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 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.
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.
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