National Ballet 2018-2019 # 3: The Nutcracker Still Dazzles

James Kudelka's beloved Nutcracker for the National Ballet of Canada remains what it has always been: a potent mix of dance, colour, theatricality, character, spectacle, comedy, and that mysterious alchemy -- or magic if you prefer -- that renders the whole much greater than the mere sum of its parts.

It would be difficult to imagine an entertainment more ideally suited to the wide age range, and ballet knowledge, of the audience.  It's a true "something for everyone" show.

Of course, the success of this production rests on two very firm foundations.  The first is the lush, richly-orchestrated score composed by Tchaikovsky.  Proof positive that creative artists are not the best critics of their own work is found in the fact that the composer felt he had gone completely off the boil with this one, and was just churning out mediocre stuff.

Well, Tchaikovsky certainly was prone to lengthy bouts of self-doubt and the misery it brings, but he couldn't have been more wrong about the music for Nutcracker.  The great glory of this production definitely begins with the splendid sound of the National Ballet's house orchestra in this beloved music.  From the sweeping string legatos in the snow scene and the grand pas de deux to the crisply chattering woodwinds in the divertissement, or the rich horn chording in the Christmas tree sequence, the musicians were on peak form throughout -- no mean achievement as they near the end of a run of nearly 30 performances spread over just 23 days.

The polish and execution of the dancers on stage is equally remarkable, given the length of the run, and the physical demands of so many performances -- often 2 per day for several days per week.  Nutcracker demonstrates in spades the depth of the company, with the five main roles distributed across a total of 26 dancers over the course of the run.

Although I bought my ticket months before any casting was announced, I got lucky and managed for once to see an entire cast of principals in roles where I had not previously seen them perform.  One of those was actually making a role debut this year.

And that's where I want to begin: with Jack Bertinshaw who appeared this year for the first time in the dual role of Peter, the stable boy who magically transforms into the Nutcracker Prince.  In what is, let's face it, a pretty slender storyline, this is one character who goes on a journey through multiple moods and emotions.  Technically, Bertinshaw's performance was impressive, from the dextrous folk-inspired choreography of the first scene to the soaring leaps in the grand pas de deux.  I liked the joyfulness of his work in the opening scene, too, and the heart-warming sense of love which he brought to his moments with the children after his transformation.  It will be interesting to watch him grow into this role, and see his handling of the relationship with the Sugar Plum Fairy in Act II develop more resonance over time.

Calley Skalnik performed the role of the Sugar Plum Fairy with a genuine sense of open-hearted welcome, and was technically impressive during her first solo for the lightness of foot which gave the impression that she might be gliding on air just a centimetre above the floor.  Her variation in the pas de deux was striking, too, for the crisp precision of her footwork.

Together, this pair created genuine magic and emotion in their magnificent pas de deux, the emotional climax of the show.

Donald Thom gave a more light-hearted, playful performance of the magician Uncle Nikolai than I have seen from some others, and that brilliance definitely bubbled over in the hilarious duet with the horse.  By way of contrast, he transitioned to a grander, more ceremonial presence as the Grand Duke Nikolai in Act II, differentiating the two characters more than other dancers have done.

Andreea Olteanu gave a vigorous performance as Baba, the nurse -- her dance with Peter a whirlwind of flying feet and skirts.

Alexandra MacDonald gave a regal, yet still light and airy performance as the Snow Queen, matched well by Ben Rudisin and Brendan Saye as her two Icicles.  Between the soaring music, one of Tchaikovsky's finest adagios, and the exquisite choreography lavished by James Kudelka on this unique pas de trois, this number always ranks as one of the most memorable moments of the performance.

Jordana Daumec gave a scintillating account of the virtuoso solo for a Bee, announcing the coming of spring, her intricate footwork a complete delight.

Even where the programme doesn't distinguish on the basis of who-dances-what-when, the smaller parts were all cast from strength, and beautifully danced too -- think of the vigour of the Spanish chocolate dance, the ineffable grace and poise of the Arabian coffee (another unique and gorgeous Kudelka inspiration), or the rumbustious waiters' dance with its numerous cartwheels across the dinner table.

The corps de ballet were, as ever, in splendid form in their major numbers, the glorious waltzes -- Snowflakes in Act I and Flowers (with Branches) in Act II.  The Waltz of the Snowflakes, a classic "white scene," puts significant demands on the corps for unity of mood, even as different groups of dancers glide hither and yon, at top speed, and apparently on collision course.  The performance on this occasion sparkled even more than the costumes.

I may only get back to it every 2 or 3 years, but this Nutcracker is endlessly rewarding and always reveals new aspects of itself every time I see it.

Echo Chamber Toronto # 2: Transfiguring Dance and Music -- and More

Echo Chamber Toronto launched last April with a choreographer/dancer, another dancer, and a single violinist in a programme lasting 45 minutes.  It was a memorable evening, to put it mildly.

(You can read about it here if you missed it: Echo Chamber: A Stunning Synthesis of Music and Dance )

This week, artistic director Aaron Schwebel returned with his second outing, and upped the stakes considerably.  This second programme, Transfigured Night, presented a full evening of music, with six players, a singer, two choreographers, six dancers, a painter, and a video artist.  The result was every bit as memorable and striking as the previous show, albeit in different ways.

Bringing music and dance into a closer, more integrated relationship with each other is a challenging yet laudable objective -- especially in an age when far too much dance is performed to recorded music tracks.  The integration of painting and video art into the mix adds fascinating new dimensions to the experience.

This programme opened with Beethoven's String Quartet Op. 18 No. 1.  For this work, the four players of the Rosebud String Quartet sat in a square formation in one corner of the performing area, leaving an open space in the centre of the square as well as the remaining 3/4 of the space open for the dancers.  Choreographer Alysa Pires confined herself to two contrasting dance sequences, one for the second (slow) movement and one for the finale.

In the slow movement, she created a passionate, energetic duet with a definite modern vibe for Miyoko Koyasu and Felix Paquet.  Beginning inside the square, the two soon burst the limits and the dance erupted across the entire space.  Modern though it was, the dance had a sense of line, a lyrical quality which not only suited the beauty of the music, but also called the traditional polish of classical ballet to mind.

In the fourth movement, Pires herself danced in a more modern style, using an intriguing chain of unique hand and arm positions to express the opening theme of the rondo movement -- a chain which she then re-enacted in slightly varying forms with subsequent recurrals of that opening theme.  Here again, she made use of the space inside the quartet as opposed to the larger space outside in different portions of her dance.  Overall, this number had a perky, amusing quality which again matched well with the light-hearted staccato of Beethoven's music.

Next up was the final movement, Entrückung ("Rapture"), from Schoenberg's String Quartet No. 2.  Schoenberg broke new ground in this work by incorporating a singing voice (soprano), with a poem by Stefan George.  Soprano Lauren Eberwein also broke new ground, turning the poem into a dramatic scene in which she hand-painted on a prepared template on the floor as she sang.  The intensity of her performance was magnified by her involvement in this action.

The template was prepared by visual artist Paula Arciniega.  Two paintings which Arciniega created for the show were displayed on the walls throughout the performance.  After the intermission, they were joined by a third -- a continuing creation growing out of the template which Eberwein had used.

Eberwein returned after the intermission with two violas and two cellos for the solemnly luminous Gottes Tod by Hindemith.  The darker sound of the lower instruments matched well with the mezzo-like tone colour of Eberwein's voice in this shorter number.

The finale was also the largest piece: the original string sextet version of Verklärte Nacht by Schoenberg.  This lush post-romantic tone poem is more often heard in the later string orchestra arrangement; the original version brings both gains (clarity) and losses (weight of tone).  Choreographer Christopher Stowell aptly took the poem which inspired the music as a point of departure for his dance work.

Briefly, that poem tells of a woman who confesses by night to a man she loves that she is bearing a child who is not his child; the man then promises to accept and raise the child as if it were his own.

Stowell's choreography made a simple but highly significant alteration by looking into the future, and incorporating the unborn child as a third character.  The dance he created on his three performers lived in a clear classical framework, with an edgy, modern quality overlaid.  This was the one work in which a female dancer performed en pointe.

Jenna Savella danced the role of the woman with great passion and emotion, clearly living both the anguish of the opening scene and the acceptance of the final part.  Perhaps her finest moment came at the first great crisis of the music, the sudden forte tremolo at which both her lover and her son quickly exited, leaving her abandoned on the stage -- and abandonment was the sense which she projected with heartbreaking force at that moment.

Her partner, Ben Rudisin, maintained a more reserved air while still matching her in energy.  The choreography of their duets included many high-speed turns, lifts, and throws, which were executed with great verve -- especially allowing for the fairly small space in which they had to work.

Spencer Hack presented a most convincing portrayal of the child-to-come, right from his first teetering steps through his playful and happy dances to his amusing insertion between his mother and stepfather as the three slowly left the stage at the end.

One element of Verklärte Nacht which unfortunately proved challenging was the incorporation of some beautiful video footage filmed by Alice Hong, and presented on large screens high on the backdrop walls.  The video presented beautiful images of nature, of the dancers' faces (filmed previously), and more, and began and ended with the shining moon so evocatively described in the original poem.  The problem here was the separation of height between the video screen and the stage floor.  It was basically impossible to watch both film and dance simultaneously.  Time and again I found the video yanking my focus away from the dancers, or (alternately) the dancers distracting me from the filmed images.  A perfect example of what is known in theatre parlance as "upstaging," this is too often the result from attempts to integrate video with live performance.

The musical performances throughout the evening were excellent, but reached an undoubted peak in the long and musically wide-ranging journey of this sextet.  Schoenberg's complex, densely written score was treated to a performance of utmost clarity and beauty of tone by the six players: violins Aaron Schwebel and Sheila Jaffé, violas Keith Hamm and Theresa Rudolph, and cellos Leana Rutt and Carmen Bruno.  Especially commendable was the quietness of the ending, the gentle sparkling figures of the final bars fading poetically towards silence.

Beyond any doubt, Echo Chamber Toronto has done it again.

K-W Symphony 2018-2019 # 1: A Double Triple or an Austrian Double

The Kitchener-Waterloo Symphony Orchestra opened their season, as usual, back in September, but I missed the first programme because I was in Europe.  So this is my first musical outing of the season!

The programme consisted largely of Beethoven and Mozart.  The Beethoven contribution was the least-performed of Beethoven's concerted works, the Triple Concerto in C Major for piano, violin, and cello with orchestra.  This work, so rare on concert programmes generally, here makes a welcome return appearance, having last been played by this orchestra as recently as 2012.  And I for one am not complaining -- I happen to be very fond of this piece.  

But I'm also very fond of Mozart's Overture to "Don Giovanni" and his "Linz" symphony, which rounded out the programme.  So this night had all the makings of a musical delight.

Guest conductor David Danzmayr won my heart right in the first 10 seconds of the evening by proving he could count.  Unlike every other conductor of every other live performance I have ever attended, he held the strict tempo through the two great rolling chords that proclaim Don Giovanni's downfall, including the rests between them.  The impact of that doom-laden opening absolutely depends on the proper length of those rests.

The remainder of the slow introduction marched along with an appropriate sense of menace, and when it came time for the allegro, Danzmayr chose the tempo with care to give a light-hearted, carefree feeling while not getting fast enough to blur the notes.  The tailored concert ending was used.

The concerto featured pianist Stewart Goodyear, as a pendant to his complete piano concerto cycle with this orchestra in the fall of 2015.  With him on the platform were two of the orchestra's section leaders, cellist John Helmers and concertmaster Bénédicte Lauzière.

Beethoven's approach to this unique work also was unique in giving the cello the lead on nearly every theme or melodic tag played by the soloists.  More than anything, this concerto represents the master in a genial, almost unbuttoned mood such as you will find in few of his major works.  The net effect of this piece is of a concerto for piano trio and orchestra, and the solo playing often reflects that -- with the three soloists playing together as a group almost in the manner of a baroque concerto.

So, the balance among the three is critically important, and was beautifully achieved.  Danzmayr kept the scale of the orchestral playing light too, so that the whole concerto came across with clarity and wit.  These qualities will elude those who try to treat it like the Emperor Concerto!  It's true that the outer movements get stretched out a little by accommodating the three soloists, but this was a fine performance and our interest was consistently sustained.  Particularly beautiful was the cello melody of the slow movement, and the elaboration of it from the violin and piano.

After the intermission, we heard a very unusual contemporary work, Within Her Arms, by Anna Clyne.  Written for a group of 15 solo string players, this work resumes a tradition of string writing that largely disappeared during the latter half of the twentieth century.  The idea of a work for a group of solo strings harks back to the Metamorphosen of Richard Strauss, while the tone colours and textures call to mind the string fantasias of Jacobean times and the Tallis Fantasia of Vaughan Williams.

But Clyne's work is really like none of those points of reference.  It's constructed (I use that word deliberately) out of several related melodic fragments, short, beautiful, and frequently repeated in close polyphony.  The result is a mostly quiet, sometimes-dense texture of chromatic collisions which occasionally land on a clearly diatonic chord.  In the final pages, the music opens up in a moment of glowing radiance, beautifully achieved on this occasion, before dwindling away again.  Although it was beautifully and expertly performed, I wouldn't particularly want to hear this piece again.  Of all instruments, the strings are among the best at performing sustained legato lines, and I felt that Clyne's choice to restrict her instruments to these little 4-note fragments short-changed both her abilities and her audience.

The concert concluded with Mozart's Symphony # 36 in C Major, K.425.  It's subtitled the "Linz" symphony for the best of reasons.  Mozart composed it when touring in that Austrian city in 1783.  Only a genius could be asked on Friday by an important patron to give a concert with a symphony on Tuesday, realize that he didn't have a score of any of his symphonies with him, and create an entirely new one -- including writing out the orchestral parts -- in 4 days!

Under Danzmayr's direction, the orchestra gave this work a crisp, energetic performance.  The energy wasn't so much a result of playing quickly, as of playing alertly.  Tempi, in fact, were all central to the tradition -- nothing hectic in this interpretation.  The slow introduction achieved pathos without portent, and the succeeding allegro remained bright, perky, and engaging.  The lilting 6/8 slow movement brought delectable playing in the oboe/bassoon duet as well as a light touch in the unusual appearance (in such a movement) of trumpets and timpani.  The minuet of the third movement was nicely balanced so that it remained emphatic (a definite plus) without becoming heavy or ponderous.  The finale sparkled and fizzed along, gaining weight at just the right moment in the coda.