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.
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