Sunday 12 August 2018

Festival of the Sound 2018 # 17: Grand Finale and My Top Ten

The great wrap-up for the 2018 Festival was once again supplied by the National Academy Orchestra from Hamilton ON, under the direction of Boris Brott.  As with the National Youth Orchestra which we heard back at the beginning of the Festival, this is a training institute with extensive classes and seminars geared to preparing for careers as orchestral musicians.  Unlike the National Youth Orchestra, the auditioned participants in the National Academy have already graduated with degrees, and are entering the professional music world.

The concert consisted of four works: a suite from West Side Story (in tribute to the 100th anniversary of the birth of Leonard Bernstein), four selections from the film Star Wars by John Williams, George Gershwin's Rhapsody in Blue with John Novacek as piano soloist, and the famous Pictures at an Exhibition by Modest Mussorgsky, in the classic orchestration by Maurice Ravel.  It's actually the second complete set of Pictures at this year's Festival, since Stewart Goodyear performed the original piano text last week during my absence.

Rant For the Day:  And that's where I'm going to start, with this masterpiece which is in danger of becoming overworked to the point of being mere cliché.  I hope not, because the Pictures really are a masterly collection of miniature tone poems -- whether in the original version for solo piano or in the Ravel orchestration.  They just get performed so damned often these days that I am finally becoming heartily sick and tired of the things.  If orchestras must go on performing the work, maybe they could give us all a change of scene by using one of the several other orchestrations which have been made -- just for a bit of variety.  Just a bit?  Please???  Rant over.

No complaints from me for the rest of the programme, though -- even if we did hear a West Side Story collection just last night!  The Gershwin Rhapsody is a firm favourite of mine, which -- in sharp contrast to the Mussorgsky -- I have never before heard played live in a large orchestra ensemble.

Okay, on to the performances.

The orchestra hit the ground running with a vigorous performance of the suite from West Side Story, a medley of the kind in which each section comes to an end on a suspension or transitional chord to lead into the next.  Even with the all-too-short nature of some of the snippets, Brott and the orchestra characterized each melody firmly before moving on.

The four selections from Star Wars were an unplanned late addition to the programme.  These pieces went to the opposite extreme, taking short pieces of film score and redeveloping them for far too long.  But again, the playing was firm and clear.  The brass and winds dominated the texture appropriately in the Imperial March while the strings delivered sweeping legato in Leia's Theme.

A short pause while the stage was re-set in the scariest configuration I've ever seen -- with the beautiful grand piano poised a bare 10 centimetres from the front edge and the drop into Row AA of the audience seating.  "Please, let the stage crew set the brakes to extra firm," was what I was thinking, after having seen the extraordinary vigour of John Novacek's playing throughout the week.

The Rhapsody in Blue began with a gorgeous rendition of the famous clarinet slide and just went from strength to strength.  Novacek delivered a rousing, even rowdy, performance of the solo part with stunning accuracy, and the orchestra matched him for sheer energy and crisp attack.  The work was beautifully shaped by Brott, and the buildup to the final chords was as powerful as anyone could ask.

After the intermission, the Pictures at an Exhibition really gave the orchestra's members a chance to shine in solo bits, as Ravel's masterly orchestration includes many unusual and effective instrumentation choices.

As Boris Brott's National Academy always includes a conductor among the young musicians, this young conductor (name not given in the programme) took the podium to conduct the opening four sections of the score -- and did so very effectively.  He also brought an interesting detail of conducting style to my attention.  The unnamed young conductor led the orchestra with the conventional orchestral manner of placing the strong first beat of a bar at the top end of a rising sweep of the baton.  The vast majority of orchestral conductors use this style.  Boris Brott, however, does not.  Throughout the concert, he began each bar with a downward sweep, leading the orchestra with the conventional 3-beat and 4-beat patterns more often used by public school teachers and choral directors.

(Yes, I know that the strong beat is called a "downbeat" and yes, it's confusing as hell when orchestral conductors deliver the "downbeat" by swinging the baton up, but that's what they do!)

The opening Promenade set the scene at a brisk but not unreasonable speed.  The lurching broken rhythms of Gnomus remained sharp and clean.  The pulsing rhythm underlying The Old Castle was played more gently than usual, reinforcing the note of pathos in the solo saxophone melody.  Bydlo featured a tuba solo with a warm, almost furry sound, appropriately representing the oxen drawing the huge wagon.  Chattering woodwinds were a delight in the Ballet of the Unhatched Chicks.  Samuel Goldenberg and Schmuyle brought a crisp, precise rendering of the muted trumpet line.  Lugubrious low brasses mourned deeply in the Catacombs.  The bassoon solo at the still centre of The Hut on Chicken's Claws created an appropriately creepy feeling for the gloomy forest home of the witch Baba Yaga.

The suite concluded with a mighty upwards rush into the Great Gate of Kiev, and here the dynamic gradations were finely controlled by Brott so that the music still had somewhere to grow right up to the final overwhelming pages (it is, by the way, extremely difficult to achieve that gradation in the original piano score).

The Festival, then, wrapped up with a spectacular performance of a resplendent orchestral work, and it made a worthy conclusion to three and a half weeks of wonderful music.

* * * * * * * * * *

My Top Ten

Out of all of the dozens of concerts I attended, I've picked these ten performances as my top ten memorable moments of the Festival.  Why?  Because each one had something special about it.  Because each one pushed my buttons in some unique way.  Because I can and I want to.  Because... oh, well -- just because!

# 10:
  The complete and intriguing traversal of all 6 solo cello suites by Bach, spread across three days with two suites each from Cameron Crozman, Rachel Mercer, and Rolf Gjelsten.

# 9:
  The excellent "teaser" performance of the first movement (only) of Schubert's Grand Duo Sonata by the Bergmann Duo.  ("Please, sir, I want some more.")

# 8:
  A fascinating selection of six Schubert lieder chosen for their evocative use of the pianissimo, sung by Leslie Fagan and accompanied by Leopoldo Erice.

# 7:
  Polished and beautifully-sung performances of two Bach Lutheran Masses and one motet by the Elora Singers under the direction of Mark Vuorinen.

# 6:
  The stunning presentation of two Chopin piano concertos, in chamber versions, with Charles Richard-Hamelin as the poetic yet still dynamic soloist.

# 5:
  The National Youth Orchestra under conductor Johnathan Darlington in a thoughtful and truly moving rare live traversal of A Pastoral Symphony by Vaughan Williams.

# 4:  The vivid contrasts between powerful energy and serene stillness in the Schubert String Quintet with the Tiberius Quartet and Bryan Cheng.

# 3: The dramatic intensity and power, in word and music, of the opening night commission, Sounding Thunder: The Song of Francis Pegahmagabow.

# 2:  The spacious, subtle, and ultimately gripping performance of the Brahms Clarinet Trio with Jim Campbell and the Cheng²Duo.

And my top pick for most memorable, most exciting, most "it" performance of the 2018 Festival:

(drumroll, please!)

# 1:  The earth-shaking, rousing, folk-dance-gone-gigantic performance of Dvorak's Piano Quintet No. 2 by John Novacek and the Tiberius Quartet.

I'm already anticipating the next great Festival season, the 40th anniversary, in 2020!

Saturday 11 August 2018

Festival of the Sound 2018 # 16: From Monumental to Mambo

The last full 3-concert day, on Friday, also handed the audience the widest possible diversity of musical styles.

The day began with the monumental.  If there's any greater monument of polyphonic ingenuity and skill than J. S. Bach's Musikalisches Opfer ("Musical Offering"), I have yet to encounter it.  Faced with a tortuous melody, propounded (according to tradition) by Frederick the Great of Prussia, Bach composed a lengthy series of canons which treat the melody at different intervals.  The various and ingenious versions include a crab canon (where the second part plays the theme in reverse order), a mirror canon (the second voice in the same order but with all intervals inverted), and a table canon (the second voice reversed and inverted).  In addition, there are two ricercars, one in 3 parts and one in no less than 6 parts, and a beautiful 4-movement trio sonata for two violins and continuo.

Except for the sonata, there's no definitive instrumentation specified.  For this performance, the Canadian Guitar Quartet joined forces with violinist Tibor Molnár and flautist Suzanne Shulman, in an arrangement prepared by Quartet member Louis Trépanier.  This arrangement was itself a work of considerable skill (and effort), redistributing both continuo and melodic voices among the guitarists, and dividing the labour so that all took their turns at each aspect of the work.  In all, he had to copy considerably more than 20,000 notes into the appropriate spots in the six separate parts.

The game was definitely worth the candle.  The gentle, soft-edged tone of four classical guitars lifted some of the daunting aura of technical wizardry that hangs over the Musical Offering, supplementing it with a pleasing, harmonious atmosphere that was also carried into the violin and flute parts.  The total sound picture was much less edgy than one would expect with a traditional harpsichord continuo, and the various canons gained musical interest to augment the skill involved.  Nowhere was this more true than in the concluding 6-voice ricercar, where the complexity of the music never for a second obscured any of the individual lines.  All of which left the audience free to enjoy the technical skill and heartfelt musicality of the playing from all concerned.  A truly rewarding hour of fine music.

The second afternoon concert was a recital of piano music, involving multiple artists, and was simply titled, Great Melodies for Piano.  The concert opened with the Bergmann Duo playing Marcel Bergmann's arrangement for 2 pianos of the andante movement from Mozart's Piano Concerto in C Major, K.467.  Yes, that one -- the movement that rocketed to fame after being used as soundtrack in the 1967 Swedish film Elvira Madigan.  Indeed, the reference is still nearly ubiquitous, and the concerto is often identified in many quarters as the "Elvira Madigan Concerto."  Bergmann's unusual arrangement broke the solo and orchestral parts into smaller units, and then shared them out between the two pianos.  With light touch, selective use of the pedals, and the gentlest of pulsing accompaniments, the Duo spun out a beautiful and evocative performance of this evergreen staple.

Speaking of "staples," Silvie Cheng next played a pair of night pieces which are ingrained in the minds of music lovers everywhere.  First she gave a reading of Chopin's Nocturne in E Flat Major, Op. 9, No. 2 which covered a wider range of tone than some pianists allow themselves in this work, rising to emphatic (but not over-loud) climaxes which seemed both inevitable and justifiable.  She then followed with a haunting Clair de lune of Debussy, drawing together flowing lines and delicate arpeggios into sheer musical magic.  In the process, she made me forget all about the dozens of times I'd heard these pieces played by conservatory students.

John Novacek then shifted the tone dramatically (said so himself, too: "Well, that was different, wasn't it?") with Scott Joplin's Maple Leaf Rag and the much later Solace: A Mexican Serenade.  Both of these well-known tunes he played with gusto and an innate sense of ragtime style.  He then followed on with two rags of his own, Schenectady and Intoxication, in which his furious cascades of notes poured in torrents across the stage -- while still remaining completely clear to the ear.

The evening concert was the last one for the season to feature the Festival's artists, and followed a kind of "anthology" format often used here for weekend events.  But don't confuse "anthology" with "lightweight"!  The programme opened -- opened -- with the famous Mad Scene from Lucia di Lammermoor by Gaetano Donizetti.  Leslie Fagan tossed off a phenomenal performance as easily as if she were singing "Happy Birthday", no mean feat when you consider that she was hitting the stage cold.  And it was a performance -- gestures, facial expressions, movement, all helped to tell the story behind the singing.  She was ably supported by Lucia's "duet partner," Suzanne Shulmann on flute, with Elizabeth Bergmann providing the piano accompaniment.

An instrumental ensemble then took the stage to play the evocative adagio movement from the Concierto de Aranjuez by Joaquín Rodrigo.  Julien Bisaillon played the complex yet still lyrical solo part with simple, affecting lyricism.

The first half ended with a suite of six excerpts from Leonard Bernstein's West Side Story, played with verve and exceptional clarity by the Bergmann Duo, and with singing in I Feel Pretty, Somewhere, and Tonight by Leslie Fagan and Koszika.  Although the singing was beautiful (Somewhere bringing tears to my eyes as usual), the real highlights of this suite were the sharp-edged, crisply rhythmic playing of the Bergmanns in Mambo and -- especially -- in America.

After the intermission, there followed a series of varied more-or-less popular song from different composers, different countries, and different parts of the 20th century, with shifting ensembles at almost every single number.  We heard from guitarists, strings, winds, singers (Koszika again demonstrating her unique and communicative style), and so on.  The culmination of the programme was Graham Campbell's large ensemble arrangement of Astor Piazzolla's famous Libertango.  All good fun, all great music, and all helping to bring the Festival closer towards its rousing conclusion on Saturday night.

Friday 10 August 2018

Festival of the Sound 2018 # 15: Cutting Loose and Going Large

Thursday at the Festival brought us a series of concerts in which many "rules" were broken: rules about who plays what, how it's played, and what music or instruments "fit" into a classical chamber music festival. The result? Some great performances, some awesome music, and a whole lot of fun for performers and audiences alike.

This kind of rule-breaking has been a key part of the game at this Festival for all of the 25 years I've been coming here. It's one of the main ingredients that makes "the Sound" so rewarding!

Mind you, you would never have guessed what was in store from the prosaic titles given to the three concerts. The first one was simply called The Sonata -- a title offering a wealth of possibilities.

The Cheng²Duo opened with Beethoven's Sonata No. 4 for Cello and Piano, Op.102, No. 1. Like much of late Beethoven, this work follows an unusual plan: two movements, each beginning with a lengthy slow section and then leaping into a contrasting faster tempo. It thus requires a wide range of dynamics and playing styles. The Chengs began each movement with beautiful legato playing, much of it in the gentler end of the dynamic range, and then fired instantly up to full throttle energy, with crisp articulation to match, in the faster sections.

Jim Campbell then took the stage with pianist John Novacek in a little-known but intriguing and delightful Clarinet Sonata by Leonard Bernstein. This music affirmed Bernstein's lifelong promotion of melody as a key element of music, and equally displayed the rhythmic quirkiness so characteristic of the composer's music. Campbell said, rightly, that anticipations of West Side Story were to be heard, but more than that -- a couple of passages with some unique 9-beat rhythms pointed the way forward to Bernstein's monumental Mass of 1970, almost 30 years after this work. Well worth hearing more often.

The major offering was the famous Sonata in A Major by César Franck, in an arrangement for flute and piano by Jean-Pierre Rampal. As flautist Suzanne Shulman rightly pointed out, every musician wants to be able to play this magnificent work (originally for violin) -- in her case, not least because so much of the flute repertoire centres on the Baroque and Classical periods.

Shulman and Novacek treated this Romantic masterwork to a beautifully-shaped performance, with all the diverse elements of Franck's musical personality given their due. The substitution of flute for violin creates a whole new feeling in the work, with both Shulman and Novacek emphasizing the sense of wistful nostalgia in the opening pages and other quiet passages. While the entire sonata was impressive, I was especially taken with the sheer power of Shulman's playing in the closing pages -- not least because she sacrificed nothing of the legato line or the beauty of tone in building up the music's full-blooded romanticism.

The second concert of the day brought a diverse and intriguing recital from the Canadian Guitar Quartet, making a welcome return visit. This ensemble of four classical guitarists must, of necessity, play many transcriptions of works written for other instruments. It was ironic that one of the two pieces on the programme composed for guitars, Hans Brüderl's Octopus, still had to be transcribed since it was originally written for two guitar quartets. That work and Renaud Côté-Giguère's Fille de cuivre were both pleasing to the ear and made for intriguing listening, as did the transcriptions of chamber works by Ravel and Poulenc. It was fascinating to watch the nimble, flying fingers at close quarters, and particularly to see how the melodic parts passed rapidly from one guitar to another with no loss of the through line.

At the end, the quartet were joined by Jim Campbell and Suzanne Shulman for a lively performance of Saint-Saëns' Tarantelle, Op. 6. As the name suggests, this is a showpiece of virtuosity for the two wind players, but with the transcription of the piano part for guitars it became a showpiece for all six players. As an encore, the six then played Ständchen by Schubert, one of the most beautiful and heart-tugging of all that master's lieder.

The evening concert was a rip-roaring conflation of Slavonic, Hungarian, Roma, Rumanian, and Transylvanian folk music elements which absolutely resisted fitting under a single catchy title. Pity -- because the concert was much more diverse and exciting than suggested by the prosaic title in the programme of Haydn, Brahms and Dvořák.

Much of the music we heard was rooted in the ancient Roma tradition of the lassu-friss' -- a slow, mournful dance contrasted with a wildly energetic one, all in duple time. You can find music of this sort scattered all over the Romantic musical map -- think of the Hungarian Rhapsodies of Liszt, the Hungarian Dances of Brahms, the Dumky Trio of Dvořák, and the Hungarian and Russian dances in Tchaikovsky's Swan Lake, for starters.

The evening concert began with the famous "Gypsy Rondo" Piano Trio in G Major by Haydn, performed by violinist Tibor Molnár and the Cheng²Duo. The entire work was played in a brisk, bright interpretation which suited the character of the music ideally. If the lively finale was perhaps a notch or two slower than sometimes heard, that was all gain as the notes all had time to register fully, and the rapid passagework remained under firm control from all three players. Certainly there was no lack of excitement.

Next up, the Tiberius Quartet were joined by Transylvanian singer Koszika for two traditional songs, in which the mournful side of the equation dominated. Koszika's pure, clean vocal tone remained undistorted by her hand mic, and one didn't need the songs to draw from her powerful performance a sense of the deep sadness underlying these ancient tunes.
The Quartet then added a sizable bonus, not listed in the programme. Who better than a string quartet from Rumania to perform the Rumanian Dances by Bela Bartok? Definitely memorable!

The first half wrapped up with a selection of five of the Hungarian Dances by Brahms, with each dance performed by different forces: the Tiberius String Quartet, the Canadian Guitar Quartet, the Cheng²Duo, the Bergmann Duo, all had a hand in the fun. Each set of performers brought their own personal spin to the lassu-friss' tradition which informs so much of this music.

The major work, after intermission and a glorious sunset on the outside deck, was the Piano Quintet, Op. 81 by Dvořák -- one of that master's weightiest chamber works. Unusually, it contains only one sonata-form movement, and that's the finale.  Even that movement is "short-circuited" by leaping very quickly from the brief development section to the second main theme by way of recapitulation, and as quickly from there into the coda.  The first two movements are definitely dumky, in the lassu-friss' tradition, while the third is a rapid Furiant in 3/4 time that flies by in one beat to a bar.

The Tiberius Quartet wrapped up their extremely busy evening with the capable partnership of pianist John Novacek. If you're going to play a work like this, with such strong folk roots, there's a lot to be said for setting aside musicianly polish and finish in favour of sheer gutsy powerhouse playing, especially in the louder and more rapid passages, and that's what we got. You just knew that this wasn't a sophisticated drawing room rendition when you saw Novacek repeatedly flying up into the air above the stool to get more leverage behind his arms, and stamping his foot down on the pedal at the loudest chords -- especially the three final ones!

The Tiberius Quartet, themselves no slouches at this kind of high-octane playing, responded in kind and the result must surely be one of the wildest performances ever of this work. "Wild," however, doesn't mean "undisciplined" -- listening to the quiet, slow passages of the first and second movements or the trio of the third made that crystal-clear.  My favourite moment of the whole evening was the beautiful playing at the relaxation into the quiet reminiscent coda of the finale, a kind of personal reflection or meditation which Dvořák used in several of his late works.

The last two days have been such a feast of major masterpieces which I haven't heard live for years -- the Brahms Clarinet Trio, the Schubert String Quintet, and now this Dvořák. I feel very lucky to have enjoyed it all.

Thursday 9 August 2018

Festival of the Sound 2018 # 14: All Over the Map

Wednesday of Week Three brought a tremendous diversity of musical styles, represented by a selection of composers covering seven different countries in all.  Hence my title.

The afternoon opened with a recital of music for piano duo and two pianos, performed by the wife-and-husband Bergmann Duo from British Columbia.

They began with the splendid opening movement of the Grand Duo sonata in C major for piano duo (i.e. for 4 hands at 1 piano).  In introducing it, Marcel Bergmann commented that the complete work would have taken up nearly the entire programme (true).  That didn't stop me from wishing to hear it all anyway, and by the time the concert was done I wished doubly that they had done so.

Their playing in the Grand Duo embodied the best techniques of piano duet performance, a light touch and crisp articulation which ensure that all the musical ideas come out clearly without the sound becoming overwhelming.

Once the Bergmanns moved to 2 pianos, the sound did indeed become overwhelming, with their selection of works calling for far too much fortissimo playing from both pianists.  Technically, the performances were a stunning tour de force, but musically left something to be desired.  

A good example was Gershwin's symphonic poem, An American in Paris.  Many of us know and love this music in its orchestral form, treasuring its piquant orchestration and perky, jazzy tone.  Alas, in this 2-piano transcription, the chromatic harmonies become harsh and unappealing, and the heavy-weight playing only served to emphasize the harshness.

Ravel's transcription of the tone poem, Nuages, by Debussy (the first of his Trois Nocturnes), at least offered better odds but here again the playing was simply too heavy.  The original work is written to be played very quietly -- judging by recordings I know, the music rarely if ever rises above a piano dynamic marking.  In this performance, the dark clouds of sound kept threatening to turn into a major thunderstorm.

On the other hand, we all got a good laugh out of the sudden intrusion of two unexpected guests into the Bergmanns' encore, and the ensuing shenanigans.

The second concert couldn't have offered a greater contrast, as the Cheng²Duo performed a selection of four works by four different Russian composers.  I've heard them play all these works before, so in this article I will simply focus in on two notable areas of difference from the last occasion.

(You can read that previous review here:  The Moscow Sound)

First up was the Pezzo Capriccioso by Tchaikovsky.  Here, I felt that the faster sections had become more playful, with less tension, than at the previous hearing.  Suddenly the title fitted the music better than I had remembered.  The other noteworthy difference was in the Cello Sonata by Shostakovich.  Here, we experienced a markedly deeper, more intense descent into the brooding melancholy of the slower pages -- an intensity that brought this piece fully into line with the darkest, most powerful moments in such later works as the first Violin Concerto or the Tenth Symphony.  The Cheng²Duo's interpretation here has gained definite stature and power with time.

Which is not to say that the Rachmaninov Vocalise or Prokofiev Cello Sonata were in any way also-rans, just that differences in those works were less noticeable.  The entire recital was as polished and as accomplished as we've come to expect from these artists.

The evening concert featured a programme which they can play for me in heaven, and all of the performances ranked at that standard too.

The Bergmann Duo led off with the overture to The Magic Flute by Mozart, in the arrangement for two pianos by Ferrucio Busoni.  Was this really the same duo that had almost pounded the pianos into the floor in the afternoon?  The playing was light, delicate, fantastic -- just the style demanded by this brilliantly sparkling music.  Busoni's arrangement was excellent, sticking very close to the Mozartean original with only a few little pianistic flourishes added.  A delightful curtain-raiser in every way.

Next we heard the Cheng²Duo with Jim Campbell on clarinet in Brahms' autumnal Clarinet Trio in A Minor, Op. 114. Of the three late Brahms masterpieces with clarinet, this trio remains my firm personal favourite, although the Clarinet Quintet ranks as one of the most-requested and most-performed works at the Festival.

Where the younger Brahms laid out his music with broad strokes and vivid colours, the older composer favoured a subtler style, with little details lightly touched in and more gradual tonal shadings. And subtlety was the keynote of this performance. Silvie Cheng on piano anchored the ensemble without ever overwhelming it, playing Brahms with an almost Mozartean lightness of touch. Bryan Cheng on cello traded musical lines with Jim Campbell with beautiful fluency and unity of mood.

Then, in the finale, the unexpected mood shift found all three bouncing through the lively dance-like music with a real burst of energy, while still maintaining that balance and unity. This would most definitely have been a performance to live with on record.

The concert concluded with the all-too-rare String Quintet in C Minor, D.956 by Schubert. This work is one of three late Schubert works which signpost the road not taken, since almost no other composers ever followed Schubert's lead in his instrumentation of this quintet, the Trout Quintet, or the Octet. As a footnote, it's worth recalling that Brahms did cast his first quintet essay as a string quintet with 2 cellos before recomposing it as a sonata for 2 pianos (Op. 34b), and then at last as the famous Piano Quintet in F Minor, Op. 34a.

This Quintet is Schubert's final completed chamber work. At its heart is the unearthly beauty of the adagio second movement, one of the very few true adagios Schubert composed. So slowly does time move in eternity that this long-breathed, serene musical stillness, which can easily last for 3 or 4 minutes, occupies a mere 6 lines of score.

This quintet, unlike all other string quintets of Brahms, Mozart, Dvorak and the rest, adds a second cello instead of a second viola -- giving the music a rich, dark warmth of tone.  More than this, the Quintet brims over with some of the most obstinately memorable earworms Schubert ever composed -- memorable, but in a completely different, almost otherworldly mode compared to the rustic-folk inspiration of the Trout.  The only other work to which I can distantly compare it is the String Quartet No. 2 by Anton Arensky, a memorial tribute to Tchaikovsky which uses violin, viola, and 2 cellos.

It's been a long time since I heard this magnificent Schubert masterpiece in live concert, and the Tiberius Quartet joined with cellist Bryan Cheng in a performance that fully transported us into those other worlds which Schubert envisaged.

The gentleness of playing in the first movement was exemplary, with the first appearance of the singing second theme on the 2 cellos a highlight.

The stillness and calm in the second movement had me holding my breath in for fear of breaking the spell -- exactly the needed effect on the audience.  Then the vehement interlude erupted with a bold savagery that maximized the contrast.  The lead-back to the serene opening unfolded with a perfect sense of inevitability.  Then the reprise of that heavenly stillness was touched in with the lightest of tone by the gentle arabesques of Cheng and violinist Tibor Molnár.

In the scherzo, the earthy folk-dance hit us with a force that suggested a dance of giants.  That's largely a result of the 9-part writing, with double stops in every instrument except the first violin, and with the cellos playing heavily on open strings.  I've always felt that this movement as much as the scherzo of the Great C Major Symphony (#9) points the way forward to the gigantic scherzo movements of Bruckner, and here the players generated an almost Brucknerian power and force in the music.  Then, again with a huge contrast, the quiet trio looked backwards to the serenity and quiet of the first two movements.

The finale, allegretto, is punctuated by frequently repeated staccato upbeat notes that lead off each rendition of the main theme.  The effect is again not unlike a folk dance, and in this performance each upbeat was marked by an ever-so-slight hesitation in the rhythm before the downbeat landed with especial emphasis -- this underlined the folk-like character of the music.  The players built the movement along a clear line leading up to the furious coda, in which the music keeps getting faster and faster -- piu allegro followed a few lines later by piu presto -- and ripped the final notes off with great élan.  A spectacular ending to a truly rewarding concert.

Festival of the Sound 2018 # 13: Classics on the Home Stretch

As we headed into the final week of this year's Festival, two of the Tuesday programmes consisted of a selection of some of the central classics of the chamber repertoire, played by some artists of notable stature and musicality.

The exception was the first afternoon concert, a collection of diverse music played by "Two Bass Hit," a duo consisting of well-known jazz bass player Dave Young and classical bass player Joel Quarrington, with piano support from John Novacek.

Even this programme opened with a classic, although I could gladly have dispensed with it -- the slow movement of Bach's Concerto in D Minor for 2 Violins. The arranger, in order to make the piece work on two double basses, shoved the piano part down into the cellar as well, resulting in dense, congested sound with too many overtones clogging the ears.

The rest of the programme, from 20th century jazz and popular composers, worked much better, and we had ample opportunity to admire the skill of these 2 quite different experts on the same instrument. A little gimmicky, perhaps, but still entertaining and intriguing.

The second afternoon concert began with the Tiberius Quartet giving a spirited performance of a String Quartet in D Minor by Haydn. In previous years I have noted the dramatic intensity of this ensemble's playing, but here they adopted a much lighter, crisper sound -- indeed, the violins were playing for long stretches with their sordines which certainly changed the tone colour as well as the volume level. As always with Haydn, a delight.

Horn player Gabriel Radford then took the stage with pianist Philip Chiu for a selection of three short pieces by Schumann. These arrangements allowed Radford to demonstrate a good range of horn tone, from a silky piano to a robust and earthy forte.

Chiu then returned with violinist Jonathan Crow to perform the Violin Sonata No. 3 in D Minor, Op.108 by Brahms. Even in this late work, Brahms still leaned towards heavy-duty piano writing, albeit not as often as in his younger, more extravagant days. Chiu demonstrated mastery of the idiom by lightening both touch and pedalling, so that balance with his string colleague was never the least affected, even in the louder passages. Crow's presentation of the violin part covered the entire range, from the con sentimento of the brief third movement to the agitato of the finale. On any count, a spectacular performance of a challenging masterwork.

The Tuesday evening concert opened with this Festival's second performance of the well-loved Arpeggione Sonata by Schubert. This time, it was given by pianist John Novacek with Joel Quarrington performing the solo part on the double bass. (Hey, it gets played on all the other stringed instruments, not to mention the flute, oboe, clarinet, horn, and bassoon, so why not?). Once you adjust your ears to the unexpectedly low pitch, the adaptation works well. Quarrington coaxed some beautiful lyrical tone out of his instrument on the higher passages, and definitely caught the playful, bouncing character of the themes in the first and third movements.

This was followed by another evergreen Festival standard, the Clarinet Quintet in A Major by Mozart, played by the Tiberius Quartet and James Campbell. I was impressed by the lightness of tone here from all concerned, as much so as in the Haydn work this afternoon. The meditative air of the larghetto was as moving as the theme and variations of the finale were jovial. The penultimate slow variation took on an appropriately autumnal air (as August slides by), and the final coda then wrapped the work up with an aristocratic flourish.

The evening ended with the Horn Trio in E-flat Major, Op. 40 by Brahms. I'm definitely fond of this work, but from recordings. This first live hearing persuaded me that it is perilously close to being unworkable in a live performance. The difficulty, simply put, is that the French horn is an instrument with a peculiarly intense sound. Ever had the experience of listening to some horn-heavy music on cheap speakers and hear the speaker cases begin buzzing? Anyone who's ever transferred a recording of horn music knows that the horn, at certain pitches, can drive the meters right over the top of the red zone. I don't know why.

In this particular case, Jonathan Crow on violin kept getting swamped by Gabriel Radford's horn tone and Philip Chiu's piano -- and it certainly didn't seem to be a case of either Radford or Chiu playing too loudly. All three performed with skill and finesse, and the tone was lovely, but I kept getting reminded of a singer struggling to be heard over a Mahlerian symphony orchestra at full throttle. My seat in the hall is barely 20 feet from the spot where Jonathan Crow was playing, so I have to assume that this balance issue is a built-in problem of the music. It's unfortunate, because the horn repertoire isn't so large that we can afford to do without any of it.

Wednesday 1 August 2018

Festival of the Sound 2018 # 12: Voices of Beauty and Light

Tuesday of Week 2 at the Festival brought a real feast of singing, with some other intriguing chamber music works layered in between the choral and vocal highlights.

As a singer of many years standing, with a voice that has evolved into an instrument magnificently suited to the shower in the morning, I was intrigued by the two wildly different sets of technical difficulties for voice that were showcased.

The first afternoon concert began with a group of six Lieder by Schubert, sung by soprano Leslie Fagan and accompanied on piano by Leopoldo Erice.

This group of assorted songs from different periods of Schubert's life were carefully chosen to illustrate the uses and colours of the pianissimo, for both singer and accompanist.  Let's face it, almost anyone can trumpet out notes at high volume (see above re: shower), while any year-old toddler can bang the daylights out of a piano -- and most of them do.  

But singing and playing quietly, while maintaining line and tone and diction and phrasing is a very different kettle of fish altogether.  I've heard more than a few pianists and singers in my time who couldn't do it to save their souls.

The sympathy and innate communication between Fagan and Erice was remarkable enough, but it was the sheer beauty of sound from both that took these performances to another level altogether.  The gently-spun quiet notes from Fagan were perfectly matched and partnered by the feather-light pianissimo from Erice.

Not that we heard only quietness.  But the intense emotional drive of Gretchen am Spinnrade, for instance, only pointed up all the more the dramatic power when the singer falls back again to the despairing quietness in which the song begins.

The same was true, for very different reasons, in the hymn-like ode, An die Musik, or (again in yet another way) in the closing bars of Du bist die Ruh'.  

Just for the record, the other three songs (also beautifully performed) were Ganymed, Erlafsee, and Frühlingsglaube.

After that mini-recital, the Lafayette String Quartet came on with a powerful performance of the Quartet # 8 in B-flat Major, Op. 168, D.112, also by Schubert.  It was composed in 1814 when he was just 17 years old, but in this work he clearly partnered his innate lyricism with a dramatic drive that foreshadows the great final quartets of a decade later.

The Lafayette performance captured both the lyricism and the drive, in bold, sometimes brash, sound which suited this earlier work.

In the second concert, Leo Erice returned with the second instalment of his 3-year project to perform and then record the last three piano sonatas of Beethoven.  This year he played the Sonata # 30 in E Major, Op. 109.  Erice's thoughtful interpretation highlighted equally the dramatic fury of the prestissimo scherzo and the unique worlds of each of the six variations in the finale.  In this performance, the link between the first two movements was so clearly drawn that the effect was of a two-movement work, with the wilful structure of the first offset by the clear variation form of the last.

Next, the Penderecki String Quartet took the stage to play the Quartet # 1 in G Minor, Op. 27 by Edvard Grieg.  Although this performance had both power and purity to commend it, I remained unconvinced that the composer really hit the target with this one.  For my money, the first movement in particular suffers from a wayward structure that simply refuses to cohere.  The most rewarding passages were the ones where the signature sounds of Norwegian folk music, including the open-fifth drone typical of the Hardanger fiddle, crept into the work.  So while the work built to an exciting and dynamic ending, and was beautifully played throughout, I could gladly have passed on it in favour of something more rewarding.

In the evening, the 22-voice Elora Singers presented a programme of Bach with an 8-member instrumental ensemble, under their interim music director, Mark Vuorinen.

The programme, performed without intermission, consisted of two of the "short" masses, the Mass in G Major, BWV 236, and the Mass in G Minor, BWV 235, separated by the motet, Singet dem Herrn ein neues Lied, BWV 225.  

Unlike the monumental Mass in B Minor, these short or "Lutheran" masses set only the Kyrie and the Gloria, since those were the only parts of the ancient Latin liturgy commonly used in the Lutheran service in Bach's day.  But, like the full setting in B minor, these remain "cantata masses", with the major text of the Gloria broken into five or six separate and contrasted movements in each.  The plan is similar in each case: a choral Kyrie and choral Gloria in excelsis, then a chain of solo movements for different voices to cover the middle sections, and the return of the choir to sing the concluding Cum sancto spiritu.

This skilled professional choir made light of the difficulties and traps in Bach's complex polyphony, singing with both precision and passion throughout.  The soloists, not credited by name, performed the challenging arias with equal skill and with beautiful tone colour from all four.  

The motet, Singet dem Herrn ein neues Lied, is one of a group of six similar works of varying sizes.  When I was a youngster and could negotiate Bach's complex vocal lines with some degree of success, a choir I sang in performed one of these, and did so unaccompanied.  The main memory I have of that performance is the need to stop twice between movements and use a note from the organ to get the choir back on pitch.  

We've learned a lot since then, including the now-irrefutable evidence that the motets were never meant to be sung unaccompanied, but were designed to be sung with continuo accompaniment.  The continuo group of cello, double bass, and chamber organ provided all the security needed to keep pitch problems at bay, and the singing again was magnificent.  This time, a solo quartet of four voices took on a semi-chorus role, singing antiphonally with the main group in one number.  This different team of voices again were not credited by name.  A pity, as they also sang with fine tone and good unity of ensemble.

Throughout the evening, Vuorinen conducted with certainty and precise beat, and with only one little interpretive mannerism that I found strange.  As each movement came to an end, he would slow down considerably, and then articulate the sound with a clear break before the final note.  This would be fine, except that it caused a break in the word being sung by the choir, eg. "elei…" "...son" or "A..." "...men", with a slight pause in between the syllables.  Not disruptive, but definitely odd.

Nonetheless, an excellent performance of some relatively rare Bach, with the vocal gymnastics adding on the second part of this little textbook of vocal technique after the intense quiet passages of the Schubert Lieder in the afternoon.

Festival of the Sound 2018 # 11: Made in Canada With Made in Canada

Okay, no surprise to my loyal and very patient readers, I fell behind.  Here's a report on a really unusual and interesting event which was held at the Festival on Thursday night last week.  I already wrote about the performance of the Chopin second piano concerto, but the major part of the programme was given over to another world premiere, the Mosaïque Project.  

This unique musical programme was commissioned by the Ensemble Made in Canada, with the aid of grants from a number of agencies, and -- in my humble opinion -- more than repaid the time, effort, and funds invested in it.

Other musical organizations participated in special projects to commemorate the Canada 150 year, but this one was certainly unique in my experience -- even if it did arrive a year after the fact.

For example, the Toronto Symphony joined with a consortium of other orchestras to commission a series of short works, collectively known as Sesquie, for the anniversary.  These pieces were to last a maximum of 2 minutes, and were performed as curtain-raisers at numerous concerts over the last two seasons.  I reviewed several of them in this blog.

Ensemble Made in Canada took a decidedly different tack.  Their plan was for a collection of 14 pieces, each to last a maximum of 5 minutes -- to be performed all together, in a single performance.  The resulting list of musical creators amounts to a roll-call, or a "Who's Who," of the newer generations of Canada's most distinguished composers.

(Many of the same composers who had contributed to the Sesquie project were involved here as well, and I could almost hear them heaving a collective sigh of relief at getting 2½ times as much breathing room for their compositions!)

After having performed at the Festival of the Sound on previous occasions, the Ensemble Made in Canada offered the Festival the opportunity to host the world premiere performance of the complete cycle of 14 new Canadian works.  I'm certainly glad that the Festival seized the opportunity!

In the completed cycle, each composer was asked to create a work inspired by, or in some way linked to, one of the 10 provinces, the 3 territories, or the St. Lawrence-Great Lakes waterway, thus making up the total of 14 compositions.

In performance, the works were presented in an artistically satisfying order, so that styles of music varied from one to the next, and the entire cycle ended with a rousing, folk-dance-inspired finale.

The fourteen works, the inspiring regions, and the composers, in the order performed were:

Red River Fantasy (Manitoba)
Andrew Downing

Petroglyphs (Ontario)
Richard Mascall

Splendor sine occasu (British Columbia)
Ana Sokolović

Jonny Pippy of Pouch Cove, on a Bicycle at Dawn (Newfoundland & Labrador)
Sarah Slean

Short Variations on Waves (Nova Scotia)
William Rowson

Shifting Landscapes (Alberta)
Vivian Fung

Ilôts  (Quebec)
Nicolas Gilbert

Great Bear River Blues (Northwest Territories)
David Braid

The Bessborough Hotel (Saskatchewan)
Nicole Lizée

Nbiidaasamishkaamin/We Come Paddling Here (St. Lawrence/Great Lakes)
Barbara Croall

Orpheus in Nunavut (Nunavut)
Samy Moussa

Race to the Midnight Sun (Yukon)
Kevin Lau

Blessed (New Brunswick)
Julie Doiron, arr. Andrew Creegan

Kensington Ceilidh (Prince Edward Island)
Darren Sigesmund

The titles alone will give some idea of the fascinating approaches taken by the different composers.

In performance, I found that the works readily sorted themselves into two main groups -- those which acknowledged rhythm as one of the prime factors of music, and those which assigned rhythm a lesser importance to tone colour.

The difference, simply put, is that the works concerned primarily with tone colour tended to produce a series of sounds, pleasingly consonant or harshly abrasive as the case might be, with little or no apparent reason why these sounds and no others should be linked together in a single unit.  Even though the composers provided programme notes to be shared with the audience, the notes sometimes seemed to bear but scant resemblance to what we heard.  (Note that, as is my usual practice, I did not read the programme notes at all until after the concert. )

In the other group of works, there was generally a much clearer sense that the music began somewhere, moved along its course, and finished its journey at a distinct point of arrival.  I realize that my thoughts on this subject make me hopelessly passé to the musical avant-garde, but I always feel music which lacks any of the key elements of rhythm, melody, harmony, and tone colour, has less staying power than music which at least touches on all four.  

Having said that, I did enjoy some of the colouristic experimentation of the more avant-garde group.  

My own purely personal sense was that the most gripping works of the evening were the opening Red River Fantasy for its highly rhythmic driving energy, Jonny Pippy of Pouch Cove, on a Bicycle at Dawn for its vivid pictorialism, The Bessborough Hotel for the creepy ghost music which definitely advanced far beyond Hollywood's idea of ghosts, and the Kensington Ceilidh for the lively, upbeat folk-dance which powered the piece.

However, I was intrigued by everything that the 14 composers had decided to share in their music, and pleased that the Ensemble Made in Canada had chosen Parry Sound as the proper location in which to present the premiere of this unique cycle of modern Canadian music, the Mosaïque Project.