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.
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.
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