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.
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.
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.
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