I especially admired the crisp articulation from the strings. Mendelssohn loved to entrust melodic material to his winds and brass while tasking his strings with endless chains of tremolando and arpeggio passages to fill in his harmonies. It gives the music a lift and lightness but only -- and this is key -- if all the string players are right on point with each other. Here, they certainly were, amply proven by the immense power and precision of the surging waves at the end of the first movement.
In the scherzo, the laughing vivace playing of the high-speed clarinet melody was a delight. I'm only sorry the clarinetist wasn't credited by name -- he certainly should have been! The finale took off right from the spot-on staccato pickup chords which open the movement. If the final majestic coda was a bit slower than optimal, it was nonetheless well within the allowable.
This symphony was followed by a Grand Duo Concertante for double bass, violin, and orchestra by Bottesini. This is one of those pieces composed by so many instrumental virtuosi in the nineteenth century, where the soloist(s) endlessly display their technique in dazzling, flashy playing while the orchestra occasionally plays a cadence, a phrase, or even -- gasp! -- an entire line of melodic material! Great fun for the soloists, in this case Martin Beaver on violin and Joel Quarrington on double bass, but no challenge at all for the orchestra. This sort of thing, to me, is about as exciting as watching paint dry, no matter how good the soloists are. And they were very good! I'd just rather hear something a little more musically substantial.
After the intermission, it was shenanigan time. First, the orchestra played a shortened version of Sir Henry Wood's Fantasia on British Sea Songs. It's a signature "last night" work, and the conductor aptly coached the audience in the appropriate clapping during the Hornpipe, which finished with the requisite breathless rush. Then that same wonderful clarinetist stretched his tear-laden solo with an endless line of improvisations while the other players conversed, wandered on and off, poured tea, sat in the audience for a few moments, until finally conductor Brott tried -- and failed! -- to bribe him into stopping with a $20 bill!
Rule Britannia brought hearty participation from the audience. Russell Braun sang with great fervour in Parry's Jerusalem, with the orchestration arranged by Elgar. That master's obligatory Pomp and Circumstance March No. 1 followed, in a shortened version. Alas, the Festival's indefatigable office team had mistakenly not supplied the words to Land of Hope and Glory so the normal singalong at this point didn't quite come off. But all went well, with a rousing conclusion of the National Anthem and the Royal Anthem.
It was an inspired decision by the Festival's artistic team to follow this evening of spectacle and grandeur with a lower key event on Sunday afternoon by way of a wind down. The hall was converted to its flat floor configuration for an English tea with light music to accompany.
(It was billed as "High Tea", but according to my upbringing which included a Scots Presbyterian-raised mother and an English-born mother-of-best-friend, it was no such thing. "High Tea", as I was always taught, was a meal -- usually on Sunday -- where the standard assortment of cakes, sandwiches, biscuits, and the like, was augmented by one hot dish, usually a meat dish, to form an evening meal.)
What we had was delightful though. Each patron received an individual plate with several small sandwiches, assorted biscuits, and two high-octane sweets. Tea and coffee were on tap, and mimosas and wine available from the bar.
While we ate, we were serenaded by two sets of classic good-old-days songs accompanied by the easygoing patter and diverting piano stylings of Gene di Novi, interspersed with two short sets of English songs by Russell Braun, accompanied by Carolyn Maule. No surprises here. Gene di Novi is as near to being sui generis as any musician could be in this day and age, and always an absolute delight to the ear and balm to the soul. As for Braun, I had heard him sing all his songs before, some of them more than once. But there are no such words as "too often" when an artist of this stature raises a simple, evocative melody like Ivor Novello's We'll Gather Lilacs to the heights of the greatest vocal works of all time. I can never, never hear him sing that song without my eyes becoming moist. Nor can I ever forget his knowing glances and suggestive vocal shadings in Sir Noel Coward's downright naughty, borderline R-rated The Bar on the Piccola Marina.
What a wonderful way to wind up another summer of splendid music-making on the Bay!
The orchestra played the work with tremendous energy, the sound filling the hall to such an extent that one could easily have believed there were sixty players instead of less than thirty. I especially admired the crisp articulation from the strings. Mendelssohn loved to entrust melodic material to his winds and brass while tasking his strings with endless chains of tremolando and arpeggio passages to fill in his harmonies. It gives the music a lift and lightness but only -- and this is key -- if all the string players are right on point with each other. Here, they certainly were, amply proven by the immense power and precision of the surging waves at the end of the first movement.
In the scherzo, the laughing vivace playing of the high-speed clarinet melody was a delight. I'm only sorry the clarinetist wasn't credited by name -- he certainly should have been! The finale took off right from the spot-on staccato pickup chords which open the movement. If the final majestic coda was a bit slower than optimal, it was nonetheless well within the allowable.
This symphony was followed by a Grand Duo Concertante for double bass, violin, and orchestra by Bottesini. This is one of those pieces composed by so many instrumental virtuosi in the nineteenth century, where the soloist(s) endlessly display their technique in dazzling, flashy playing while the orchestra occasionally plays a cadence, a phrase, or even -- gasp! -- an entire line of melodic material! Great fun for the soloists, in this case Martin Beaver on violin and Joel Quarrington on double bass, but no challenge at all for the orchestra. This sort of thing, to me, is about as exciting as watching paint dry, no matter how good the soloists are. And they were very good! I'd just rather hear something a little more musically substantial.
After the intermission, it was shenanigan time. First, the orchestra played a shortened version of Sir Henry Wood's Fantasia on British Sea Songs. It's a signature "last night" work, and the conductor aptly coached the audience in the appropriate clapping during the Hornpipe, which finished with the requisite breathless rush. Then that same wonderful clarinetist stretched his tear-laden solo with an endless line of improvisations while the other players conversed, wandered on and off, poured tea, sat in the audience for a few moments, until finally conductor Brott tried -- and failed! -- to bribe him into stopping with a $20 bill!
Rule Britannia brought hearty participation from the audience. Russell Braun sang with great fervour in Parry's Jerusalem, with the orchestration arranged by Elgar. That master's obligatory Pomp and Circumstance March No. 1 followed, in a shortened version. Alas, the Festival's indefatigable office team had mistakenly not supplied the words to Land of Hope and Glory so the normal singalong at this point didn't quite come off. But all went well, with a rousing conclusion of the National Anthem and the Royal Anthem.
It was an inspired decision by the Festival's artistic team to follow this evening of spectacle and grandeur with a lower key event on Sunday afternoon by way of a wind down. The hall was converted to its flat floor configuration for an English tea with light music to accompany.
(It was billed as "High Tea", but according to my upbringing which included a Scots Presbyterian-raised mother and an English-born mother-of-best-friend, it was no such thing. "High Tea", as I was always taught, was a meal -- usually on Sunday -- where the standard assortment of cakes, sandwiches, biscuits, and the like, was augmented by one hot dish, usually a meat dish, to form an evening meal.)
What we had was delightful though. Each patron received an individual plate with several small sandwiches, assorted biscuits, and two high-octane sweets. Tea and coffee were on tap, and mimosas and wine available from the bar.
While we ate, we were serenaded by two sets of classic good-old-days songs accompanied by the easygoing patter and diverting piano stylings of Gene di Novi, interspersed with two short sets of English songs by Russell Braun, accompanied by Carolyn Maule. No surprises here. Gene di Novi is as near to being sui generis as any musician could be in this day and age, and always an absolute delight to the ear and balm to the soul. As for Braun, I had heard him sing all his songs before, some of them more than once. But there are no such words as "too often" when an artist of this stature raises a simple, evocative melody like Ivor Novello's We'll Gather Lilacs to the heights of the greatest vocal works of all time. I can never, never hear him sing that song without my eyes becoming moist. Nor can I ever forget his knowing glances and suggestive vocal shadings in Sir Noel Coward's downright naughty, borderline R-rated The Bar on the Piccola Marina.
What a wonderful way to wind up another summer of splendid music-making on the Bay!
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