Friday 30 August 2019

Shaw Festival 2019: Sparks Flying Everywhere

In a much anticipated special event, the Shaw Festival has staged the full-length version of George Bernard Shaw's philosophical epic comedy Man and Superman for only the fourth time in its history.  This year's production fully lives up to its three predecessors, and the strong cast sets the sparks flying all over the stage throughout the performance.

Although both my heavyweight description and the show's 6.5 hour running time (including several intermissions) may deter many potential theatregoers, I've always found that this play stands at the strongest point of Shaw's career and is one of his wittiest as well as most thought-provoking creations.

I've attended at least two previous Shaw Festival productions of the complete play:  in 1977, starring Ian Richardson, and in 2004, starring Ben Carlson.  (I may also have witnessed Michael Ball tackling the role in 1989 but my memory is less clear on this point.)  This is the only show which I chose to attend at this year's Shaw Festival.

For those not familiar, a few brief programme notes follow.  Informed readers, feel free to skip.

* * * * * * * * * *

Shaw prefaced the play with his customary lengthy essay about its genesis, themes, and ideas.  In this essay, he laid the "blame" (if you can call it that) on his friend, Arthur Bingham Walkley, who had urged him to "write a Don Juan play."  What's most intriguing about the resulting unique creation is the way in which Shaw took the well-known theme of the libertine male seducer of women and turned it on its head, creating a new trope in which (to quote his own words in the play): "Woman is the pursuer and the disposer; man, the pursued and the disposed of."

Although Shaw's plays consistently generate much of their comedy by setting up conventional expectations and then reversing them, this play consistently goes one stage further and subverts the entire convention of the story it purports to re-invent for the twentieth century.

The result is precisely as Shaw described it in his essay: a conventional, modern (in its day), three-act comedy onto which the author grafted a lengthy additional act.  In that long third act, the protagonist lies down to sleep in the Sierra Nevada of Spain, and has a dream in which Don Juan, Doña Ana, the Statue, and the Devil convene in Hell and hold a philosophical debate about existence in heaven and hell, the Life Force, and the true nature of relationships between women and men.

The roster of characters in this debate obviously is drawn from Mozart's Don Giovanni, one of the great masterpieces of all opera.  As a former practising music critic, Shaw couldn't avoid Mozart in connection with the idea of Don Juan.  He didn't try.  Mozart is woven into the fabric of the play by explicit reference in text and stage directions alike.  All of the participants in Don Juan in Hell refer to him except Ana, and Shaw specifies that snippets of his music should be used as "calling cards" to introduce all four of the characters.

(I can't avoid Mozart either.  I'm listening to Don Giovanni as I write this.)

It's entirely possible to present the play without the third act, and previous productions have offered that option.  It's also possible to detach the embedded Don Juan in Hell scene and present it alone, as a self-contained entity -- as the Shaw Festival did in its 1962 debut season.

Commentator Charles A. Berst succinctly observed of the Don Juan in Hell scene:  
"Paradoxically, the act is both extraneous and central to the drama which surrounds it."
Shaw himself admitted as much in his introductory essay.

The complete play is a true dramatic marathon for the cast and audience alike, but especially so for the actor who portrays John Tanner/Don Juan Tenorio (note the deliberate resemblance of the name).  It's not just the fact that he's on stage for so much of the play's over-five-hour performing time, but the more pertinent fact that this character is Shaw's mouthpiece for the philosophical ideas which the author wishes to hammer home.  And Tanner/Don Juan does hammer the ideas -- so forcefully and at such great length that the other characters make several sarcastic comments about his incredible torrents of words.  Take just the Don Juan in Hell scene as an example.  In its 100-minute playing time, Tanner easily has to speak over 70% (perhaps more) of the entire text, and in one case has a speech which runs all by itself to well over a full page of script. 

* * * * * * * * * *

So, now, to the 2019 production.  The lengthy running time was handled with an 11:00 AM curtain, a 75-minute lunch break after the second act, and 20-minute intermissions after Act 1 and Act 3.  The show ended at 5:20 PM.

Camellia Koo has designed a handsome, traditional suite of costumes in appropriate period style for the year 1905, when the play was first staged.  For Don Juan in Hell, the costumes represent the height of the social pyramid for Spain in the seventeenth century -- except for the Devil, whose costume retains the 1905 style, thereby appearing "contemporary" to the rest of the play.  Koo's set is formed of two large walls of floor-to-ceiling stylized bookcases, with half-height and full-height rolling ladders for access to the upper shelves.  These ladders open up fascinating vertical as well as horizontal possibilities for variety in stage pictures.  The shelves incorporate practical doors in Act 1 and windows in Act 3.  In Act 4, they are replaced by a single shelf unit with broken ends where the larger segments have broken off -- an appropriate visual metaphor for John Tanner's final broken attempts to evade capture by the Life Force.

Joseph Tritt's understated original musical score for the play makes use of appropriate embedded snippets of Mozart's Don Giovanni, following the suggestion of the author (not slavishly, but effectively).   An inspiration was the idea of having the "popular air" whistled by Straker throughout Acts II-IV be represented by La ci darem da mano, Don Giovanni's serenade to Zerlina in the opera.

An even more fascinating musical adaptation marked the opening pages of the play, when the entire (somewhat elliptical) dialogue between Octavius Robinson and Roebuck Ramsden was accompanied by non-metric harpsichord chords, and turned into operatic recitative in the style of Mozart.

 I doubt if any other play ever written makes such extreme demands on the memory and vocal cords of one single actor.  Gray Powell turned in a fascinating performance as John Tanner, covering the gamut from solemn and sincere to sarcastic and sardonic.  His control of the text, especially in his long speeches in Act 1, was noteworthy and his crystal-clear diction ensured that every word carried across into the audience, even when he was ranting at full throttle.

In the lengthy third act, Powell achieved even more gripping results by generating considerable dramatic interest in Don Juan's apparently endless philosophical monologues.  I place little store on the moments when he fumbled a bit with this or that word or phrase, preferring to focus instead on the incredibly precise delivery of such daunting set-pieces as the lengthy "They are not ____, they are only ____" speech which goes on exactly according to that template for literally dozens of comparisons in a string.  Also noteworthy was his careful adherence to the spirit of Shaw's stage directions in creating for Don Juan a distinctly different character and varied speaking voice from John Tanner, albeit with resemblances.  By any standard, this was a performance of energy and fire in a context where few expect anything of the sort.  Overall, Powell created a remarkably strong centre to the entire play.

Tanner's antagonist, the representative of the Life Force, was played by Sara Topham with much more than a hint of the irresistible energy which neither she nor anyone else can master or evade.  As Ann Whitefield, both face and voice held a consistent hint of laughter, even when damped down to the decorum of mourning.  In the first act, I found that it was not easy to follow her soft-edged accent but her diction became decidedly clearer in the later running.  The concentration of the seductive energy in the final moments of the play was both intense and enchanting, the latter characteristic an absolute necessity as the script requires Ann to become a true Siren of the Life Force in those culminating moments.  As Doña Ana, she adopted a slightly more rhetorical style with the implicit laughter absent -- again, an effective character change from Ann, a change sketched in lightly rather than painted with bold colours.

Veteran actor David Adams returns to the Shaw after a 25-year absence to play the dual role of Roebuck Ramsden and the Statue of the Commander.  As Ramsden, Adams summoned great resources of scorn to heap on Tanner (a notable moment being when he introduces Tanner in the last act with the dismissive "one of our circle").  For the role of the Statue, Adams summoned up a bluff, military heartiness that was quite foreign to Ramsden, but right on point for this very different character.  His singing voice was deployed to good effect in the recitatives of the first scene and in his brief duet with the Devil of Mozart's Vivan la femmine!  Viva il buon vino!

Only a conventional theologian of the most rigid kind could carp at the inspired choice of Martha Burns to portray the Devil.  An unmistakable presence even when sitting still, Burns provided the necessary counterweight and debating opponent to Gray Powell's forceful Don Juan.  Effective comic timing and lightly rhetorical pointing of some of Shaw's choicest sardonic repartee added much to the fun, as for instance in the classic, "Have you ever been in the country where I have the largest following?  England."  Less rewarding was her portrayal of Mendoza, leader of the brigands.  The thick Spanish accent added little and detracted much in the way of comprehension.  Since Mendoza is [a] Jewish and [b] recently a waiter at the Savoy in London, I see no real need to assume that she's a long-time resident of Spain at all, whatever her birthplace may have been.

As a side note here, I have to point out that there were two or three instances where one of the other performers referred to either Mendoza or the Devil with the original masculine pronouns, where most references were altered to feminine pronouns.  A hidden peril of gender-blind casting, because the audience may only become blind to the gender of the actor, not that of the character.

Sanjay Talwar came close to stealing the show with his coolly cutting presentation of chauffeur Henry Straker, his dissection of his employer Tanner's pretensions beautifully understated with well-nigh perfect comic timing.  His melodious whistling of Mozart was an easily-audible and recognizable comic highlight.


Long-time Shaw veteran Sharry Flett turned in a nuanced portrayal of Mrs. Whitefield, accurately capturing the bewilderment that ineffectual woman feels when confronted with the tyrannical energy of her older daughter, Ann.

Kyle Blair gave a cartoonish portrayal of Octavius Robinson.  With almost every line turned into the tearful moanings of a sentimental poet scorned, his Tavy veered into caricature again and again.  This isn't necessary; the script offers adequate opportunity to create a more nuanced character.  Blair's fine singing voice registered to good effect in the opening recitative passages.

Courtney Ch'ng Lancaster nailed the icily contemptuous Violet Robinson as thoroughly as Violet nailed down everyone who crossed her path.

As her secret husband, Hector Malone, Jeff Irving found both the romantic ardour and the romantic fantasy swimming in the mind of the young American son-of-wealth.

Tanja Jacobs cut the right kind of figure as a stuffy, old-fashioned, rigid moralist in her brief appearance as Roebuck Ramsden's maiden sister, Susan.

Tom McCamus started out as a forcefully temperamental and controlling Irishman, and accurately presented the growing bewilderment of Hector Malone, Senior at finding out that he can neither evade Violet's control nor put her down.

Director Kimberley Rampersad has crafted a finely-paced, well-integrated production of a notoriously sprawling script, allowing Shaw's rhetorical expanses fair play while also maintaining the through line of the drama.  Her direction makes the most effective use of the possibilities in the text and in the set.  I was particularly impressed with both the pacing and the interesting stage pictures which she conjured up for the lengthy debate of Don Juan in Hell.

In sum, the Shaw Festival has mounted a fascinating, rewarding full day of theatre in this rare production of the complete Man and Superman.  The show continues on stage with a limited run of performances until October 5.  A definite do-not-miss!

Tuesday 20 August 2019

A Refreshing Musical Treat

It's a rare Festival of the Sound that doesn't result in me purchasing at least a couple of recordings -- or more.  But this new acquisition is particularly intriguing for the selection of music, encompassing ten composers across several centuries, and all composed or arranged for the duo of flute and harp.

Take the pure, cool tones of Suzanne Shulman's flute, pair them with the liquid cascades of Erica Goodman's harp, and the resulting combination is as refreshing as a tall iced drink on a hot summer afternoon -- and provides far more lasting satisfaction.  And that's the secret recipe of this Naxos release, entitled Serenades and Sonatas for Flute and Harp.

Not the least of the attractions, for me at any rate, is the presence in this collection of no less than four composers whose names are completely new to me.

Among the less well-known names are found some true delights.  Sample the light-hearted, fleet-footed waltz of the final movement in John Marson's Suite for Flute and Harp, enticingly entitled Strawberries and Cream.  It's a pity that room could not be made for the other four movements.

Or take the gentle lyrical beauty of Arthur Woodall's Serenade, a love song in instrumental form if ever I heard one.

It's not all sweetness and light, mind you.  Alphonse Hasselmans contributed a virtuoso concert study for the harp, La Source, Op. 44, written in 1899. Here, Goodman presents a busy and demanding score with such aplomb and apparent ease that it's hard to visualize how much work is involved.

The best among these relative unknowns is the Victorian Kitchen Garden Suite by Paul Reade.  Drawn from music composed for the BBC2 TV series of the same name in 1991, this collection of short pieces is a real charmer -- yet plainly calls on the skills of both players to a high degree.  The serenity of the opening Prelude, marked andante pastorale leads to the brighter birdsong trillings from the flute in Spring.  The central movement, named simply Mists, draws rapid arpeggios from the harp which help to sketch in the picture of wreaths of mist drifting by.  Exotica brings exuberant rhythms and virtuoso flourishes from both instruments.  The final movement, Summer, is marked flowing and the performance here definitely captures he composer's intent with his rising and falling melody in almost folk-like harmonies, ending with a piquant final cadence, beautifully pointed by Shulman.

Aside from these rare names, Shulman and Goodman have also provided some fascinating pieces from more established names.  Top of the list here is Naiades -- Fantasy-Sonata for Flute and Harp by English composer William Alwyn, whose work is very well-known in his homeland.  Although the prevailing style remains somewhat lyrical in the early pages, there's also a good deal of dissonance to spice the mixture.  These dissonant moments don't pain the ear in the way they might on, say, a piano, thanks to the softer-edged tone of these two instruments.  In the more energetic later sections, the duo capture an elemental wildness in the music which reminds us that nature spirits don't always act in a civilized manner.

More traditional in both style and structure is the 1937 Sonata for Flute and Harp by Nino Rota.  It's a pity that Rota is mainly famed in North America as the composer of film music for the first two films of The Godfather trilogy, because his output was far greater and more diverse, including operas, ballets, theatre music -- and this beautiful sonata.  Simplicity and clarity are the keynote of the first two movements.  The energetic dance of the finale creates a fine contrast, ending with a spectacular flourish from both flute and harp.

John McCabe's arrangement of Les Oiseaux by Ernest Chausson takes incidental music from a production of the comedy by Aristophanes and assembles it into a short concert suite for the two instruments.  The opening brings birdsong flourishes from the flute, leading into a slow and stately song for the duo.

Two delightful arrangements of harpsichord pieces by François Couperin bring the Baroque style of the court of the Sun King into the recital.  The sweeping lines of Le Rossignol en amour ("The Nightingale in Love") are succeeded by the strutting, preening dance of Le Rossignol vainqueur ("The Nightingale Conqueror").

Brief contributions from two of England's most famous composers complete the programme.  The disc opens with a flute and harp arrangement of the Fantasia on Greensleeves, by Ralph Vaughan Williams.  This means, of course, no substantial difference in the opening bars which were originally scored for flute and harp!  Next to last on the CD is the Chanson de matin of Edward Elgar, another beautifully melodic short work.

Throughout the recital, the instruments are clearly heard in a spacious but not over-reverberant acoustic, with just "enough" resonance in the air (a definite matter of opinion, of course).  The playing from both Suzanne Shulman and Erica Goodman is exemplary, both technically and artistically.

This is a disc that I think is guaranteed to put a smile on your face -- it does on mine.  Now, where's my tall cool drink?

Thursday 15 August 2019

Festival of the Sound 2019 # 17: Retrospective and My Top Ten of the Festival

Was there something special in the air at this year's Festival of the Sound?  Of course there was a good deal of excitement for the 40th anniversary of the Festival, especially among those of us who've been attending for many years.  There were certainly plenty of reminiscences of the "old days" of concerts in the steam bath of the high school gym -- not that anyone really wants to go back in time and experience that again.  I'm just grateful that any ideas of re-mounting the original concert in the original venue were nipped in the bud!

Whatever the reason or reasons, there did seem to me to be a more festive vibe in the air this summer.  Maybe it was just me, or just my imagination, but I'd like to think that the entire experience took on a heightened air of "special event" for others as well.

It's a bit of a challenge to try to put that across, since Festival audiences have become well-accustomed to the unusual, the exceptional, the exciting, the memorable, from year to year.

And now for my Festival Top Ten List.  I started this tradition last year.  This is not a comment on relative quality of performance -- we're not talking about the Gramophone Awards here -- but just a selection of performances or events that stood out in my memory for some particular reason.

Starting with...

[10]  Beethoven Quartet Op. 131 with the New Zealand String Quartet.  Any time an ensemble sits down to play this monumental work carries the cachet of a special occasion.  This performance stood out among others that I recall for the care in which all the diverse styles were welded into a single, coherent whole, culminating in the intensity of the finale.

[9]  The Payadora Tango Ensemble.  The combination of gifted and versatile instrumentalists, singers, and dancers with the intoxicating rhythms of Latin dance was irresistible.  

[8]  Beethoven's Trio Op. 70, No. 1 "Ghost."  The intense quietness of the playing by Yolanda Bruno, Bryan Cheng, and Silvie Cheng in the slow movement set the seal on this major offering of the concert, "And So We Began," which remounted 3/4 of the original concert of 40 years ago on the same date and at the same time.

[7]  Eric Robertson's "The Sound: A musical evocation of Georgian Bay."  With fascinating vocal writing and instrumental textures, Robertson's 40th anniversary gift to the Festival and the Elmer Iseler Singers was the highlight of the Gala Opening Concert.

[6]  "We'll Gather Lilacs" by Ivor Novello, sung by Russell Braun with Carolyn Maule accompanying on the piano.  Without fail, his interpretation of this nostalgic love song reduces me to tears.  Braun is one of those incredibly gifted artists who can take a simple, popular tune like this and elevate it to heights of emotion which I suspect were undreamed of by its composer.  

[5]  "Pavane for a Dead Princess" by Ravel.  Amid the beauties of the Cheng²Duo's recital, this work stood out for the luxurious tone which Bryan Cheng coaxed out of the high harmonics on the third reiteration of the melody.  

[4]  Bach's Chaconne in D Minor for solo violin.  Another musical work whose every performance is an event, this one showed Karl Stobbe building the long arches of the music with a degree of passion and intensity that many violinists might fear to use in Bach.

[3]  "Beethoven II" concert on July 30.  Yegor Dyachkov and Leopoldo Erice delighted us with the undervalued variations on Mozart's "Ein Mädchen oder Weibchen," and followed with a thoughtful, insightful reading of the Cello Sonata No. 4 in C Major, Op. 102 No. 1.  Then, speaking of passion and intensity, Erice pulled out all the stops in a dynamic and gripping performance of the final piano sonata, No. 32 C Minor, Op. 111.

[2]  "Tzigane" for violin and piano.  With more-than-capable support from Glen Montgomery, Yolanda Bruno flung caution to the winds, digging deep into the strings and playing this challenging work with a wild spirit and fiery temperament, such as I had never heard before.

And finally, the big moment....

[1]  The Celebration Day, Friday, August 9.  Okay, I know I'm cheating a bit here, but it's impossible for me to detach any one performance from the immense musical banquet laid on for us on that day: 40 works for 40 years, stretching from 10:30 in the morning for almost 12 hours.  There were far too many highlights for me to name them all here.  If you refer back to Post # 15 of this series, you'll see what they all were on that page.

Festival of the Sound 2019 # 16: Orchestral Festival

Once again, the Festival wrapped up with a concert featuring conductor Boris Brott and the National Academy Orchestra.  The members of this orchestra are musicians who have completed their formal programmes in schools of music and stand on the threshold of a musical career.  This year's concert featured a string of orchestral fireworks of great popularity, all old favourites of mine, and a unique composition by one of the leading aboriginal composers in Canada.

Although it came second on the programme, I wanted to begin with this premiere performance of Barbara Croall's Maang N'gamwin (Loon Song).  Croall herself appeared as singer and drummer in this piece, in which she combined her own song which came to her during a spirit fasting time with an orchestral accompaniment that highlighted the song's intensity and power.  The resulting fusion of aboriginal and European cultural traditions and instruments, overlaid by the haunting cries of Croall's voice, was uniquely gripping and involving.  And I wanted to hear it again.

Aside from Croall's uniquely powerful music, the rest of the concert consisted of some of the most famous and colourful orchestral works from the 19th and early 20th centuries.  All of these pieces share a common characteristic.  This is music which provides all kinds of virtuoso opportunities to musicians in many parts of the orchestra -- which sounds great in theory.  In practice, these highlight moments are almost all completely exposed, to such an extent that if the player has even a momentary loss of confidence or glitch in the execution, anyone in the audience who knows the music will pick up on it right away.  Kind of like a musical equivalent of walking a tightrope over Niagara Falls. 

The concert began with the rousing Rakoczy March by Hector Berlioz -- actually, an arrangement of a genuine Hungarian march tune.  When he wanted to incorporate this piece into his dramatic legend, La Damnation de Faust, Berlioz had to transfer the entire opening scene of the score from Germany to Hungary!  It was good to hear this work again, for it is not nearly so popular now as it was when I was younger.  The orchestra held together splendidly across some of the bar-crossing rhythms, and the brass playing just before the fortissimo return of the main theme was truly spectacular.

The Piano Concerto No. 1 in B-Flat Minor, Op. 23, by Tchaikovsky rounded out the first half, with a dynamic performance of the solo part by Alexander Tselyakov.  This well-loved concerto was treated to an uncommonly tightly-knit performance of what can sometimes seem a discursive score, due in no small measure to the close visual communication between conductor and soloist.  The climactic pages scattered throughout the first movement had both energy and momentum to match their power.  The lovely flute solo opening the slow movement was one of the real delights of the concert.  The finale maintained the dance-like character along with an earthy weight that highlighted the music's indebtedness to the Russian folk tradition.

 The opening piece in the second half was actually conducted by this summer's apprentice conductor.  I'm sorry I didn't get his name, because I was truly impressed by the ease of his podium manner and the understated fluency of his beat and gestures. 

The piece was Bedrich Smetana's tone poem Vltava (more commonly known in German and English speaking countries as "The Moldau").  That's the German name of the river, which flows from the Czech Republic into Germany and merges into the Elbe on its way to the North Sea.  In the opening depiction of the cold mountain springs which give birth to the river, the wind soloists seemed a bit ill-at-ease, and an occasional badly-timed gasp for air could be heard.  Once the strings joined in, the music rolled irresistibly onwards with the rise and fall of the main theme.  The quiet interlude in the middle, a moonlit scene, showed the winds in better form.  The brasses played with commanding force in the St. John's Rapids, and the climactic depiction of the fortress of Vysehrad as the river flows past Prague brought the piece to a rousing conclusion.

Rimsky-Korsakov's resplendent Capriccio espagnol came next.  Even more than in Vltava, this work is well-provided with solo highlights for various instruments -- a trademark of the composer's orchestral style.  The programme listed the five marked sections of the score, although in practice the work is played as a single continuous whole.  Again, there were a few technical glitches in some of the solo parts, but the performance as a whole was essentially lively and vividly coloured, an essential requirement of this work.  Minor note: although many performances omit it, the harp cadenza was given its repeat, piano, creating a delightful echo effect.  The showy Fandango was built to a rousing conclusion, and I for one would have been more than happy to end the concert there.

Maestro Brott, however, had different ideas, and wrapped the programme up with the most fearsome collection of instrumental solos and highlights in the standard repertoire: Ravel's Bolero.  The most critical features of getting Bolero "right" are the absolutely rock-steady tempo of the insistent snare drum rhythm and the gradual pacing of the single 16-minute long crescendo to reach its climax at the sudden violent swerve into E major in the 17th and last variation.  In these respects, Brott's reading of the score was right on target. 

The only glitch in the snare drum came in the 16th variation with the entry of the second snare drum, which required a moment for the two drums to get exactly synchronized.  The biggest challenge, though, is the collection of solo melodic parts in every variation of the piece -- and once again, the wind solos were a mixed bag, some more successful than others. 

But it was great fun to hear these favourite showpieces, so many of them, all in the same programme, and I'm sure many of the audience would agree with me in that statement.


Saturday 10 August 2019

Festival of the Sound 2019 # 15: Happy 35th Anniversary, James Campbell

The culmination of the Festival's Celebration Day came with this concert, a concert like no other I have ever attended.  Over 30 artists of varying kinds participated in a tribute to the extraordinary man who has led this Festival so successfully for 35 years.

In its fusion of serious music-making with madcap comic mayhem, the programme became also a tribute to the unique style of the Festival of the Sound.  Jim's style.

In a way, it resembled the famous Last Night of the Proms in London.  The serious first half of the programme yielded place after the intermission to an equal mix of music and shenanigans.

[33]  The programme opened with one of the great treasures of music: the powerful first movement of J. S. Bach's Concerto in D Minor for 2 Violins, BWV1043.  Moshe Hammer and Helene Pohl took the two solo roles, flanked by a small ensemble of string players with cello and double bass doing continuo duty.  Without in the least overspeeding, the musicians caught that essential feeling of unstoppable momentum which makes this music so memorable.

[34-35]  Next, Graham Campbell took the stage with James Campbell, who had pointed out in advance that Graham was 8 months old when Jim opened his first Festival as Artistic Director.  They first played Graham's composition, La Ananda, which Graham explained as being a lullaby for some noisy farm dogs he encountered in Spain -- a gentle lyrical delight, which I'm sure the dogs were not.  They then played a more jazzy, upbeat Brazilian number, Cochichando by Pixinguinha.

[36]  Alexander Tselyakov then appeared to play the Etude No. 12 in C Sharp Minor, "Revolutionary", by Chopin.  The articulation of the endless rolling arpeggios was impressive, but more so the way in which he never slackened the essential driving energy, even in the quieter and slower moments.

[37]  The first half wrapped up with one of the perennial Festival favourites (although it's been a few years since we last heard it), the string Octet, Op. 20, by Mendelssohn.  The New Zealand String Quartet joined forces with the Penderecki String Quartet in this work.  Since Jeremy Bell of the PSQ was unavoidably absent, Yolanda Bruno stepped in to fill in the company.

As a footnote, this Octet was the work which first brought the Penderecki Quartet to the Festival back in the 1990s.

It's always intriguing to recall that the Octet is a teenager's composition.  Even in the "slow" movement, you sense the irrepressible bubbling young man's energy, and the faster movements -- well....

In this performance, everything landed right side up and sounded wonderful.  My own particular delight comes with the third-movement scherzo, the first of Mendelssohn's light-as-thistledown fairy pieces, and plainly a dress rehearsal for Overture to A Midsummer Night's Dream, soon to follow.  The eight players perfectly created the airy textures, the gossamer lines, the lightest of pizzicati, and the last notes vanished into the clear air.  The finale then launched with immense energy, and there was the never-failing surprise of hearing a robust passage and realizing that it was from that light and airy scherzo, now much beefed up.  A delight for everyone!

[38]  After the intermission, Leslie Fagan repeated a number from the first weekend: the aria Sempre Libera from Verdi's La Traviata, acting in character right along with the words.  Not to put too fine a point on it, I agree with the audience member who said afterwards that Fagan "is such a ham!" -- but she sings this showy coloratura aria with such flair and skill that a little hamminess is forgivable.  Glen Montgomery accompanied at the piano.

[39]  Next we heard the Canadian Guitar Quartet in their arrangement of the famous Danse macabre, Op. 40 by Camille Saint-Saens.  Louis Trépanier, in introducing the piece, set the scene based on a poem which describes the naughty antics of the dead spirits called out of the tomb by Death's fiddling, but failed to mention the real scandal which the poem caused in French society: the way it showed people from the highest social class consorting with the lowlife peasants and such.  Oh, the shock!  As if that didn't go on constantly anyway, but discreetly and in secret.

The four members of the quartet use an astonishing variety of tone colours on their instruments to capture the vivid depiction of the original orchestral tone poem.  As well as more standard guitar techniques, they strum the strings at the peg-end of the neck to emulate the sound of the clattering xylophone in the original, while slapping on the guitar's body gives us the quiet bass drum strokes.  An impressive and entertaining performance.

And finally:  [40]!!!  The culmination of the concert, Saint-Saens' Carnival of the Animals, was preceded by the biggest performance this year of the Festival stage crew and stage manager Chris Todd, as the crew cleared away the guitarists' chairs and replaced them with seats for some 25 musicians, including two pianos and a harp.

It's a well-known fact that this throwaway bit of musical burlesque, which Saint-Saens composed for a private party, caused no end of disgust to its creator by becoming his most popular piece.  It's an incredibly clever send-up of French music.  The tortoises dance to Offenbach's famous Can-Can, but at agonizingly slow speed, and the elephants waltz to the Minuet of the Sylphs -- but the ethereal tune by Berlioz is played on a lumbering double bass.  There's also a quote from the scherzo of the Mendelssohn Octet!  The composer even took a swipe at himself, bringing in the xylophone from the Danse macabre to simulate the sound of the "Fossils" -- and that movement also quotes several popular folk songs and Una voce poco fa by Rossini.  The crown of the musical satire comes when the pianists have to grind out the Hanon exercises which so many of us remembered -- and dreaded -- from our youthful piano lessons.
(By the way, did you know that we writers have our own version of Hanon exercises?  We certainly do.  It's called "reading.")
The Carnival has a long and honourable history at the Festival, and no wonder -- it fits hand-in-glove with the kind of shenanigans for which this event has long been renowned.  Before the concert, I was reminiscing with flautist Suzanne Shulman about the performance in the 1990s when Jim Campbell tried, and failed, to play the solo part in The Cuckoo in the Woods because everyone else took turns jumping in to play it before him.

On this occasion, a written text by Gary Michael Dault served as a thread tying the movements together.  It was spoken with considerable aplomb and style by Colin Fox.  The entire performance was conducted by long-time Festival artist, James McKay.

As the players began the Royal March of the Lion, one clarinetist came forward, put down his instrument, and proceeded to become -- the lion.  This was mime artist Trevor Copp, and his clever performances added much laughter to the music for the tortoises, the elephant, the fish in the aquarium, and the lion.

There was a definite overplus of pianists on the stage (I think five altogether -- they kept switching places so it was hard to keep count).   At the "Pianists" movement, they stacked up at two to each of the two pianos, and proceeded to play those damnable Hanon exercises with more wrong notes, missed notes, dropped beats, unmarked pauses, and -- well, you get the idea.  Silvie Cheng said afterwards that she'd played more wrong notes than she could ever remember.  All in good fun, of course -- and I'm sure all the people in the audience who could play the piano were cringing as much as I was.

When it came time for The Cuckoo in the Woods, the requisite two-note solo didn't appear on cue -- it came in about 2.5 beats late, and from somewhere behind us.  Jim Campbell proceeded to meander through the "forest" of the audience, sounding his cuckoo call intermittently and never at the right time, while the narration spoke lovingly of the cuckoo artistic director who keeps the whole Festival running.  At the end, he wandered off stage through the side door, with a distracted air that made the whole piece seem a bit like Lady Macbeth's sleepwalking scene.  Or maybe the ghost of Hamlet's father.

The Swan was accompanied by Erica Goodman's rolling liquid arpeggios on the harp, and was played with sublime grace and flow by Bryan Cheng.  The narration pointed out that the "Bonjour" Stradivarius cello which Cheng is now using (on loan from the Canada Council Instrument Bank) is the same instrument on which The Swan was played by Charles Lebouc at the original private performance in 1886.

Before the finale could launch, a half-dozen more musicians crowded onto the stage, including the Canadian Guitar Quartet, soprano Leslie Fagan, and yet another clarinetist -- stage manager Chris Todd, who gave a splendid reading of the rollicking first theme of the finale.  The entire huge ensemble brought the Carnival to a suitably rousing conclusion.

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A Final Note:  Although only the one allusion was overtly made in the narration to Jim Campbell's 35 years as Artistic Director, the entire concert was a suitable celebration of Jim's Festival.  The music ranged from Baroque to the twentieth century.  There were original versions and arrangements.  We had serious music-making and comical hijinks.  The final Carnival of the Animals included the creative and effective addition of the mime artist.

All these aspects typify the Festival of the Sound as it has grown and developed under James Campbell's stewardship.

As well, the stage hosted performers who've been at the Festival for nearly all of those 35 years: three members of the original Festival Winds, Suzanne Shulman, James Mason, and James McKay.  Other long-time musical friends of the Festival were there: the New Zealand and Penderecki Quartets, Glen Montgomery, Beverly Johnston, Leslie Fagan.  More recent additions to the growing Festival family were represented by the Canadian Guitar Quartet and the Cheng²Duo.

So we didn't need any big speeches to pay tribute to Campbell's work.  The concert did that for him.

And on a personal level, it's been a real privilege, joy, and delight for me to share 27 years of this journey from my seat among the audience.


Festival of the Sound 2019 # 14: The Great Big Humongous 40th Anniversary Celebration Day.

It all started with James Campbell, Artistic Director of the Festival, having one of his infamous little ideas that sound so innocuous: why not celebrate the 40th anniversary of the Festival by playing 40 works of music in one day?

According to Jim, his wife's response was:  "Whose idea was that?"

She knew.

Many of the works were heard only as single movements from larger works.  Otherwise, as Jim also pointed out, we'd have had to stay for an extra week.  No matter.  This madcap idea turned into the most entertaining, unusual, and invigorating day of music I've ever experienced.

It was a tiring day.  No question.  But the consensus among people I spoke to who, like me, did the entire thing, was that it was worth every minute.   

Get ready for a review like no other you've ever read, as I bop around five different venues and six separate events while listening to 35 different artists in quest of the elusive magic 40.
Note:  Violinist Jeremy Bell was unable to join his colleagues of the Penderecki String Quartet for this one-day musical binge.  So, any reference to the Penderecki Quartet actually refers to 3 of the 4 members.  For convenience in this lengthy post, I'll be referring to the Penderecki Quartet as the PSQ, the New Zealand String Quartet as the NZSQ, while the Canadian Guitar Quartet becomes the CGQ.  I hope all of that is now clear as mud.  
Numbers will be marked for each piece throughout this post and its successor to keep track of our progress towards our goal.  And off we go!

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Celebration Day No. 1:  The Morning Cruise


I guess it would have been too cliché to open with a morning cruise featuring Handel's Water Music.  When we boarded the Island Queen at the dock for a departure at 10:30 am, we were greeted with a programme focusing strongly on the later Classical and Romantic eras.

[1,2]  The day launched with the piano duo of Glen Montgomery and Magdalena von Eccher playing the wistful Slavonic Dance No. 10 by Dvorak and the more impassioned Hungarian Dance No. 5 by Brahms.  Both were played with impressive balance and tone quality, especially considering the need to use an electronic piano (even if it is a good one).

[3]  Next, we heard a four-movement Divertimento for Winds by Mozart.  Originally this was a Divertimento for Three Basset Hounds -- oops, I meant Three Basset Horns, of course.  Dave Bourque, who provided the sole basset horn on this occasion, always, and I do mean always, has to make that joke about basset hounds.  For those not familiar, the basset horn is a member of the clarinet family, pitched lower than a regular soprano clarinet and with additional lower keys that extend its range lower than an alto clarinet.  Mozart made extensive use of basset horns in his later works.  We have no statistical information on his use of basset hounds.

This divertimento, like so many of the genre, was a lightweight, pleasant piece -- probably originally written as after-dinner music to go with the port and cigars.  The finale of this piece shall henceforth be known as Music to Go Through a Hole in the Wall By, because it was played by the trio as the Island Queen navigated the narrow, rockbound channel called "The Hole in the Wall" which separates Wall Island from the larger Huckleberry Island.  Jim Campbell (clarinet) and Jim Mason (oboe) joined Bourque in a pleasing, perky performance.

[4]  Daniel Tselyakov took the keyboard for a Nocturne, Op. 9 No. 3 by Chopin.  Tselyakov has an easy, natural way with rubato in Chopin, the ebb and flow of the tempo seeming entirely organic and not feeling like a stuck-on interpretive device.

[5]  Next, Magdalena von Eccher returned with the opening adagio sostenuto of the Sonata quasi una fantasia in C Sharp Minor, Op. 27 No. 2, by Beethoven -- better known, but not by the composer's choice, as the "Moonlight Sonata."  At a sunny 11-something o'clock in the morning, the popular sobriquet seems merely silly.  von Eccher phrased this familiar music much more thoughtfully than many performers.

[6]  We then heard the Singer-Fischer Duo of Sebastien Singer on guitar and Andre Fischer on cello in an Astor Piazzola piece entitled Café: 1930, originally written for guitar and flute.  In the mix of mood-evocative elements with popular song styles of the time, it was classic Piazzola.

[7-8]  The final set of this concert was provided by violinist Moshe Hammer and pianist Glen Montgomery.  They began with Fritz Kreisler's Schöne Rosmarin, a waltz with a definite (to my ears) Viennese concert-in-the-park air.  The next piece was the virtuoso warhorse, Zigeunerweisen, by Pablo Sarasate.  Hammer tossed off all the technical tricks (there are many in this piece) with the ease of long experience.

[9]  These two were then joined by Jim Campbell for Srul Irving Glick's The Klezmer's Wedding, a work originally premiered at the Festival a decade or so ago.  It's a marvellous evocation of traditional Jewish klezmer music, and these artists played it with ample dash, style, and energy.  A very rewarding finale to Part One.

Jim Campbell finished off this event with a generous shout-out to the owners and crew of the Island Queen, which has been an integral part of the Festival experience for over 3 decades.  The routine of weekly musical cruises was already well established when I first came here 27 years ago, and continues to enliven the summer Monday evenings for hundreds of people every week of the Festival -- as well as on the annual Canada Day cruise.


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Celebration Day No. 2:  Magic of Mozart

With a half-hour break after the boat docked, and time to scarf down a quick snack lunch, we were seated in the Stockey Centre concert hall for an afternoon with Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart.

[10]  We began with the adagio and allegro movements of Mozart's String Quartet No. 1 in G+, K.80, a work composed by Mozart at the tender age of 14.  Simple and straightforward as compared to later Mozart, yet unfailingly melodious, this "dear little piece," as violist Gillian Ansell called it, was played by the NZSQ in a light-hearted, easy-going style that suited it perfectly.

[11]  Time for the opposite end of the scale.  The NZSQ were then joined by double bass Joel Quarrington and clarinet James Campbell for the adagio movement of Mozart's Clarinet Concerto in A Major, K.622.  In this beautiful late addition to Mozart's concertante works, the soloist and ensemble gave a performance which could only be called sublime.  If it were a recording, I'd be hitting the repeat button.

[12]  Daniel Tselyakov was joined by the PSQ in the first movement of the Piano Quartet in E Flat Major, K.483.  Tselyakov's rationale was simple -- since his dad played the other piano quartet a day or two previously, he would do this one.  Although the piano part was arguably a bit heavy for Mozart, it was otherwise clear as you could ask -- and Tselyakov's colleagues had no trouble keeping up with him in the volume department so the balance wasn't at risk.

[13]  An impostor!  Beethoven sneaked into the Mozartean mix with the Variations on "La ci darem da mano" (a  duet from Mozart's opera Don Giovanni) for two oboes and cor Anglais -- here played with one oboe, one clarinet, and one cor Anglais or basset hound or whatever.  In other words, the same three players as in [3].  And yes, the basset hound joke got made again.

[14]  If I'd had my druthers, the relative positions of this piece and # 15 would have been reversed.  Leslie Fagan joined with Glen Montgomery in a rare performance of the complete cantata, Exsultate, jubilate, K.165, written when the composer was 17 and attending the Milan premiere of his opera seria, Lucio Silla.  I've been deceived more than once in the past when the cantata was announced or programmed, but all I got was the concluding Alleluia -- a famous soprano showpiece.  The complete work is a nicely balanced structure, with the two fast, coloratura movements framing the slower recitative and lyrical aria in second and third place.  I've long since decided that Glen Montgomery is, hands down, the most versatile pianist ever to appear at this Festival, so I was not surprised that he dealt so readily with all of Mozart's elaborate passagework.  As for Leslie Fagan, she proved as much at home in the slower aria Tu virginum corona, producing a smooth flow of limpid tone, as in the more athletic coloratura of the opening movement and the showstopper Alleluia.

[15]  Glen Montgomery, now joined by Magdalena von Eccher, played the Variations for Piano Duo in G Major, K.501.  These variations are based on an original theme, and it's a perky, upbeat melody indeed, lending that character to much of what follows.  For a relatively short work, it's very diverse in styles, and this duo moved readily from lighter scales and runs which definitely lived in the realm of fantasy to emphatic, powerful chords that yet did not forget that this was still the 1700s.  A delight.


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Celebration Day No. 3:  Music for Strings

Afternoon celebration passes in hand, we migrated up the street to St. Andrew's Presbyterian Church for a concert after my own heart.  All my life, I've loved music for strings and this programme took me to a favourite place in my musical life, in a venue whose sound is especially congenial to these instruments.

[16]  This concert opened with a repeat from the Tuesday night dinner.  Again, no complaints in this quarter.  Julien Bisaillon joined the NZSQ for the Boccherini Fandango.  Enough said about that already, although I did notice one detail which escaped me the other night.  Rolf Gjelsten, the cellist, was tapping on the body of his instrument in a rhythmic pattern which definitely evoked the castanets sometimes used in this piece.  Great fun to hear it again.

[17]  Katie Schlaikjer, cellist of the PSQ, presented a work for solo cello by Argentinian composer Osvaldo Golijov, entitled Omaramor.  This proved to be very impassioned music, sometimes fragmentary and uncertain in harmony.  A contrasting central section resolved into a discernible melody, although the fragmented material punctuated it at phrase ends.  The following section became even more fiercely discordant.  An interesting musical journey.

[18]  Julien Bisaillon returned to play the Choros No. 1 for guitar by Heitor Villa-Lobos.  Like much of the composer's music, this was melodious and approachable, with a discernible verse-refrain structure throughout.

[19]  If the slow movement of Schubert's String Quintet is indeed the gateway to heaven as Artur Rubinstein said, then we may have gotten there for a few minutes as that magnificent music was played by the PSQ with Monique Lapins on second violin, and with Joel Quarrington standing in on double bass for the second cello part.  Heartachingly beautiful, as fine as I ever hope to hear it.

[20]  Halfway there!  Three players of the CGQ, minus Julien Bisaillon, joined Leslie Fagan for two famous Schubert lieder:  Ständchen and Ave Maria.  The choice of a trio of guitars worked magnificently with these two lyrical inspirations.  Ständchen was magnificent.  So was Ave Maria -- until Fagan bowed to bad tradition and sang the second verse with the horribly mismatched text of the Latin prayer, replete with weak syllables landing on strong beats, thus:  "gra-ti-aa ple-naa."  Schubert did NOT set that prayer to music.  Can you tell that I have strong feelings about this abuse of the composer's inspiration?

[21]  Revisiting an old friend, the NZSQ joined with James Campbell in the third movement of the Brahms Clarinet Quintet.  This piece is the very heart and soul of their artistic collaboration, and it's always a pleasure and a privilege to hear them play it.

[22]  The NZSQ then wrapped up this instalment with the allegro molto finale of the String Quartet No. 9 in C Major, Op. 59 No. 3 by Beethoven -- the third of the "Razumovsky" Quartets.  This high energy moto perpetuo was "stolen" (to use their word) by the CGQ earlier in the week;  now, the NZSQ stole it back again!  Great attention to the molto part of the tempo marking, especially in the final pages, but equal attention to precision of playing from all the members of the quartet.


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Celebration Day No. 4:  Tea, eh?  Ah, yes.  Tea.

A select lucky few who got their orders in early enough next moved to the Festival Station Office for an afternoon tea-with-music.  Back in the early days, when concerts were held in the sizzling heat of the high school gym, iced tea and lemonade at intermission were much more than a treat -- they were a survival strategy.  Today, freshly-brewed iced tea added delight to a lovely hour of music.  So did some luscious dessert items.  And there was also hot tea in elegant fine china cups, for those wanting to include a degree of old-fashioned class in their day.

After tea, we moved into the small performance hall behind the office for the fourth concert.  This concert divided into two recognizable sets, a decided change of pace after all the mixing-and-matching that went on earlier in the day.  The first set was performed by flautist Suzanne Shulman and harpist Erica Goodman.  I have to say that it almost seems presumptuous to offer any comment on the quality of playing from these two first-rank artists.

[23]  The opening number was Elgar's Chanson de matin, Op. 15, No. 2.  A rare name at the Festival, Elgar makes a welcome reappearance.  The piece was originally for piano and violin, but sounded completely idiomatic in this arrangement.

[24]  The Victorian Kitchen Garden Suite by Paul Reade was an absolute delight.  The music was written for the BBC2 television series of the same name.  The five short movements -- Prelude, Spring, Mists, Exotica, and Summer -- offered a diversity of styles for the players to explore, and certainly piqued my desire to hear the music again.

[25-26]  Le Rossignol en amour and Le Rossignol vainqueur are arrangements of two harpsichord pieces by François Couperin.  The soaring, aching 4/4 melody of the nightingale in love contrasted neatly with the strutting 6/8 pride of the nightingale conqueror.

[27]  La source, Op. 44 (The Fountain) by Alphonse Hasselmans, is a concert study for harp alone, written in the early days of the modern double-action harp as a technical tour de force for the composer's students.  Erica Goodman gave the endless swirling arpeggios a clear sense of form which definitely helped us to enjoy the subtleties in the piece.

[28]  Casilda Fantasy by Franz Doppler and Antonio Zamara.  Casilda was an apparently forgettable Romantic opera by the older brother of Queen Victoria's Prince Albert.  The fantasy was created by the two composers, themselves renowned virtuosi, at the height of the nineteenth century craze for such pastiche works.  Often these were aimed at the home market, but in this case I doubt if many homes conveniently contained a double-action harp all ready for action.  The themes in this piece were pleasing to the ear, and the virtuosity of the playing made it worthwhile to listen and rather enjoyable.  But if the lost Casilda had as weak a libretto as some of the other nineteenth-century operatic flopperoos, she'd probably better stay lost.

In preparing to play this piece, Suzanne Shulman said that she had a bone to pick with the composers because the central section is written in seven flats and "on the flute, seven flats is a non-union key.  Erica has no trouble with seven flats."  To this, Erica Goodman made the tart rejoinder, "On the harp, all keys are non-union keys."

At this point we took a brief break to switch performers, bringing forward the Cheng²Duo for the second set of the teatime concert.

[29]  The Chengs opened with the famous Arioso from the Cantata No 156 by J. S. Bach.  This certainly wasn't an "authentic" interpretation, as shown by the firm playing of the piano and the vibrato on the cello, but neither was the music overloaded with romantic indulgences.

[30]  Next up we got the first and last of Manuel de Falla's Seven Popular Spanish Songs.  El paño moruno was strong and forceful, Polo even more so, in the authentic canto jondo style of Andalusia.  It's just a pity that they didn't include Nana.  Nudge, wink, for those who were at the opening weekend dinner concert!  Sorry, an inside joke.

[31]  Maurice Ravel came next with the Pièce en forme de Habañera.  Played with a sultry air reminiscent of la siesta on a hot Mediterranean afternoon, this evocative piece seemed like a dream of Spain, perhaps viewed through a veiled archway.  The famous habañera rhythm, so familiar from Carmen, was there still, but far more understated than in Bizet's famous opera.

[32]  Ending with what is probably their most-requested encore, the Chengs sent us off with the rousing Horse-Racing by Huang Haihuai.  Apparently this song was originally written to be played on a solo erhu, a two-stringed fiddle, but I can't for the life of me imagine how that would work.  The comic highlight of the tea came when Bryan Cheng imitated the neighing of the horses on his cello at the end.


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Celebration Day No. 5:  Jazz on the Grill

A barbecue supper on the deck at the Stockey Centre, overlooking the sparkling waters of Georgian Bay, was just the ticket to continue the celebrations.  For me, though, it became the event to skip.  My stomach seriously rebelled at the idea of yet another two-bite snack, and I betook me to a restaurant for a fuller, badly-needed sit-down meal.  Sorry to miss the jamming that took place on the deck, I'm sure it was great.  But I felt a bit less guilty when I realized that the barbeque music was not part of the magic "40."


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Celebration Day No. 6:  Happy 35th Anniversary, James Campbell

No, that's not a misprint.  It was five years after the Festival began that founding Artistic Director Anton Kuerti asked Jim Campbell to take over the role, and -- as they say -- the rest is history.  I'm going to cover this fabulous culmination of the marathon Celebration Day, with pieces [33] to [40] in a separate post, # 15. 

Friday 9 August 2019

Festival of the Sound 2019 # 13: Lively Evening Classics

Okay, I admit it: I cheated.  I skipped not one but two afternoon concerts on Thursday.  This was a result of that not-unusual Week Three phenomenon known as "hitting the wall."  But I also took the afternoon off because I wanted to summon up the extra energy needed for what was coming on Friday (and just wait until you hear about that -- see below).

Those of us who sit down to write reviews in the wee hours of the morning sometimes face intriguing little issues in clarifying detail, at a time of day when consulting the performers involved is basically impossible -- since they and all other sensible people are asleep.  Here's one example: the evening concert opened with what was listed as the Quartet in D Major, Op. 2 No. 2 by Haydn.  However, according to two sources I consulted, Op. 2 No. 2 is in E major.  Hmm.

I'd call it a simple misprint, except that we heard this early quartet in an arrangement in which the first violin was replaced by a guitar.  Was the music recast in D Major for technical reasons or for convenience relating to the use of the guitar?  Or was it another example of the ubiquitous misprint gremlins at work?

Whatever the truth of the matter, this cheery, five-movement work was played by a string trio of Yolanda Bruno (violin), Christine Vlajk (viola), and Bryan Cheng (cello), with the four members of the Canadian Guitar Quartet taking turns in the leader's chair, movement by movement.  It lent an unusual and appealing Mediterranean air to Haydn's music, but this performance was especially interesting for allowing us to study in turn the quite different playing styles of the four guitarists.

After a brief pause, Yolanda Bruno returned with pianist Glen Montgomery to give the most hair-raising, fire-eating rendition I've ever heard of Ravel's virtuoso showpiece, Tzigane.  In this rhapsodic, free-form work, Ravel took up the then-popular exotic style loosely rooted in eastern European gypsy or Roma tradition, melded in the virtuoso fireworks of such violinists as Sarasate, and then raised the resulting combination to a level of complexity and ferocity scarcely matched by any rival.

The gimmick: you simply can't get at the "ferocity" of the music by playing with sweet, angelic, lyrical tone.  Bruno didn't even try.  Her Tzigane snapped, snarled, growled, even roared as her bow dug deep and hard into the strings, over and over.  It was a wonder to me that she didn't break all the bow hairs as she played.  At the midpoint, when the pianist finally gets to join in, she and Montgomery kept right together through all the tricky accelerando passages which litter the second half of the work.  The final chords could only be described as being ripped right off the score.  Wow.  I've never heard any other violinist go for broke so recklessly, or with such rewarding results.

After an intermission, with time for some deep breaths, we heard another one of Vinzenz Lachner's arrangements of a piano concerto for string quartet, double bass, and piano.  This one was Mozart's Concerto No. 23 in A Major, K.488.  For me this has always been one of the most specially lovable of all Mozart's concertos, an affectionate marriage of soaring lyricism with virtuoso skill.  Alexander Tselyakov took the piano part, and the New Zealand String Quartet were joined by double bass Joel Quarrington.

There was much to admire in this performance.  The scale of tone from both strings and piano allowed for ideal balance between the two, not pulling their punches, but not overplaying.  There was no hint here of overly-precious or fastidious playing evoking the gentle clink of Dresden china, nor did anyone try to haul Mozart prematurely into the Romantic era in the manner that was fashionable when I was young.  The perfect balance became especially delightful in the slow movement, which is written in the manner of a dialogue between piano and orchestra, with each in turn falling silent to listen to the other.  

Also commendable was the ease and fluency of the playing by all, a definite need of the music of Mozart and of this concerto particularly.  Any hint of Sturm und Drang would be out of place.  The ease was especially noteworthy in the endless roulades and passagework of the piano's part in the finale.

The Festival environment allows for only limited rehearsal time, and sometimes glitches can happen as a result -- always a risk in any public performance, and here doubly understandable.  But I was disappointed when the final movement of the concerto came perilously close to breaking down and halting completely.  Fortunately, the performers managed to pull out and keep going but  I would have to say it was the nearest brush with complete disaster I can ever recall hearing in a concert.  Not an isolated incident, either: it was the last of four or five such moments in the concerto performance.  

Up next: the marathon Celebration Day which commemorated the Festival of the Sound's 40th anniversary with 40 musical works played in a single day on Friday, August 9.

Thursday 8 August 2019

Festival of the Sound 2019 # 12: Strings Every Which Way

Wednesday's programmes at the Festival were dominated by (although not exclusively dedicated to) the stringed instruments -- also known in Anna Russell's madcap musical lingo as the Scrape Section of the orchestra (not to be confused with the Bang Section or the Blow Section).

The first concert featured the perennial "ugly stepsister" among the strings, the viola.  String players make viola jokes the same way that choral singers make alto jokes, and for the same reason.  Always buried in the middle of the harmony, usually playing the 3rd note of whatever key we're in, the viola is sometimes hard to pick out of the texture, although you'd certainly miss it if it weren't there.

Gillian Ansell of the New Zealand String Quartet gave us a short talk about the history of her Nicolo Amati viola, built in Cremona in 1619 and thus celebrating its 400th birthday this year.  The viola is on permanent loan for the use of the violist of the NZSQ.

She then joined with violinist Yolanda Bruno in a delightful Duo in G Major for violin and viola, K.423 by Mozart.  It's one of a number of works Mozart wrote which purported to be by Michael Haydn, the younger brother of Franz Josef Haydn.  Apparently, M. Haydn lost interest in completing a commission and got Mozart to do it for him.  Sounds a bit like an eighteenth-century equivalent of some of the more recent pulp fiction mills.

It was intriguing to listen to this music and pick out the moments when the viola was playing a harmony part to a non-existent bass line, versus the moments when the viola played the bass line.

Although the next piece, Johan Halvorsen's Sarabande on a Theme by Handel, was composed for violin and viola, we heard it played by Bruno on violin with Joel Quarrington on double bass.  I'm at a bit of a loss as to why this substitution needed to be made, and from his comments Quarrington wasn't quite sure either.

At any rate, the original Sarabande theme is both dignified and sombre, and the first few variations hewed to that tone -- sounding, indeed, positively Handelian -- before the wilder virtuoso antics and dissonant melodic lines of the later variations took over.

Ansell then returned with pianist Alexander Tselyakov for a substantial main work, a late Sonata for Viola and Piano in C Major, Op. 147, by Dmitri Shostakovich.  This was, in fact, the composer's final completed work.  Like many of his late works (such as the Symphony No. 15), this music eschews complex textures and bizarre harmonies in favour of a sparer, leaner style with a definitely elegiac tone.   Ansell and Tselyakov played the second movement with only a hint of the composer's signature sardonic humour (all that's needed here) and then played the long slow finale with beautifully sustained intensity and weight.

The second concert brought back the cello-piano Cheng²Duo in a recital entitled Fables and Folk Tales.  The programme opened with the sweeping Adagio, Op. 97bis, from Prokofiev's ballet score, Cinderella.  These symphonic adagios are a standard feature of romantic ballet scores, and in this number Prokofiev paid tribute to the work of Tchaikovsky in his own inimitable style.  The Chengs played this beautiful music with suitable long singing melodic lines on the cello and firm harmonic support from the piano.

Their next work was the Five Pieces in Folk Style, Op. 102, by Robert Schumann.  Bryan Cheng performed near-miracles in perfectly pitching the challenging double-stops in the third piece, while still delivering earthy, suitably rustic playing in the more vigorous fourth and fifth numbers.  Silvie Cheng's piano grounded the cello's energy with firm chording in the louder moments and lyrical gentleness in the quieter passages.

The Chengs continued with the beautiful Pavane for a Dead Princess by Ravel, pointing out first that the wordy title was selected by Ravel purely because he liked the sound of the words.  I've also read that it was an attempt to skewer the overly delicate or "precious" nature of musical titles used by certain other composers.  Their arrangement of this work showed another side of these siblings' musical skill as Bryan Cheng floated the most sweet, vibrant, yet still gentle sound out while playing the third recurrence of the main melody entirely on the high harmonics -- a region where most string players struggle not to develop a scratchy edge on the tone.  At the same time, Silvie Cheng was playing the accompanying harmonies with feather-light touch, yet with all the notes sounding clearly.
(One of the miracles of the Stockey Centre concert hall, by the way, is the way in which such edge-of-inaudibly-quiet playing can still be heard clearly all the way to the highest and farthest seats from the stage.)
The Cheng²Duo ended their recital with a substantial and intriguing Sonata for Cello and Piano by Francis Poulenc.  This work, judged weak by many Great Experts, seemed much stronger to me -- and could have come from no other hand.  (But then, I always reserve the right to disagree with the Great Experts!) The first movement was perhaps a bit anodyne, but with the second-movement Cavatine and third-movement Ballabile  ("Ballet") the unmistakable voice of the composer emerged, that voice which caused him to be described as a solemn monk with a rowdy choirboy peeping out from under his robes.  The march-like first movement was played by the Chengs with a pleasing lightness of tone, neither heavy nor ponderous.  The cello sang delightfully in the Cavatine, and the two instruments danced freely along in the Ballabile.  The Finale, authentically French in style, wrapped up a very rewarding and diverse hour-long recital.

The evening concert was billed in advance as a celebration of the 15-year musical friendship between James Campbell and the New Zealand String Quartet, although in the event Campbell joined in only one of the three works on the bill.  

The New Zealand Quartet opened with the String Quartet No. 29 in G Major by Haydn -- which proved to be the same work of which we had heard three movements at the previous night's dinner concert.  It's sometimes a bit annoying to have the same performance repeated like this, but who could get annoyed at such a sunny, genial piece of Haydn's best vintage champagne?  Right from the get-go, the opening gesture on a bizarre perfect cadence which normally marks the end of a piece, I found myself smiling as if encountering a good friend long absent.  I was even more struck in this second go-round by the realization that the Minuet and Trio, was -- in reality -- an early example of a scherzo.  The wildly-syncopated main theme turns the entire piece into a single large musical joke.  The final Presto bounced and bubbled jovially along and it was quite obvious that the players were enjoying themselves as much as we were enjoying the music.  The scale of tone throughout the work was firm and clear, neither too delicate nor overly big-boned.

The second work was a piece for string quartet and clarinet, Raven and the First Men, by Canadian composer Tim Corlis.  Written in 2008, it represented what the composer called his "personal response" to the unique woodcarving of the same name by Bill Reid, one of the leading artists working from within the aboriginal traditions -- in this case, the traditions of the Haida of the west coast.  The performance was enhanced by a specially-created film which examined closely the instruments playing the music and the details of the sculpture itself, with the entire sculpture appearing in the closing seconds.  The music is severely modern in style, fragmentary, in places sweet in tone, and in others harsh.  It's not a narration of the legend in any sense.  The five performers met all the technical demands of the music with subtlety and bravura mixed together.  At the end, I was left with a strong feeling that this music would lose both form and purpose if presented apart from the visual imagery of the film.  Perhaps that is the composer's intention.

After the intermission, a dramatic shifting of gears brought in one of the Everests of all music, the String Quartet No. 14, Op. 131, by Beethoven.  What makes this piece so monumental is not just the total playing time of 40 minutes, nor the extraordinary number of movements (seven).  In this quartet, Beethoven seized the genre by the ears and booted it forward into an unguessable future where almost anything might become possible.  It's appropriate that it appears here in the same Festival as a performance of a Mahler symphony, because here we find the prototype of Gustav Mahler's assertion that a symphony must contain the ideal world.  And Mahler would most certainly have been aware of this music, as he was thoroughly aware of Beethoven's symphonies.

I've heard the NZSQ play this work in Parry Sound before, and have heard at least two other performances by other ensembles.  The New Zealanders play this work with a rare degree of intensity and power, unanimity raised to the limits of unity, yet still lacking nothing in their appreciation of the score's more unbuttoned, almost peasant-like, boisterous moments.  Just as they make no attempt to soften the aching discords of the severe opening fugue, so they push their characterization of the seven contrasting variations in the pivotal fourth movement right to the limit in every direction.  The fifth Presto movement covers a range of playing from lightly skittish to heavily emphatic.  The final Allegro has the bows biting into the strings, the dotted rhythms heavily accented rather than lightly bouncing along.  It was in the New Zealand's ferocious reading of those final pages that we heard clearly why so many people feel that this music should be called a symphony for the quartet.


Wednesday 7 August 2019

Festival of the Sound 2019 # 11: A Day of Memories

Tuesday started out as a day of remembering an event from last year's Festival, and ended for me as a day of personal memories.

In 2018, the Festival launched with a unique commissioned work like nothing else ever done here before.  Originally envisaged as a chamber opera, it emerged from the creation phase as a hybrid, half-opera, half-theatre piece, and a crossing point of different worlds, both artistic and racial.

In the process, the Festival succeeded in making a significant contribution to the deeply-needed process of reconciliation between the European and the aboriginal or First Nations populations who share this land.  

This uniquely powerful artistic creation was entitled Sounding Thunder: The Song of Francis Pegahmagabow.  You can read my review of the original premiere performance in July of 2018 here:  Festival of the Sound 2018 # 4: Gala Opening Concert

On Tuesday afternoon, the Stockey Centre briefly switched into movie-theatre mode as we watched a short documentary about the making of Sounding Thunder, followed by a video recording of last year's performance.

Since I already knew some of the nuts and bolts of the creation of the work, the documentary was mainly of interest for sharing the personal views and feelings of several of the performers, most notably Brian McInnes (the great-grandson of Francis Pegahmagabow), Waawaate Fobister (who played the role of Francis), and singer Jodi Baker Contin whose purpose-written song of thanks for the land of Wasauksing formed the prelude of the performance.

Of course, the emotional impact of the actual performance was slightly lessened, both by the distancing of the video and by the advance knowledge of what I would be seeing.  But I was grateful for a second opportunity to witness this remarkable event, and to affirm my judgement of last year that it was powerful, evocative, and gripping from start to finish.  Two moments again brought a lump in my throat: the intense, powerful, even anguished singing of Jennifer Kreisberg during the war scene in the middle act, and the wonderful moment at the end when the musicians stood to join Jodi Baker Contin and Kreisberg in singing a song in traditional style, and the audience rose to their feet to join in the singing in a moment of communal affirmation.

On a completely different footing was Tuesday night's event, an unusual second fundraising dinner concert -- this time held at the Seguin Valley Golf Club, whose log clubhouse with its gabled roof produces good acoustics for musical performances.

The concert following the dinner was an entertaining mix of different musical styles.  The performers were the New Zealand String Quartet, the Canadian Guitar Quartet, and violinist Moshe Hammer.  Actually, Hammer was already a familiar face before I came to the Festival for my first time in 1993, but I have watched as the two ensembles have arrived and grown to become regulars as well.  Ah, the memories.

I can recall a few highlights of this concert.  The first work up was an entertaining string quartet by Haydn -- but I can't remember which one!  The epithet "entertaining" is no help; that word describes nearly everything Haydn ever wrote.  "The quartet with jokes" isn't much better; Haydn loved to sprinkle his scores with musical jokes.  But this one was something else again.

Agatha Christie's novel, Endless Night, has this opening line: "In my end is my beginning."  And that's the story for this quartet too.  It opens with a dominant-tonic cadence, after which the first main theme is played.  The same cadence marks the recapitulation, but only at the end of the movement does it appear at the traditional place where dominant-tonic cadences are supposed to appear -- the end.

The scherzo is just as wonky in a different way.  Notes in odd rhythmic groups fly about, apparently unrelated in time, until it finally becomes apparent that we are in a triple-time signature.  But that doesn't become apparent until we are over a minute into the movement.  That Haydn!  But it was good fun, plainly as much for the players as for the audience.

The NZSQ then followed with an impassioned account of the opening movement of Ravel's String Quartet, a work which I have come to love although it's taken me a while.

The Guitar Quartet played the moto perpetuo finale of Beethoven's Op. 59 No. 3 quartet, or -- as one of them said in introducing it -- "the sincerest form of flattery is theft."  Meaning, of course, theft from their colleagues in the string quartet.  It was a fascinating arrangement, not least because of the different tone colours as the theme passed from one instrument to another.

The guitars provided an unusual, but effective, background accompaniment as Moshe Hammer played the heartachingly beautiful Ständchen by Schubert.  It was a favourite song for my late husband, Massi, and I got tears in my eyes.  I was less thrilled, though, with Hammer's rendition of the equally lovely Ave Maria as he played the second verse in parallel octaves (notoriously difficult to tune accurately), then in parallel thirds, and tossed in a couple of gratuitous ornaments.  Schubert's song has suffered enough indignity from being clumsily mated to the Roman Catholic prayer instead of its original text; it doesn't really need to be made the subject of these virtuoso antics.

My hands-down favourite of the entire evening was the Fandango from one of Boccherini's Guitar Quintets, works adapted by the composer from earlier string quartets and quintets.  In this case, the arrangement is for string quartet and guitar.  Although we didn't hear them last night, several recordings have added in castanets, and with good reason.

The slow introduction may be typical of Boccherini's usual galante style, but the beginning of the main theme instantly tells us that we are in Spain.  The fandango spins on and on, over a brief repeating bass pattern, but in the course of the movement both melodic and bass parts migrate to various instruments, introducing much variety of texture into what might otherwise become boring.  The New Zealand Quartet leaned at full throttle into the bigger passages and guitarist Julien Bisaillon drew powerful sounds from what many people consider to be just a quiet instrument.  Fascinating performance of one of the most stubborn earworms in the entire classical repertoire.

It was yet another joy to welcome back my friends from New Zealand, reminisce a bit about our time together there at the 2017 Adam Chamber Music Festival, and look forward to meeting them in Nelson in 2021 when I plan to attend that Festival again.


Tuesday 6 August 2019

Festival of the Sound 2019 # 10: And So We Began

The Festival moved into the last and biggest week of its 40th anniversary season with a rare Monday afternoon concert.  Rare because it was a Monday afternoon, and even rarer because it ran as a full-length concert with intermission, not the usual daytime 60-75 minutes.

The title of my review gives the clue.  This concert, entitled "And So We Began" in the Festival's publicity and literature, re-enacted the all-Beethoven programme given at the very first concert 40 years ago.  On the same day of the year.  At the same time of day.  With the same artists?  That, no.  The exact same programme?  Well....

In his pre-concert remarks, James Campbell honestly admitted that the Horn Trio featured on the original programme had been replaced with a Clarinet Trio.  In his words, as near as I can recall: "I didn't have a horn player lying around, and couldn't find one out in the street."

The programme opened with the impostor (so to speak): the Clarinet Trio in B-flat Major, Op. 11, performed by Campbell with the Cheng²Duo of pianist Silvie Cheng and cellist Bryan Cheng.  It's a bouncy, fun piece, definitely closer to Mozart than to the Beethoven of, say, the final quartets.  Notably light in touch from all three players, with plenty of crisp staccato to give the music a spring in its step, this was a wonderful appetizer to begin the musical banquet.

It was followed by the famous warhorse Piano Sonata No. 8 in C Minor, Op. 13, the "Pathetique."  Glen Montgomery's reading of this work was a bit of a mixed bag.  His carefully limited application of the sustain pedal and thoughtful placement of the una corda pedal were admirable, and his phrasing both clear and logical.  His tempo choices kept the individual notes clear and distinct at all times, something that many Beethoven pianists fail to respect adequately.

However, his playing developed an odd and distracting mannerism in which the two hands failed to arrive on the beat at the same time.  This began in the hands-crossed passage which occurs twice in the first movement.  One hand seemed to be keeping strict time while the other indulged in wayward rubato.  It became more frequent still in the finale.  As long as the left hand arrived before the right, you could forgive it as an interpretive application of appoggiatura, but when the right came ahead of the left it simply sounded disjointed.  A pity, because there was otherwise much to admire in Montgomery's performance of this oft-abused sonata.

After the intermission, Moshe Hammer took the stage alongside Montgomery for the Violin Sonata No. 4 in A Minor, Op. 23.  Again, we were treated to clear-toned, clean-edged playing on both instruments, the piano part showing no signs of the odd disjunction heard in the Pathetique.  Moshe Hammer phrased eloquently in the lyrical passages, and played with great vigour and precision in the faster sections.

The culmination of the concert was the Piano Trio in D Major, Op. 70 No. 1, the "Ghost" Trio.  This three-movement work consists of an Allegro vivace e con brio and a Presto framing a much longer Largo assai e espressivo.  It's that long and intense central movement which gives the work its nickname, a sobriquet usually (although not universally) attributed to Carl Czerny.

In this performance, the Cheng²Duo were joined by violinist Yolanda Bruno.  While the two outer movements were played with considerable brio and sparkle, the extra weight given to the slow movement effectively made it the trio's centre of gravity.  The three musicians maintained a constant air of intensity through all the long crescendo passages, and showed no sign of falling away from that intensity during the subsequent diminuendo in each case.  The ghostly quiet effects were as effective as the sonorous forte sections.

Although the first movement was dynamic and the finale exciting, the standing ovation which followed was undoubtedly influenced by the especially powerful and thoughtful performance of that slow movement.  A memorable performance indeed.


Friday 2 August 2019

Festival of the Sound 2019 # 9: Always in Season

Tuesday night and Wednesday afternoon of Week Two gave us a pair of events devoted to the music of the Baroque era, the period in the late 1600s to mid 1700 dominated by the genius of Bach, Handel, Vivaldi, and so many more.  It's a vast field, and a little intimidating for non-specialists to know where to dip in.

So it's scarcely surprising that any performance of the famous group of violin concertos by Vivaldi known as The Four Seasons will usually bring a near-capacity crowd out for the evening.

This year, James Campbell (the Festival's Artistic Director) asked Larry Beckwith to arrange "a Four Seasons not like any other."  He definitely got his wish, but I'm willing to bet that a few in the audience had no idea what they were letting themselves in for.  Artistically stimulating, thought-provoking, a little aggravating in places, but never less than engaging and involving.  And definitely different.

The Four Seasons were originally published with accompanying sonnets which describe what the music seeks to depict.  Although the author of the sonnets is unknown, each of them is divided into three segments which correspond exactly to the content of the three movements in each concerto -- lending credence to the theory that Vivaldi himself was the poet.  Notations in the text of each sonnet cross-reference to the musical scores, with such exact directions as "the barking dog" placed in the score next to the repeated pairs of notes in the viola part.  It's interesting to note that, like Haydn's much later oratorio The Seasons, Vivaldi's work places emphasis on the lives and activities of the common country people, not of the aristocracy or church leaders who were the patrons of so much of musical life in their times.

This year's unique performance featured violinist Mark Fewer, leading an ensemble of eight strings and harpsichord in the concertos.  Bass player Jeffrey Stokes gave stylish readings of the sonnets before each of the concertos.

Additional music interspersed around and between the concertos was performed by mezzo-soprano Julie Nesrallah and pianist Robert Kortgaard.  Anishinaabe elder John Rice contributed with traditional words of welcome, and with traditional stories of creation and of the seasons.  The whole performance was enhanced by projections on the overhead screen of relevant artwork, music titles, and texts of the songs performed by Nesrallah.

Kortgaard's solo piano contributions were two selections, Song of the Lark and Autumn Song from Tchaikovsky's piano album, The Seasons, Op. 37.  He played these selections in an appropriately gentle and subtly phrased style.  Songs performed by Nesrallah and Kortgaard were Im frühling (Schubert), Beau soir (Debussy), Automne (Faure), and L'hiver (Koechlin).  Nesrallah's wide-ranging mezzo was displayed to fine effect in the Schubert, and created truly hypnotic feeling in the lower passages in Beau soir.

John Rice's stories enhanced the performance greatly by reminding us all that the human activity depicted in Vivaldi must take place in the context of the wider natural world which we all live in and have to share.

In the concertos, Mark Fewer led the ensemble at a very brisk pace in the fast movements, making maximum contrast with the slower, quieter central movements.  Although the players nimbly kept up with the speeds chosen, there were several places where I felt that even 1 or 2 percent slower would bring an improvement in musicality as the string tone became ugly and harsh under the pressure of maintaining the hell-for-leather speeds.

In the solo role, Fewer stamped the music with is own personality to a considerable extent.  Repeat sections were ornamented to a far greater degree than in any previous performance I've heard.  The sleeping shepherd snored audibly and the drunks dropped into sleep quite literally, as Fewer let his fingers slide down the fingerboard in a drowsy portamento.  The last concerto, Winter, found Fewer slipping easily into rhythms and figurations drawn from jazz in his repeated sections.  

I personally enjoyed the spice which all these added dimensions contributed to such oft-heard music, although I could readily imagine that purists might be annoyed.  

The concert by the Festival Baroque ensemble on Wednesday afternoon brought more Baroque inspirations, including one of the most inspired of all musical masterpieces, and one of the most wildly ornamented pieces of music written any time before the nineteenth century/

The concert opened with a delightful performance of an Oboe Concerto in D Minor by Telemann, played by James Mason with his customary flair and style.  Don't let the minor key fool you; this is music to put a smile on your face and the ensemble and soloist certainly took us there.

The Brandenburg Concerto No. 5 in D Major by Bach followed.  This unusual work brings the harpsichord beyond its usual continuo role into participating in the concertino solo group, and therefore the keyboard part is fully written out (unusual for ensemble music in Baroque times).  The flute is the other distinctive sound which accompanies the strings in this outing.  It's a firm audience favourite, and with good reason, and the ensemble gave it a spirited performance while holding the tempo to a range where every note registered clearly -- no blurry mush here!

Violinist Karl Stobbe next performed the monumental Chaconne from the Partita No. 2 for solo violin in D Minor, again by Bach.  As Stobbe worked his way through this magnificent piece, by turns sombre and almost angry, I could see just why so many people subscribe to the theory that this chaconne is a memorial tribute to Bach's first wife.  How else to account for this immense and carefully structured theme and variations appearing at the end of what is otherwise a suite of dances?

Stobbe's performance gripped us right from the opening bow strokes across the strings, and held the entire audience rapt for the full fifteen minutes.  Although Stobbe's playing avoided romantic excesses of portamento and excess frilly ornamentation added onto the text, he did use a full range of tone and tone colour in presenting the varying character of all the variations.  Impressive musicianship by any standard.

The final work, also a theme and variations, was emphatically of the virtuoso show-off variety.  Vivaldi's Trio Sonata in D Minor is only among the most famous of more than 150 known compositions based on the theme known as La folia or Folies d'espagne.  You can read more about the history of this incredibly popular musical theme here, in my rare music blog:  Dreams of Folly

Vivaldi's chain of variations runs through multiple changes of tempo, finally reach such hectic heights that the composer appears determined to win the Guinness record for maximum number of notes crammed into a single beat.  And there are definitely a lot of notes here!

Stobbe and Julie Baumgartel raced through all this hectic activity with immense technical flair and precision.  I wish I could say "aplomb" but it was obvious that keeping up with the composer's insane demands was indeed a challenge.  All the same, it made for a thrilling end to a fascinating 24 hours of Baroque music.