So now I am back from my roaming time in the United States, and ready to resume my role of unofficial resident blogger for weeks 2 and 3 of the Festival of the Sound.
The first afternoon concert today featured violinist Atis Bankas and pianist Leopoldo Erice in a programme of Beethoven and pseudo-Beethoven. It started with a masterpiece and ended with what can only be called (in modern slang) an earworm. Damn tune is still running through my head hours later!
Erice opened the concert with the Piano Sonata # 31 in A Flat Major, Op. 110. As with the other marvellous creations of Beethoven's late years, so with this next-to-last of the piano sonatas. The flashy virtuosity of some of the earlier sonatas or piano concertos has been left far behind. While the music is still just as challenging, the technique is now at the service of musical ideas which can only be described as refined and rarefied. If a pianist heard or read Mahler's famous remark that a symphony should encompass the whole world, said pianist wouldn't go far wrong by thinking of this remarkable sonata as the piano equivalent.
Erice's interpretation spanned all the musical realms found in the work. In the quieter pages, there was a sense of fantasy, while slow passages plumbed the depths of thought -- particularly notable in the finale, just at the beginning of the fugue's inversion. The faster and bigger passages certainly didn't lack energy, but the energy was of an appropriately more inward kind, lending a pensive quality in places where the younger Beethoven might simply have demanded -- and then supplied -- more speed. A thoughtful reading of a challenging and rewarding work.
Erice was then joined by Bankas for the Violin Sonata # 5 in F Major, Op. 24. This is the work that was tagged with the nickname "Spring" after the composer's death, and no wonder -- there's a fresh, bright, brisk springtime feeling to almost every page of the music. This work always sounds to me like a dress rehearsal for style of the Pastoral Symphony (# 6). In fact, Beethoven began work on the symphony the year after this sonata was published, although the Pastoral only reached completion and performance six years later, in 1808.
Bankas and Erice joined in a performance that aptly caught the brightness and lighter weight of the entire work. Only in one place did things become too light, and that was in the first movement when Bankas spun out chains of notes alongside the repeat of the main theme which were so quiet that they almost disappeared. Otherwise, balance between the two was exemplary. In the brief little scherzo movement they kept the music light while playing at a slower tempo than many artists, a tempo that some might have felt was ponderous -- if they hadn't heard this sparkling performance. This sonata is justly an audience favourite, and received a truly winning interpretation here.
The afternoon concert closed with a chip from the master's workbench, a pleasant little rondo for the two instruments. This was followed by Fritz Kreisler's recomposition of the work, in a different key, as a Rondino on a theme by Beethoven. This was one of many pieces which Kreisler originally credited to various composers, before he finally admitted authorship later in life. Bankas subtly flavoured his playing in the Kreisler with an entirely period-appropriate degree of vibrato and portamento which he did not use in any of his Beethoven playing.
I'm ashamed to say that I missed the second afternoon concert, one which I actually had been looking forward to hearing (a selection of music arranged for guitar quartet). I was just too damn tired after my recent travels, and wanted to get into my hotel room, unpack, and have a nap!
The evening programme was devoted to a classical music theatre piece called The Missing Pages by Tom Allen. In it, he unearthed the little-known story of Theodor Molt, a European-trained music teacher from Quebec who became (in 1825) the only Canadian to meet Beethoven. The conversations Molt had with the master have perforce had to be imagined, since the relevant pages are missing from Beethoven's conversation books. The one historic sign of the meeting is a simple little vocal canon signed by Beethoven in the National Archives of Canada.
Allen has imagined a lively series of encounters among his four characters: Beethoven (Richard Waugh), Molt (Bryce Kulak), soprano Susannah Sotto (Patricia O'Callaghan), and Beethoven's secretary Anton Schindler, played by Allen himself. Viewed as theatre, the piece was more in the nature of a staged reading than an actual play, suitable to a concert-hall setting. But there was more than enough dramatic interest to sustain audience involvement.
Allen mostly remained in the background of the piece, popping in occasionally as narrator and (as Schindler called it) "controller" of the story. Waugh, a leading voice-over actor, proved to have more than adequate resources to dominate the stage when seen in person. Kulak created a fussy, fidgetty persona as Molt, and also demonstrated his skill as a pianist in a waltz theme and variations of his own composition. I mean Molt's own composition -- purportedly. Was it really his? Someone else's? Did Kulak write it? Pastiche? It was certainly in the authentic early-nineteenth-century salon manner, whoever actually set it down. O'Callaghan had fine moments of both singing and acting, including the heart-breaking moment when her voice fails her on a high note.
The glue holding this whole loose structure together was, of course, the master's own music. Each part was prefaced by a movement from a larger work played by pianist Leopoldo Erice with his customary finesse and sense of appropriate style. Within the action, suitable pieces provided as background or as interludes were played in arrangements for harp by Lori Gemmell. This might seem improper to some, but I can listen to the harp for hours on end and thoroughly enjoyed it.
While not a heavyweight classical concert, nor yet a powerhouse drama, this was an entertaining and enjoyable fusion of the two, and the audience plainly had a fun time with it.
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