We're now officially into "Multi-Concert Madness." During the three weeks of the Festival, the weekdays from Tuesday through Friday generally have three concerts each, although occasionally a day is allowed to get off lightly with just two. The standard times for a 3-concert day are 1:30pm, 3:30pm, and 7:30pm. The first two concerts typically last 70-75 minutes with no intermission, and the evening concert usually runs about 120-150 minutes including an intermission. The game is always to see how close the intermission can come to showing off a spectacular Georgian Bay sunset, since the broad deck outside the back of the Stockey Centre faces west across the waters of Parry Sound.
The other game, at least for me, is to see how many of these concerts I can attend on my season pass before battle fatigue sets in.
I'm tolerably certain that the results were not the Festival's intention as the programme was drawn up, but it is a fact nonetheless that each of the three Tuesday concerts involved music being arranged for some instrument or instruments other than the originals.
The first concert featured the celebrated duo-pianists Anagnoson and Kinton, now in their 42nd year of performing as a team. The featured work was an exciting rarity: the 4-hands piano adaptation of Stravinsky's ballet, Petrushka. The composer and other pianists worked from this score during the rehearsals for the ballet's 1911 premiere, but did not perform it publicly. It says something for the complexities of Stravinsky's score that it couldn't readily be reduced to the scale of a single piano, much more the rule in ballet and opera studios. In any case, the 4-hands version has now been adapted to incorporate changes made during Stravinsky's 1946 revision of the ballet.
Petrushka is an exciting, dynamic score, so it's much better suited to piano performance than some other Stravinsky works. Anagnoson and Kinton treated the work to a suitably sharp-edged reading, full of dramatic contrasts from section to section.
The performance was accompanied by overhead projections of a series of paintings by Alan Stein, illustrating the events of the story in a winter setting full of brilliant colours set against cold white surroundings.
To round off the programme, Anagnoson and Kinton then played Lutoslawski's Variations on a Theme of Paganini, a six-minute virtuoso showpiece for 2 pianos. The piece is based on the famous Caprice No. 24 for solo violin, itself a set of variations on a theme. This is the same caprice used as thematic material in the two books of Paganini Variations by Brahms and in the Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini by Rachmaninoff.
Lutoslawski's work strikes me as the epitome of what Robertson Davies once called "wrong-note modernism." Really, what this means is that the players could make mistakes in every bar and only someone who had played and studied the work would know the difference. Paganini's theme is there at all times, and even some reminiscences of a couple of the Brahms variations, but all surrounded and hedged in by massive discords all over both keyboards. The fun of the work, such as it is, comes from trying to keep the theme in your ear throughout the performance, and from admiring the frenetic exertions of the players.
The second concert brought a welcome annual return visit by the Gryphon Trio. In the first section, they were joined by clarinetist James Campbell in an interesting assortment of short pieces by Schumann, each for a solo instrument and piano. The trick was that two of the pieces were played on solo instruments other than the ones which the composer originally assigned. These alternate versions were sanctioned by Schumann -- in some cases.
Campbell opened with the first of the Drei Fantasiestücke, Op. 73 -- a piece to which the clarinet has the legitimate claim, although Schumann allowed the use of either viola or cello. Perhaps it was true, as Campbell stated, that he really didn't care since the piano was his instrument! =
The second work was the second movement of the Drei Romanzen, Op. 94, for oboe and piano. In this case, Schumann explicitly forbade his publisher, Simrock, to publish alternative versions for violin and clarinet, saying that the piece would have been different if he had written it for one of those instruments. Simrock went ahead and published the alternate versions anyway -- neither the first nor the last time that a publisher has ignored the wishes of a composer or author!
The piece is marked Einfach, innig (simple, heartfelt) and that described exactly the manner in which violinist Annalee Patipatanakoon played it.
The third piece we heard was the third of the Drei Fantasiestücke, played by Roman Borys on cello with a great deal of fire and energy.
After a brief pause, the Gryphons were joined by Douglas McNabney on viola and Joel Quarrington on double bass in the well-loved Piano Quintet in A Major, "The Trout," by Schubert. This unusual five-movement work is one of the most frequently requested and performed pieces at the Festival, being in a perpetual dead heat for first place with the Brahms Clarinet Quintet.
The Trout Quintet always strikes me as the definitive piece of summer music, full of light and air, gentle breezes and ample energy.
Those qualities were present in full measure in this performance. One intriguing feature of this reading was the prominence of the many passages where the melody is assigned to the viola; these points in the score all seemed to have been specially highlighted, although not in any glaringly obvious way. Another delight was the consistently light and airy playing of Jamie Parker on the piano. Schubert certainly helped by writing so much of the piano part high up on the keyboard, and Parker's lightness of touch on the keys and of foot on the sustain pedal made true summer sunshine of the music. The warm applause at the end was certainly well-earned.
In the evening, there was a dual concert by members of the Hannaford Street Silver Band, with a free "Bands on the Bay" concert on the Stockey Centre's outdoor deck at 6:30 pm followed by the more structured concert in the hall at 8:00 pm.
In a Peanuts cartoon from the 1960s, Lucy convinces Charlie Brown to take his yearly kick at the football by showing him the printed programme announcing his participation. After she has yanked the ball away, according to tradition, she stands over him and says, "In every program, Charlie Brown, there are always a few last-minute changes."
The evening concert from the Hannaford Street ensemble wasn't so much a matter of a few changes as it was a completely new concert which included a few of the pieces previously announced! Since I don't normally take notes, I'm relying on the weakest of witnesses -- my memory.
The programme started on historic ground, with Giovanni Gabrieli's Sonata pian' e forte ("Sonata soft and loud"). It's one of the earliest instances we know of a composer incorporating dynamic markings in a score. The ensemble divided into two groups, standing on opposite sides of the hall, as the players in Gabrieli's original performances would have been positioned in the opposing music galleries of Basilica San Marco in Venice. It seemed a pity that the players couldn't have gone up to the upper balconies of the Stockey Centre, but it's a long hike up and the elevator is both slow and small. It was still a spectacular piece.
This was followed by a spectacular C Major Concerto for 2 Trumpets by Vivaldi, with the two players using the stratospheric piccolo trumpets. The virtuoso acrobatics of the soloists were impressive.
We also heard a suite of three famous excerpts from Bizet's Carmen, played with considerable elan, especially in the jet-propelled final pages of the Bohemian dance.
This concert included a special guest artist, baritone Russell Braun. Conductor Ray Tizzard spoke about Jim Campbell's knack for putting together unexpected combinations of performers, and imagined Jim saying to himself, "You know who would sound good with the Hannaford Band? Russell Braun." Tizzard then added, speaking for himself, "Who knew?"
I got what he meant. The idea of combining a single, unmiked singer with a 12-member band playing on trumpets, cornets, French horn, tuba, and trombones, really does sound like an accident waiting to happen. But then, Russell Braun is not just any ordinary singer, and his voice --powerful and tonally beautiful in equal measures -- was more than up to the challenge of remaining audible at all times against this semi-Wagnerian level of orchestration.
Among Braun's solo numbers, scattered through the evening, were a Donizetti aria, Mozart's Non più andrai from The Marriage of Figaro, and a passionate love song by Ivor Novello.
In the second half, the band turned towards a more popular repertoire, ranging from Piazzola's Libertango to When I'm 64, with a gorgeous horn solo in Stardust as a highlight along the way. The main programme ended with a rousing St. Louis Blues March by W. C. Handy.
Two brief encores followed: the 1867 patriotic song, The Maple Leaf Forever, and the 1967 Ontario theme song, A Place to Stand.
All in all, a vastly entertaining concert with something for everyone in the selection of music.
The first concert featured the celebrated duo-pianists Anagnoson and Kinton, now in their 42nd year of performing as a team. The featured work was an exciting rarity: the 4-hands piano adaptation of Stravinsky's ballet, Petrushka. The composer and other pianists worked from this score during the rehearsals for the ballet's 1911 premiere, but did not perform it publicly. It says something for the complexities of Stravinsky's score that it couldn't readily be reduced to the scale of a single piano, much more the rule in ballet and opera studios. In any case, the 4-hands version has now been adapted to incorporate changes made during Stravinsky's 1946 revision of the ballet.
Petrushka is an exciting, dynamic score, so it's much better suited to piano performance than some other Stravinsky works. Anagnoson and Kinton treated the work to a suitably sharp-edged reading, full of dramatic contrasts from section to section.
The performance was accompanied by overhead projections of a series of paintings by Alan Stein, illustrating the events of the story in a winter setting full of brilliant colours set against cold white surroundings.
To round off the programme, Anagnoson and Kinton then played Lutoslawski's Variations on a Theme of Paganini, a six-minute virtuoso showpiece for 2 pianos. The piece is based on the famous Caprice No. 24 for solo violin, itself a set of variations on a theme. This is the same caprice used as thematic material in the two books of Paganini Variations by Brahms and in the Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini by Rachmaninoff.
Lutoslawski's work strikes me as the epitome of what Robertson Davies once called "wrong-note modernism." Really, what this means is that the players could make mistakes in every bar and only someone who had played and studied the work would know the difference. Paganini's theme is there at all times, and even some reminiscences of a couple of the Brahms variations, but all surrounded and hedged in by massive discords all over both keyboards. The fun of the work, such as it is, comes from trying to keep the theme in your ear throughout the performance, and from admiring the frenetic exertions of the players.
The second concert brought a welcome annual return visit by the Gryphon Trio. In the first section, they were joined by clarinetist James Campbell in an interesting assortment of short pieces by Schumann, each for a solo instrument and piano. The trick was that two of the pieces were played on solo instruments other than the ones which the composer originally assigned. These alternate versions were sanctioned by Schumann -- in some cases.
Campbell opened with the first of the Drei Fantasiestücke, Op. 73 -- a piece to which the clarinet has the legitimate claim, although Schumann allowed the use of either viola or cello. Perhaps it was true, as Campbell stated, that he really didn't care since the piano was his instrument! =
The second work was the second movement of the Drei Romanzen, Op. 94, for oboe and piano. In this case, Schumann explicitly forbade his publisher, Simrock, to publish alternative versions for violin and clarinet, saying that the piece would have been different if he had written it for one of those instruments. Simrock went ahead and published the alternate versions anyway -- neither the first nor the last time that a publisher has ignored the wishes of a composer or author!
The piece is marked Einfach, innig (simple, heartfelt) and that described exactly the manner in which violinist Annalee Patipatanakoon played it.
The third piece we heard was the third of the Drei Fantasiestücke, played by Roman Borys on cello with a great deal of fire and energy.
After a brief pause, the Gryphons were joined by Douglas McNabney on viola and Joel Quarrington on double bass in the well-loved Piano Quintet in A Major, "The Trout," by Schubert. This unusual five-movement work is one of the most frequently requested and performed pieces at the Festival, being in a perpetual dead heat for first place with the Brahms Clarinet Quintet.
The Trout Quintet always strikes me as the definitive piece of summer music, full of light and air, gentle breezes and ample energy.
Those qualities were present in full measure in this performance. One intriguing feature of this reading was the prominence of the many passages where the melody is assigned to the viola; these points in the score all seemed to have been specially highlighted, although not in any glaringly obvious way. Another delight was the consistently light and airy playing of Jamie Parker on the piano. Schubert certainly helped by writing so much of the piano part high up on the keyboard, and Parker's lightness of touch on the keys and of foot on the sustain pedal made true summer sunshine of the music. The warm applause at the end was certainly well-earned.
In the evening, there was a dual concert by members of the Hannaford Street Silver Band, with a free "Bands on the Bay" concert on the Stockey Centre's outdoor deck at 6:30 pm followed by the more structured concert in the hall at 8:00 pm.
In a Peanuts cartoon from the 1960s, Lucy convinces Charlie Brown to take his yearly kick at the football by showing him the printed programme announcing his participation. After she has yanked the ball away, according to tradition, she stands over him and says, "In every program, Charlie Brown, there are always a few last-minute changes."
The evening concert from the Hannaford Street ensemble wasn't so much a matter of a few changes as it was a completely new concert which included a few of the pieces previously announced! Since I don't normally take notes, I'm relying on the weakest of witnesses -- my memory.
The programme started on historic ground, with Giovanni Gabrieli's Sonata pian' e forte ("Sonata soft and loud"). It's one of the earliest instances we know of a composer incorporating dynamic markings in a score. The ensemble divided into two groups, standing on opposite sides of the hall, as the players in Gabrieli's original performances would have been positioned in the opposing music galleries of Basilica San Marco in Venice. It seemed a pity that the players couldn't have gone up to the upper balconies of the Stockey Centre, but it's a long hike up and the elevator is both slow and small. It was still a spectacular piece.
This was followed by a spectacular C Major Concerto for 2 Trumpets by Vivaldi, with the two players using the stratospheric piccolo trumpets. The virtuoso acrobatics of the soloists were impressive.
We also heard a suite of three famous excerpts from Bizet's Carmen, played with considerable elan, especially in the jet-propelled final pages of the Bohemian dance.
This concert included a special guest artist, baritone Russell Braun. Conductor Ray Tizzard spoke about Jim Campbell's knack for putting together unexpected combinations of performers, and imagined Jim saying to himself, "You know who would sound good with the Hannaford Band? Russell Braun." Tizzard then added, speaking for himself, "Who knew?"
I got what he meant. The idea of combining a single, unmiked singer with a 12-member band playing on trumpets, cornets, French horn, tuba, and trombones, really does sound like an accident waiting to happen. But then, Russell Braun is not just any ordinary singer, and his voice --powerful and tonally beautiful in equal measures -- was more than up to the challenge of remaining audible at all times against this semi-Wagnerian level of orchestration.
Among Braun's solo numbers, scattered through the evening, were a Donizetti aria, Mozart's Non più andrai from The Marriage of Figaro, and a passionate love song by Ivor Novello.
In the second half, the band turned towards a more popular repertoire, ranging from Piazzola's Libertango to When I'm 64, with a gorgeous horn solo in Stardust as a highlight along the way. The main programme ended with a rousing St. Louis Blues March by W. C. Handy.
Two brief encores followed: the 1867 patriotic song, The Maple Leaf Forever, and the 1967 Ontario theme song, A Place to Stand.
All in all, a vastly entertaining concert with something for everyone in the selection of music.
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