As Week One of the Festival has shifted into high gear, I find I've had to abandon my traditional one-post-per-day approach in favour of a more thematic take on the performances.
One of the highlights of this week -- and of the entire Festival, for me at least -- is a pair of evening concerts featuring the two famous Piano Concertos of Chopin, in a chamber music arrangement for piano and string quartet.
With almost any other composer, giving this kind of treatment to a concerto for piano and full orchestra would seem merely eccentric. But there are three good reasons why Chopin's concertos deserve to be heard in this form:
[1] The title pages of the first published editions authorize it by specifying "piano and orchestra or piano and strings."
[2] Journals and letters verify that Chopin himself performed both works in a chamber format as well as his performances with orchestra.
[3] The orchestration of the works is, for many people including myself, workmanlike rather than inspired, often thick and turgid, and may not even be Chopin's work at all but the work of his fellow composition students (although argument about that last point still rages among the Great Experts).
Now that I've heard two different artists perform the works live in chamber format, and heard two different recordings of two different chamber-ensemble arrangements, I come down firmly in favour of this stripped-down format for these two works. I find that thinning the ensemble out to this size permits some of Chopin's truly lovely counter-melodies to come shining through in a way that the full orchestra version does not allow, and generally clarifies the orchestral parts immensely in their interaction with the piano when both are playing at once.
So, to this week's performances, featuring rising piano star Charles Richard-Hamelin together with different string groups in the two concerts.
Richard-Hamelin shot to fame when he won recognition at the International Chopin Piano Competition in Warsaw, and his Chopin playing is indeed of a very special calibre, as I've heard on previous occasions. He's preparing to record these two works with L'orchestre symphonique de Montreal, and on the strength of his performances this week I certainly plan to acquire that recording when it is released.
But therein lies the problem -- small but important. Richard-Hamelin gave a stunning rendition of the solo parts, full of equal parts power and fantasy, and with immaculate touch and pedalling. But he played as if he were performing with a full orchestra, and the members of the string quartet in Concerto # 1 had their work cut out for them just trying to remain audible in some of the bigger passages. I think the problem really comes down to the immense growth and evolution in power of the piano since Chopin's day. In Concerto # 2 a second cello part was used, often playing an octave lower, and this helped matters somewhat.
On a future occasion, I'd suggest using a string septet -- double the viola and cello and add a double bass, since the ensemble's sound, with only the cello as a bass line, lacked a firm foundation to match the piano's deeper bass tones. With that larger body of players, I think balance would be improved while still allowing the clarity that this chamber approach makes possible.
And there were so many beauties in the playing of both works. Especially lovely were the several counter-melodies assigned by the arranger of Concerto # 1 to the viola, an instrument that rarely gets its due in much of the chamber repertoire. The dramatic first movement of Concerto # 1 sizzled with energy, while the slow movement was a gentle, lyrical delight from all the players. In Concerto # 2 (actually the first written, but the second to be published), my favourite moments came in the slow movement, in which the cadenza passages for piano were played with the lightest touch you could ask for. Then, the finale waltzed gracefully away to bring the work to a most satisfying end. And let's not forget the viola's other moment of glory, substituting for the horn signal just before the final reiteration of the theme leading into the coda.
Even with the balance issue noted above, an absolutely delightful pair of performances!
* * * * * * * * * *
On Friday afternoon, Charles Richard-Hamelin presented a pendant to the concerto performances, in the form of a stunning rendition of Schumann's Fantaisie in C Major, Op. 17. This 3-movement work, lasting for half an hour in performance, began life as a planned piano sonata but evolved into a much freer form. In the process, it became both complex and virtuosic beyond the limits of all but a tiny handful of Chopin's works.
I've always found the first movement to be frankly unconvincing. It comes across to me as a potpourri of unrelated themes and thematic fragments, played all the way through, and then played all the way through again with slight variations in register and key. Almost like a collection of unused chips from the master's workbench.
The second and third movements, though, are a different story. The powerful and energetic march which dominates the second movement, the fiendish high-speed coda, and then the almost hymn-like slow finale, all speak of structure carefully planned and as carefully worked out.
Having said that, I must admit that Richard-Hamelin came very close to making me forget about that wayward first movement's structural deficiencies. His playing in the other two movements was simply beyond praise.
Even with the balance issue noted above, an absolutely delightful pair of performances!
* * * * * * * * * *
On Friday afternoon, Charles Richard-Hamelin presented a pendant to the concerto performances, in the form of a stunning rendition of Schumann's Fantaisie in C Major, Op. 17. This 3-movement work, lasting for half an hour in performance, began life as a planned piano sonata but evolved into a much freer form. In the process, it became both complex and virtuosic beyond the limits of all but a tiny handful of Chopin's works.
I've always found the first movement to be frankly unconvincing. It comes across to me as a potpourri of unrelated themes and thematic fragments, played all the way through, and then played all the way through again with slight variations in register and key. Almost like a collection of unused chips from the master's workbench.
The second and third movements, though, are a different story. The powerful and energetic march which dominates the second movement, the fiendish high-speed coda, and then the almost hymn-like slow finale, all speak of structure carefully planned and as carefully worked out.
Having said that, I must admit that Richard-Hamelin came very close to making me forget about that wayward first movement's structural deficiencies. His playing in the other two movements was simply beyond praise.
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