Euro Concert Tour # 9: Classy Classics of Modern Dance

The formal concert tour/cruise is over now, but I added on a pendant in the form of a side trip to Stuttgart to watch two performances of another fascinating modern dance programme entitled "Classy Classics" by the Gauthier Dance company, resident dance company of the Theaterhaus in Stuttgart.  It's the first time I've ever visited this company in their home space.  It's a sizable hall created inside a factory building which appears to date from the 1950s.

My nephew, Robert Stephen, is a member of this company --

and one absolutely fantastic conductor!  (see below)

The programme was divided into two halves that couldn't have been more contrasted if you tried.

The first half consisted of a single work -- well, sort of -- entitled Decadance.  Before you go any farther, go back and read that title a little more carefully.

Choreographer Ohad Naharin, the dean of Israeli modern choreographers, has developed an intriguing and, for me, rather odd habit.  When one of his works is to be restaged, he also revises it by introducing one or more segments from other works of his.  In the end, the "work" becomes more of a salad of wildly contrasting sections which may, or may not, cast any illumination on each other.

Decadance is an extreme example of this habit, since it has been restaged in many modern dance companies since the original premiere in 2000.  As we saw it in this staging, the work lasted for 55 minutes.  By any standards, this is a challenging time span to try to bridge with any sort of coherence, whether narrative, thematic, or stylistic.

Naharin basically doesn't bother to try.  The "piece" is actually a compendium of multiple pieces performed back to back.  Sometimes the relationship between two adjacent pieces in the work points up some aspect of relation between them.  But just as often, there's no apparent connection at all.  

The closest equivalent to an overall theme for Decadance is to say that the focal point or "theme" of the work consists of all the contrasts of style, of pace, of energy, and of tone -- and that's a fairly bag-full-of-hot-air thematic statement.  Because Naharin's work incorporates some heavy-handed attempts at humour, perhaps the entire point of the thing could be to make fun of us for taking it seriously at all.

Maybe so.  But if that's the intention, then I've seen the point made much better by other choreographers in as little as 5 minutes.  

The ridiculously pompous narration, and the narrator-driven "seventh-inning stretch" for the audience, effectively bookend the work's most gripping and fascinating sections.  Once everyone has sat down again after the "stretch," my feeling of "we've seen all of this already, so show us something different" only gets stronger.

I realize that this is tough language from an amateur critic, but I did see the show twice so I'm twice as certain of my ground.   None of this commentary is to detract from the performance of the company in this carnival of eccentricity.  Individually, in pairs, in groups, they explored all the wildly divergent possibilities of energy and stillness, frenetic rushings and controlled slow-motion, meeting every test the choreographer could throw at them with complete assurance and finesse. 

And there's no question that Naharin's choreography at its peak is fascinating, full of rhythmic and structural possibilities that far too many modern choreographers fail to explore.  Here's one key example: a solitary woman struts in a posture which makes her hips look slightly dislocated, from back of the stage to front, then to the left, then to the back, and across the back to repeat the pattern.  At each corner she pauses and turns, like a soldier turning on a parade ground.  Meanwhile, other dancers enter the space in twos and threes, interacting, moving, some faster, some slower, in all kinds of directions -- entirely ignored by the woman strutting around the square.  This disjunction between the different kinds of movement so fascinated me that I didn't even notice the point when the strutting woman switched to a 45-degree angle across the stage until she was almost halfway across.

And who can forget the couple who move around the stage in a slow, stylized prancing motion, wearing enormously baggy red harem pants -- if that's the right name for them.  That limited prance was nothing if not unique.

In the end, I guess that the real problem with Decadance is the problem of the creator endlessly trying to reinvent the piece for each new company that takes it on by recycling his own earlier work, and in the process only watering down the whole slowly but inevitably -- and mercilessly. 

The second half of the programme was, for me, far more rewarding.  This consisted of four shorter works by four completely different choreographers, each with a distinctive and uniquely imaginative approach to the art of dance-making.  

Orchestra of Wolves, choreographed by Gauthier Dance artistic director Eric Gauthier, showed us exactly what the name said it would.  This comedic gem, danced to the famous opening movement of Beethoven's Symphony No. 5, brought modern dance into sharp collision with the classic comedic takes of Bugs Bunny, the Marx Brothers, and P.D.Q. Bach.  The six wolves of the "orchestra" make instrument-playing motions while pushing, gliding, and spinning across and about the stage on wheeled chairs -- something that many young children would love to get a chance to do.  The conductor, bunny tail popping ludicrously from under his tailcoat, begins the performance with complete assurance -- insouciantly filing fingernails with his baton during one sequence, for instance -- until the moment when he suddenly loses control of the orchestra. 

The ensuing chase scene can hardly be rivaled for playful energy or for sheer Keystone Kops humour. And why not?  The audience at the second performance I attended seemed uncertain whether laughter was allowed, but where is it written in stone that modern dance is not allowed to be fun?  The first audience I joined certainly took it as a cue to laugh merrily.

Following on this came a true classic of modern dance, the Herman Schmerman pas de deux by William Forsythe.  In this duo, Forsythe begins with a man dancing in modern style while a woman uses a style that blends modern motion with classical pointe work.  Before the piece ends, the two have moved through a multi-stage courtship ritual of a sort, and have largely adopted each other's movement styles.  With this dance, I could readily imagine all sorts of levels of meaning to read into the choreography, and by no means were all of them related to the art of romance.  The two dancers gave the work a reading of intensity and intention, where every moment and movement assumed real significance -- demanding equally intense attention from the audience. 

As a footnote, there's a rare synchronicity at work here.  I first saw Herman Schmerman in 1997, when it was staged as part of a cross-Canada farewell tour celebrating Karen Kain's retirement from dancing at the National Ballet of Canada (Kain herself did not dance in this work, but in another part of the programme).  On the day when I was going to see the first of two performances of this staging in Stuttgart, Kain announced her retirement from the Artistic Director's position at the National.  How weird is that?

The third work, Äffi, highlighted the signature and unconventional choreographic style of Marco Goecke.  This style calls for rapidly repeated movements of hands, feet, and sometimes whole arms and legs, while the body as often as not remains relatively still.  It goes beyond "shaking" -- in each Goecke work that I have seen, the operative word is "vibrating."  In this dramatic solo, three segments of varying length were paired with three songs performed by Johnny Cash.  Sometimes, Goecke's signature style can seem pointless or even contrived.  In the first song, though, paired with the undeniable pain and anguish in the singer's voice and words, the dancer's movement suddenly not only made sense but developed a powerful, indeed painful immediacy.  Sustaining that power across the succeeding songs merely highlighted the piercing anguish of the first number.  Although it seems at first rather distancing, the fact that the soloist mostly performed with his back to the audience also heightened the emotional intensity of the piece.  A memorable work indeed.

The programme ended with a work from a Spanish choreographer previously unfamiliar to me, Cayetano Soto.  Malasangre (literally, "Bad Blood"), is an ensemble work set to songs by "the Queen of Latin soul," La Lupe.  Again, power and energy are the highlights of the piece, with complex postures, movements and lifts the rule.  In faster passages, the dancing becomes a total whirlwind of high-speed motion -- yet always with clear intention.  This made for a climactic ending to a programme which demonstrated, in spades, the depth and ability of this company.

Euro Concert Tour # 8: The Grand Finale

For those on the tour who are following this series, I apologize for not including a review of the Zurich Ballet.  I was just too tired out to go racing out the door again on Sunday night.  I was asleep in bed before the show was even half over.

The grand finale of our European concert tour came on Monday night at the historic St. Peter's Church in central Zurich.  For this performance, the Gryphon Trio and James Campbell were joined by the Swiss Piano Trio and two additional musicians, Ruth Killius (viola) and Kenneth Henderson (horn).  The concert was billed as a "Three Festivals Concert," because it featured the anchoring musicians of three music festivals:  Festival Kammermusik Bodensee (the Swiss Piano Trio), Ottawa Chamberfest (the Gryphon Trio), and Festival of the Sound (James Campbell).

The choice of venue was significant.  I dearly love all three works on the programme, but I have never heard any of them played in such a resonant venue with such a lengthy echo time.  The church is a sizable (although not huge) building with a Romanesque barrel roof.  The interior walls and ceiling are faced with acres of paint over either plaster or stone.  The floor is all stone.  The musicians play on the rostrum where the elders would sit at service, also a stone floor.  The fronts of the balconies around three sides are faced with wood, but there are almost no other sound absorbers in the building at all.

This tricky acoustic had two effects on the balance of the music.  It tended to damp down the string tone, while amplifying the percussive edge of the piano by a quantum factor.  It couldn't possibly have been a greater contrast from the plush, low-resonance lounge of the M/S AmaSerena where previous concerts took place.  It was notable that the Gryphon Trio's pianist, Jamie Parker, was leaning into the piano part much as he would have done on the ship -- and there, it was necessary.  In this church, though, his piano playing sometimes swamped the strings.  By contrast, the Swiss Piano Trio's pianist, Martin Lucas Staub, who has often performed in this church, is plainly used to the environment and didn't work the piano nearly as forcefully.

In pointing this out, I need to qualify by saying that the world's greatest artists would be apt to run into similar problems, playing chamber music in such an unfamiliar and resonant environment.  My own amateur estimate is that the echo time is somewhere upwards of a second -- which means that, in loud percussive sections, it's quite possible to distinctly hear each separate note twice.

But it also means that rapid passagework in the strings is apt to become blurry, with runs sounding more like slides or portamenti.  Definitely a challenge to adapt on such limited rehearsal time.

So with that overall caveat, here are my reactions to the programme.

Mozart:  Quintet for Clarinet and Strings, K.581 

Angela Golubeva, violin;  Ruth Killius, viola;  James Campbell, clarinet;  Jamie Parker, piano.

A delightful performance of this mature Mozart inspiration.  In the faster movements, especially the briskly-played minuet, the passagework for the upper strings was blurred by the resonance.  The tonal beauty of the slow passages in the second movement, in the first trio of the minuet, and above all in the heartfelt slow variation in the finale was a total joy to the ear.  The air of playfulness in the clarinet part in both the minuet and the theme of the finale brought a smile to my face, and I'm sure to many others.

Schumann:  Quintet for Piano and String Quartet, Op. 44

The Gryphon Trio (Annalee Patipatanakoon, violin; Roman Borys, cello; Jamie Parker, piano) with Angela Golubeva, violin; Ruth Killius, viola.

This quintet always strikes me as a bit of a paradox.  It's acclaimed, with good reason, as one of the great masterpieces of the Romantic chamber music repertoire, yet it contains sections which seem to me embarrassingly naive, notably the slow movement and the finale -- both of which depend to a dangerous extent on endless repetitions of a single short melodic fragment.

I know that not everyone will agree with me, and that's fine.  At dinner before the concert, I listened to another gentleman at our table loudly acclaiming the Schumann Quintet as the greatest piece of chamber music ever composed.  I held my peace.  If I were forced to make such a selection, I would personally opt for either Beethoven's String Quartet Op. 131 or Brahms' Piano Quintet, Op. 34.  But, for me, the "greatest" is generally whichever piece I am listening to at the moment.

It was in some of the louder pages of the first and last movements that the balance problems between piano and strings became most acute.  But there were ample compensations.  I simply cannot forget the gorgeous angelic halo cast over the lyrical episodes in the funeral march and scherzo -- the finest string playing of the evening.  On the more dramatic side, the double fugue at the end, where the finale's theme combines with an augmented version of the opening movement, fairly stood my hair on end -- and here, the balance was impeccable.

Dohnányi:  Sextet for Clarinet, Horn, Violin, Viola, Cello, and Piano, Op. 37.

The Swiss Piano Trio (Angela Golubeva, violin; Joël Marosi, cello; Martin Lucas Staub, piano) with Ruth Killius, viola; Kenneth Henderson, horn; James Campbell, clarinet.

This work was composed in 1935, almost a century after the Schumann Quintet, and it shows.  Even though Dohnányi composed in what was then considered a "conservative" idiom, his harmonic practice is definitely later than Wagner.  If nothing else, the truth of that statement is amply proven by the last two chords of this work -- I'm sure that ending would have made both Brahms and Wagner cringe.

In the first movement, allegro appassionato, the ensemble found much drama in the sometimes wayward writing.  Most striking were the several passages where the melodic line fell by a minor second, while the bass line ominously rose by a minor third to the tonic -- the same doom-laden progression which Schoenberg used, to devastating effect, in the tragic Lied der Waldtaube from his early choral/vocal masterpiece, Gurrelieder.

Drama continued to erupt, between more lyrical passages, throughout the second movement Intermezzo (Adagio) and the third movement, Allegro con sentiment (although I've never really gotten the point of that unusual direction).  But then, the music suddenly morphed into the completely different world of the finale, and the whole ensemble were plainly having the time of their lives with the upbeat, jazzy rhythms, and the endless syncopations -- mainly due to the main theme getting chopped short on almost every appearance.  When it isn't being chopped, it's being lengthened.  This strikes the hearer as music meant to disorient, and the players relished the fun of disorienting their audience again and again.

The final buildup to the coda was suitably raucous and energetic without sacrificing the musicality of the playing.  The never-failing joke of the false ending on the subdominant, followed immediately by an insouciant cadence to the tonic, was both neatly and dramatically executed.  I don't think I've ever heard more comically underlined the words that Jim Campbell spoke to us before the work was played: "The last two notes are definitely worth waiting for."  Oh, yes.

The final applause was succeeded by several short speeches of thanks to the gang of 138 who went along on this extraordinary musical adventure, a "festival on the water" in truth.  We all made so many friends on this trip, some in passing, and some definitely for the longer term, and all the music was somewhere from incredible on up. 

Please be aware that any criticisms I've had to level in these reviews have been in the nature of trying to find the right rating in the range of 90-99%.  It's been a fantastic experience from start to finish.

Euro Concert Tour # 7 (but it's actually "# 2a"): Beethoven at the Source

It's with considerable chagrin that I have just realized, after the last concert on the cruise ship, that I never posted a review of the concert in Bonn.  Oh, my.  Mea culpa.  First time I have ever forgotten to review an event I attended.

In Bonn, on Tuesday afternoon, we had a chance to visit the Beethoven House (the composer's birthplace) which is now a museum.  Afterwards, we stepped out into the back garden, and then were ushered into a modern addition at the rear, and took our seats in a lovely little 200-seat concert hall for a concert of music by -- who else? -- Beethoven.  The hall sits on top of the underground facility which houses the Beethoven Archives.

So there we sat, listening to the master's music in the literal backyard of the house where he was born.  And sitting directly above the manuscript of at least one of the works we heard.  Quite an experience, to put it mildly.

This concert opened with an early work, the Trio for Clarinet, Cello, and Piano in B-flat Major, Op. 11.  Since the work is also playable with violin, there is disagreement as to whether it should be considered as the "Piano Trio # 4" (in between Op. 1/1-3 and Op. 70).  This is the kind of musicological fine detail that can sometimes drive amateur audiences to distraction.  Maybe we'll even meet some of the artists there, too!

At any rate, this is a delightful work with the kind of mixed atmosphere one would expect from a maturing composer.  Some pages sound positively Mozartean, while other passages present the kinds of terse musical motifs, ripe with possibilities, which we associate with the mature Beethoven.  The three movements are an allegro con brio, an adagio, and a theme with variations (allegretto) based on a melody from a then-well-known dramma giocoso, L'amor marinara ossia il corsaro (no, I've never heard of it) by Joseph Weigl (never heard of him either).  The tune, Pria ch'io l'impegno, must have been hugely popular because other composers such as Eybler, Hummel, and Paganini also made use of it (thank goodness, yes, I have heard of them!).  The theme and variations is the most interesting part of the work for me, as the switches in tone and technical demands from one variation to the next take the musicians through a wide range of playing styles and techniques in a short time period.

James Campbell, Roman Borys, and Jamie Parker gave a nicely-sprung account of the opening movement, played the second with lovely singing tone, and then finished with a lively account of the variations movement which only once became arguably a trifle heavy-handed for an early work such as this.  The point is certainly arguable, either way.

The larger work on this concert was the Piano Trio in B-flat Major, Op. 97, commonly referred to as the Archduke Trio.  The sobriquet refers not just to the dedication to Beethoven's friend, student, and patron, the Archduke Rudolf, but also to the tone of the work.  This trio can be, by turns, imposing, stately, even regal, and is eminently well-mannered -- but rarely does it become dramatic after the fashion of either the Seventh or Ninth Symphonies, which bracket it in the order of composition.  Given the elevated art which Beethoven brought to this composition, it's sad to relate that it was the final work which he played before retiring from public performance -- and his playing was so irregular and uncontrolled that listeners could scarcely grasp the music without looking at the score.

No such charge could be leveled against the Gryphon Trio on this occasion.  I was especially struck by the unity of style which stretched across the entire work, giving it a strong through line as if in the telling of a story.  That's a doubly apt metaphor, because I was reminded time and again of the famous axiom that chamber music is a conversation between friends.  The sense of question or comment and following response was rarely absent.  Balance among the three players was well-nigh ideal throughout the work.  This was, like the Dumky Trio later in the week, a performance that one would be glad to hear again.

This, by the way, is the work which James Campbell mentioned at the opening of the concert as being the manuscript reposing in the Archives directly underneath us.

Euro Concert Tour # 6: Musical Fun and a World Premiere

Saturday afternoon was the last chance to have a concert in the main lounge of the AmaSerena as the ship glided serenely along the last 250 km of the Upper Rhine towards Basel in Switzerland.  River cruises can pose some interesting challenges.  In this case, the concert time ended up being dictated by the time we could pass through one of the locks on the river, so that the performance would not suddenly be shrouded in darkness, or distracted by any bumps or bangs in the locking-through process.

In the event, that proved to be shortly after 3:30 pm, and our intrepid musicians deliberately framed a programme full of fun and games, good humour and good music.  The performance began with two movements from the Suite for Clarinet, Violin and Piano, Op. 157b by Darius Milhaud.  Much of the fun in this piece comes from recognizing the different keys being used.  Much of Milhaud's writing is resolutely tonal, but he doesn't always fuss so much about everyone being in the same key at the same time.  James Campbell, Annalee Patipatanakoon, and Jamie Parker relished all the amusing key switches and rhythmic change-ups in the music, which is precisely the point of Milhaud's style here.

Next, Annalee was joined by Graham Campbell for a violin and guitar duo by Paganini.  This is pleasantly light-hearted music, neither too sophisticated (at first glance) nor too aware of its own self-importance.  "At first glance," because -- like many apparently artless musical works -- there's a good deal more to it than meets the passing glance or half-attentive ear.  Again, performed with a light touch and a light heart, entirely appropriate to the music.

The inevitable change in the programme came with the insertion of the first movement -- Bordel 1900 -- from Astor Piazzolla's suite, L'histoire du Tango.  Here, the players adapted themselves to the swaying rhythms and jazzy rhythms, and served up an authentic dose of traditional tango music with the typical individual flair of Piazzolla.

We then heard a work which began its life in the 1990s as a Festival of the Sound commission -- The Klezmer's Wedding by Canadian composer Srul Irving Glick.  Right from the opening clarinet slide we are immersed in another world, and the music is coloured from start to finish by the minor harmonies and raucous celebratory rhythms of Jewish tradition.  Once the celebration launches, there's only one way to play this piece, and that's to just go for it!  Campbell and the Gryphon Trio certainly did that, in spades.

The concert concluded with a world premiere, commissioned for this cruise tour and likely with some finishing touches added during the trip.  There was a chance to hear an open rehearsal a few days ago, but I passed -- I wanted to get the whole picture at the first performance.  

This new work, the Rhine Rhapsody by Graham Campbell, was scored precisely for the five musicians who have been with us on the tour -- so, for violin, cello, piano, clarinet, and guitar.  Although the two movements have individual titles, I felt that the overall title described the first movement to perfection.  Without being overly pictorial, this music evoked for me much of the character of this river.  It was music of considerable forward momentum, with rolling waves of sound rising up out of the lower instruments before falling back down, and with sudden changes of time signature giving an unpredictable, even wayward character.  Overall, definitely rhapsodic music, with beautiful melodic lines, but still giving an underlying sense of power.

The second movement went for complete contrast, with Campbell turning to the South American dance rhythms of which he's very fond.  This piece had a more extrovert profile, with a brighter sound picture and energy flying out from the players in all directions to give a rousing end to the concert.

Although it seems superfluous to say so, the five musicians (including, of course, the composer on guitar) gave a sterling account of this new work, and definitely appeared to be having a great time doing so.  And Graham Campbell received a rousing ovation, entirely merited.

Euro Concert Tour No. 5: Two Rarities and a Repertoire Cornerstone

Friday afternoon's concert on board the AmaSerena paired a well-loved and treasured romantic piano trio with two much less well-known works.  The result was an uncommonly delightful concert brimming over with ingratiating melodies and darker, more introspective moments.

The concert opened with the Gryphon Trio performing the delightful Piano Trio in G Minor, Op. 17 , by Clara Schumann.  With this work, Clara Schumann had plainly emerged from her apprenticeship in the art of composition.  Sadly, not much more came to follow it.  Her composing career soon took a back seat to promoting the music of her husband through concerts.  Listening to the skillful handling of parts in this trio, one can only imagine wistfully what wonders might have emerged if she had continued her work as a composer for many more years. 

This trio certainly lives in a post-Mozartean world, and a light touch is essential.  There are moments of drama and power in the first and last movements, but even these need to be kept clear and clean as one would do in Mozart, not overloaded with thunder as later composers would do.  The Gryphons presented this beautiful rarity with a keen sense of the appropriate scale of tone, finding all the diversity of emotion in the music without overloading it in any way.  Their playing in the two central movements, both in the character of intermezzi, was marked by the gentility of teatime conversation among friends, an entirely apt style for this music.  

Clarinetist James Campbell then took the stage with pianist Jamie Parker and cellist Roman Borys for three selections from Eight Pieces for Clarinet, Viola, and Piano, Op. 83 by Max Bruch.  This music, previously unknown to me, was composed in 1910 when the composer was 72 years old.  The three selections we heard were nicely contrasted, with one handing the melody primarily to the cello which subbed for viola in this performance.  As the cello sang the melody, the clarinet provided a gorgeous descant above.  The piano part has a few piquant discords which Jamie Parker touched in lightly, without undue emphasis, just enough weight to be heard.  On the strength of hearing these three excerpts, I definitely want to hear the entire set -- and with viola, as composed. 

The most familiar work in this concert was saved for the end: the large-scale Piano Trio in E Minor, Op. 90 "Dumky" by Antonín Dvořák.  Familiarity sometimes prevents listeners from recognizing the startling originality of this work.  Instead of trying to sandwich the Slavic dumka into such traditional classical forms as the sonata or rondo, as he had done in other works, Dvořák here set the musical style free to be itself, on its own terms.  The essence of the dumka is the stark contrasts of mood and temperament within each piece, and Dvořák highlighted those contrasts in each of the trio's unprecedented six movements.

The form originated with epic ballads from the Slavic regions of eastern Europe, and its influence can be traced clearly in the traditional lassu-friss' of the Roma -- music in which slow, mournful sections alternate with wildly energetic, even frenetic fast dances.  From the Roma, the style made its way into many corners of western art music: Tchaikovsky (Hungarian and Russian dances in Swan Lake), Liszt (Hungarian Rhapsodies and others), Lehar (the Balkan kolo in The Merry Widow), Brahms (Hungarian Dances), Johann Strauss Jr. (the Czardas in Die Fledermaus), Kodály (Dances of Galánta), Smetana (The Bartered Bride), and many others including -- frequently -- Dvořák.  

As one of the composer's most personal works, this Trio demands an equally personal, intuitive response from players and audiences alike.  For performers as much as for us who are listeners, Dvořák demands that we follow his lead in setting aside "traditional" expectations of "good form" and simply experience the music on its terms -- not ours.  

Each time I hear the Gryphon Trio perform this work, I feel as if I am hearing a completely new performance.  Externals are similar in some respects, but always there are points across the six movements where I become acutely aware of aspects of the music which I didn't previously notice.  In a world where cookie-cutter performances, endlessly repeated, are valued so highly, this kind of highly personal commitment to the composer's art from musicians is especially to be respected.

The entire journey through this score is a memorable one with the Gryphons as our guides.  Slower sections dig deeply down into feelings of sadness, loneliness, introspection.  Faster passages revel in fiery energy, rejoicing, even outbursts of anger in some passages.  These artists do not fear to push the emotional boundaries without losing control of the music, an essential quality in this of all pieces.  The pinpoint precision of the playing in the energetic pages was matched by long-breathed phrasing and feather-light playing in the more emotional quiet passages.  A memorable performance of the work by any standard.

Euro Concert Tour # 4: A Morning With Schumann and Schubert

Thursday morning's concert in the main lounge of the AmaSerena brought us a delightful programme of music by Robert Schumann and Franz Schubert -- delightful in every way, both the choice of the music and the performances by our resident artists and friends.

Some of Robert Schumann's most beautiful inspirations came in the form of short works that could be called "character" pieces.  It's a term often applied to piano music, less often to chamber music.  And yet, such works as the Drei Fantaisiestücke, Op. 73, the Fünf Stücke im Volkston, Op. 102, or the Märchenbilder, Op. 110, encompass a world of moods and pictorial imagery in short movements lasting no more than 5 minutes or so each.  In each of these works, a solo instrument is partnered with Schumann's beloved piano.

On this occasion, the Gryphon Trio and James Campbell gave us three samples which highlighted not only the breadth of Schumann's inspiration but also the flexibility which allows at least some of these pieces to be played by instruments other than the composer's first choices.

James Campbell opened with one movement of the Drei Fantaisiestücke, playing the clarinet part with smooth mellow tone and subtle phrasing.

Annalee Patipatanakoon followed on violin with the second of the Drei Romanzen, Op. 94, Schumann's only composition for oboe.  Although this brief yet telling music has been frequently performed on violin or clarinet, Schumann explicitly told his publishers that he would not permit such adaptation to be made:

"If I had originally written the work for violin or clarinet it would have become a completely different piece. I regret not being able to comply with your wishes, but I can do no other."

Not for the first or last time in the history of music publication, the publisher (Simrock) ignored the composer's wishes and went ahead with issuing the alternate versions anyway!

This performance proved once again that the adaptation of the music to violin works very well indeed, with the beautiful opening melody played with a simple yet truthful response to the composer's direction of Einfach, innig ("Simple, heartfelt").  The contrasting middle section brought a nice sense of dramatic intensity without overloading what is still a miniature.

Roman Borys then finished this section of the concert with the final movement of the Drei Fantaisiestücke on cello, an adaptation which was sanctioned by Schumann.  He gave a vigorous, intense reading to a piece which teems with drama, and pianist Jamie Parker -- excellent in all 3 pieces, by the way -- matched him in raising the emotional temperature of the piano part, right to the energetic conclusion.

After a brief pause, the Gryphon Trio then played one of Schubert's sunniest inspirations, the Piano Trio No. 1 in B-flat major, D.898.  Like many other of his finest masterpieces, this work was completed during the last year of Schubert's life, part of an outpouring of creative activity almost without precedent in musical history.

This is one of that select company of musical compositions which is guaranteed to put a smile onto my face as soon as I hear the opening notes.  (Just for the record, a few others would include the Trout Quintet, the sixth symphonies of Beethoven and Dvorak, Bach's Magnificat, Handel's Water Music and Royal Fireworks Music, Monteverdi's Vespers, Mozart's F Major Sonata, K.332, and almost anything by Vaughan Williams.)

 

Schubert's late music made creative use of silences, either rests or pauses, and the opening melody of this trio proves the point when it suddenly ends before beginning again in a different key -- and yet, you can almost hear the notes rolling on through that moment of quiet, carrying the players smoothly to their new point of departure.  Throughout the work, the Gryphon Trio unfailingly conveyed the sense that the silent moments are as integral to the music as the notes we actually hear.  

The nicely relaxed tempo of the opening allegro moderato definitely heeded the moderato direction, so essential to the feeling of warmth and sunshine which this music conveys so well.  Lightly sprung rhythmic figures and dotted notes are an essential part of the recipe too, and Jamie Parker's piano part in particular stayed light-weight and light-hearted, never becoming too symphonic or weighty.

Although not explicitly named so, the second movement has always struck me as being in the character of a barcarolle.  The Gryphons took us on a gentle voyage with much charm, and the more turbulent middle section didn't disturb the calm more than temporarily.

In the scherzo movement, the imitations of voices by the different instruments all registered clearly without the need for heavy underlining.  The waltz-like trio swept through gracefully and easily.

The finale seems to me like a kind of subtle musical joke, since I always get the feeling that there's some sort of an off-beat effect going on -- I sense that my leg is being pulled gently.  The music also feels a little akin to a polonaise.  Sure enough, there are several contrasting sections of this rondo where the time signature flips to 3/2 and here the polonaise rhythm becomes more overt.  The Gryphons played this movement with plenty of fire matched by impeccable balance.  Even the final frantic rush to the finish line in the presto coda was both unified and energetic.  A most satisfying performance of a truly fun piece of music.

Euro Concert Tour # 3: Music With Diana

Wednesday brought another unique concert event, as we were taken by bus from our cruise ship to the Schloss Engers at Neuwied, a suburb of Koblenz.  This palace was originally a hunting lodge (though hardly a rustic cabin in the woods) for the Prince-Archbishop.  Its intended use in the hunting season explains why the large upstairs salon features a vaulted ceiling with a fresco painting centred on Diana, the goddess of the hunt.

It was in this "Diana Hall" that we had our concert.

Schloss Engers is now the home of Villa Musica, an ongoing series of programmes which bring young professional musicians together with senior artists for a week of intensive music-making and sharing, culminating in a concert performance.  

The concert we heard featured three string players from the current Villa Musica programme group: Niklas Liepe, violin; Lilya Tymshychyn, viola; Olivier Marger, cello; Kathrin Klein piano -- along with clarinetist James Campbell, one of the touring artists on our cruise.

The first work was Beethoven's String Trio No. 3 in G Major, Op. 9, No. 1.  There are often moments in early Beethoven which can sound almost as much like Mozart or Haydn, and certainly don't fit in with our immediate image of the titan of music that Beethoven would eventually become.  But this work, which was new to me, seemed to be full of moments which anticipated the style of the mature Beethoven: repeated brief melodic or rhythmic figures, dramatic crescendos or diminuendos, and above all a sense of impending symphonic scale in the sonata-form first movement.

The strings gave a strong performance which matched the score in anticipating rather than becoming the symphonic Beethoven which still lay in the future.  I enjoyed the clean articulation of the first movement, the lyricism of legato in the slow movement, and the energy of the scherzo and the presto finale.  The balance at times worked against the violinist, as the viola and cello leaned into their parts with almost too much energy.  A rewarding performance of a work not often heard.

Campbell then joined with Tymshychyn and Marger in the Trio for Clarinet, Viola, and Piano in E-Flat Major, K.498, by Mozart.  The nickname "Kegelstatt" was applied to this score in the first edition of the Köchel catalogue of Mozart's works in 1862.  The name signifies a place where the game of skittles could be played.  It apparently refers to a letter in which Mozart described himself composing the Twelve Duos, K.487 "while playing skittles."  No such reference to this trio has been found -- but there's no tradition so strong as a totally unfounded tradition!

One of the curious features of this work, for me, comes in several spots where the clarinet, supposedly the treble instrument, dives below the viola.  The effect is similar to the equally rare instances in choral or vocal music where the soprano part dips below the alto -- and it gives some moments of the trio an unusually mellow, even autumnal sound, which is definitely appealing.


Although I had no quibble with any of the player's performances, individually, there were again issues of balance with the piano and viola both becoming a little too robust and energetic in certain passages.  In light of this, it's interesting to note that Mozart seemed uncertain whether he wanted the work played on a fortepiano or a harpsichord -- the markings vary on the different movements in his autograph score.

This is not to say that the performance was a write-off; far from it.  There were moments of true serenity in the opening andante, and a nice upbeat dance feeling in the minuet.  The varying character of the multiple themes in the final "Rondeaux" movement was clearly brought out by the performers, and gave this movement a most engaging character. 

Euro Concert Tour # 2: Brahms and Mendelssohn on the Rhine

Our third musical event of the tour was also the first to take place aboard the M/S AmaSerena, as it cruised placidly through a sunny, warm October afternoon along the broad waters of the Rhine from Düsseldorf to Köln (Cologne).

On the face of it, many musicians and music-lovers might regard the main lounge of a typical river cruise ship as a somewhat unfavourable environment for classical chamber music.  In fact, the results were better than I had expected or even hoped.  The broad space, low flat ceiling, and abundance of plushy armchairs and sofas all balanced each other off nicely to give a clear, but not harsh, overall sound with the further advantage of suppressing the percussive edge which can sometimes allow a piano to overwhelm the other instruments in a chamber ensemble.

And since much chamber music was written for performance in private homes, be they aristocratic palaces or just middle-class sitting rooms, the environment is actually much closer to a true chamber setting than any concert hall, no matter how fine its acoustic may be.

This first on-board concert, then, featured the combined musicianship of clarinetist James Campbell and the Gryphon Trio, all ranked among Canada's foremost chamber musicians and all artists with international reputations.

Jim Campbell began the performance by asking the audience a question: "What would it take to make you come out of retirement?"  His question, of course, was a leading reference to Johannes Brahms, who had retired definitively from composing -- until he heard the clarinet playing of Richard Mühlfeld, and proceeded to compose a whole string of autumnal masterpieces including three significant chamber works for clarinet.  It was the first of the three, the Trio for Clarinet, Cello, and Piano in A Minor, Op. 114, which we heard today.  Some of the Great Experts declare that this is a relatively weak composition, but for me it has always been a personal favourite among the three Brahms chamber works for clarinet.  Unusually, Brahms called for a clarinet in A (rather than the more common B-flat instrument) and, in his desire to showcase the instrument and player, incorporated a low C sharp, which cannot be played on a B-flat clarinet.

From the opening bars, it was plain that the music was in secure hands.  Cellist Roman Borys and pianist Jamie Parker joined Campbell in a performance which respected the intimacy of the music while still finding many nuances of light and shade in all the movements.  Particularly admirable in this reading was the interplay between the clarinet and cello, the rare combination of instruments which gives this trio its uniquely warm, rich sound.  The  ensemble's playing in the third movement particularly heeded the composer's direction grazioso.  The finale achieved lively results right up to the end while still remaining intimate in scale.  While recognizing, as all artists do, that you are only as good as your next performance, it's still valid to say that the excellence of the work from these musicians can safely be taken for granted.

The second major work was the Piano Trio No. 2 in C Minor, Op. 66, by Felix Mendelssohn.  This piece was composed in 1845, when Mendelssohn was at the full height of his powers as a composer.  Like its companion Trio No. 1 of five years earlier, this four-movement work encompasses worlds of drama, pathos, and fantasy, yet never forgets its chamber-music heritage and only briefly seems (at one or two points) like a symphony struggling to get out and breathe.  That's a notable balancing act.

I'm always intrigued by Mendelssohn's compositional style in which a clear melodic line is accompanied by endless scales or ostinati reinforcing the harmonic progress of that melody.  What amuses me is the way that, in his symphonic writing, the melody is usually entrusted to the winds or brasses while the violins get to turn endless somersaults with the sixteenth-note figures -- while, in his chamber music, the strings as often get to  carry the melodic line while the poor pianist has to play eight times as many notes in the form of scales and arpeggios ad infinitum!  Certainly, there are a number of passages in this trio that reinforce the point.

There's something special about a performance such as the one the Gryphon Trio gave today.  Here, you have a group of musicians who have worked closely together for many years, and who now perform almost as if they were a single living organism.  And yet, there is no suspicion of routine at all about the performance -- rather, a powerful sense that each note, phrase, or movement is being discovered anew throughout.  That never-failing feeling of new discovery is the keynote of every Gryphon Trio performance.

So, today, the drama of the first movement built up through a series of waves of rising and falling excitement to the positively hair-raising coda.  The second movement was played with just as much sense of dramatic building and resolving of tension, despite the slower tempo.  The scherzo, yet another of Mendelssohn's incredible gossamer-light inspirations, flew by in a whirlwind of quiet sound, with every note still clearly and distinctly audible (this is one spot where a bigger, more resonant hall might work to the audience's disadvantage).  

Then the finale brings one of Mendelssohn's unique inspirations, a central episode incorporating a Lutheran chorale, played first with quiet majesty by the piano and then repeated by violin and cello with ineffable lyrical beauty.  Then, in the coda, the chorale returns with some piano writing so emphatic and so bass-heavy that for a moment Mendelssohn sounds more like Liszt.  And it was here, and here only, that the piano momentarily overwhelmed the strings -- but that is an obvious built-in hazard of the score.  The string reprise was as lovely as before, even with the heavier piano underscoring.  And the Gryphons then drove the final bars to a conclusion of furious energy.

A very rewarding first performance of the week from our resident artists on this tour!

 

Euro Concert Tour # 1: Concertgebouw and Muziekgebouw

This month I'm attending a music festival with a difference.  I've embarked on a classical music travel package which includes 3 nights in Amsterdam, a 7-night Rhine cruise, and 2 nights in Zurich.  Ten of the 12 days include concerts, some at shore venues, and some on the ship.  The featured musicians on the cruise are James Campbell and Graham Campbell from the Festival of the Sound, and the Gryphon Trio from the Ottawa Chamberfest.  Some of the onshore events feature European performers and ensembles. 

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Amsterdam's Concertgebouw ("Concert Building") has long been renowned for the splendid acoustics of its Great Hall, considered one of the finest concert halls in the world.  The much newer Muziekgebouw aan 't Ij ("Music Building on the Ij") opened in 2005, as part of a modern redevelopment of the eastern harbourfront.  This hall is mainly geared to modern chamber music, and again has very fine acoustics to suit its purpose.  On Saturday, I attended concerts in both buildings, and here's my review of these two performances.

On my first-ever independent trip to Amsterdam, way back in 1975, I had a chance to attend a concert at the Concertgebouw.  I passed on the chance (lack of funds and time).  This year, another dream on my musical bucket list finally came true as I took my seat in the Concertgebouw for the season opener concert of the Radio Filharmonisch Orkest, led by their brand-new Music Director, Karina Canellakis.  

The programme followed the classic overture-concerto-symphony pattern so familiar from my youth, but the choice of repertoire was definitely adventurous.

The concert opened with a repertoire staple -- the overture to Egmont by Beethoven.  Canellakis led the orchestra in a brisk performance of the main allegro section of this work after a carefully shaped slow introduction.  My one quibble in this piece was the lack of clarity in the final "Victory Symphony," as the repeated pairs of notes in the violins blurred into something closer to single notes.  But this might be due to the Concertgebouw's famed warm acoustic and the fact that I was sitting in the "podium seating" (otherwise known as the choir loft), and behind the violin section.  But still, a splendid opener to the concert with the final clearly articulated staccato chords giving a rousing finish.

There followed the Netherlands premiere of a violin concerto, Aether, written in 2017 by American composer Sebastian Currier.  Oddly enough, I could find no mention of this four-movement work on the composer's own website.

My biggest problem with this piece is that so much of it is of the type of modern music where everything moves with glacial slowness.  Silence slowly fades up into audibility.  Here's a sound, then a long pause filled with background shimmerings; okay, here's another sound -- and more shimmerings.  Wait, here's a sound you haven't heard before.  And so forth.  At the opening, the soloist, Baiba Skride, began by imitating in turn each of the little sound bites given forth by various other instruments.   She used different techniques on the violin to try to evoke the sound quality of each of the instruments that she was copying, and did so with considerable skill.

Eventually her part evolved into a slow, somewhat lyrical melody which sounded interesting when I could hear it (which was not often) through the sudden blasts of brass, winds, percussion, or combinations thereof.  There was a brief section in the second half when the soloist erupted into an intense cadenza of tone clusters, whereupon the music suddenly exploded to life with a vigorous rhythmic pattern and sense of movement, a quality lacking until then.  This energetic impulse -- which you might describe as a scherzo -- exhausted itself after a couple of minutes, and the tedium of the opening returned -- in thankfully shortened form, leading to an ending where sound faded slowly into silence.

I could see no particular reason why Aether could not have said what it had to say in 5 or 6 minutes instead of something close to half an hour.  Nor did it offer much opportunity for the audience to hear Baiba Skride on the violin, a serious flaw in a work that purports to be a violin concerto.

The concert concluded with a performance of Shostakovich's Symphony No. 10 which was nothing short of hair-raising -- and not only for the loud, exciting parts of the score.

Canellakis absolutely had the measure of this large and complex score.  From the quiet opening to the dramatic climaxes, the first movement quivered with energy held on a tight rein.  The second-movement scherzo let all that energy rip at a sizzling pace.  There was no doubt about the unanimity of the orchestral response, although the string parts lost something in clarity in rapid passagework due to the hall's acoustic environment.  But the music demands this kind of frenetic speed, and the details are less important that the overall impression of a demonic ride to the abyss.

Both conductor and orchestra found the right kind of almost dead tone for the long quiet passages of the slow movement.  Then, in the tricky cross rhythms of the finale, the precision of the playing again paid dividends.  Canellakis whipped the orchestra up to a high peak of fervour in the exultant closing pages.  The ensuing standing ovation, for both conductor and players, was entirely merited.

The evening concert at the Muziekgebouw brought the Pavel Haas Quartet with an intriguing programme of 21st and 20th century string quartet music.  The programme was arranged in reverse order, so to speak, beginning with the more recent music and working backwards to the older pieces.

Lubica Cekovská (b.1975) is one of the current generations of composers who aren't afraid of such old-fashioned elements as rhythm, melody, and a general sense of motion and pace in their music.  Her A Midsummer Quartet of 2016 is a single movement work, written in a style which automatically induced a smile in at least this member of the audience.

After a brief slow introduction consisting of several drooping glissandi, the cellist launched into a pizzicato bass line which sounded for all the world like the rhythm line of a jazz bassist, and this cello part became the propulsive force of the work which followed.  Without analyzing it too closely, I'd assume that the line was in predominantly major harmonies since it had a notably cheerful feeling to it.  Above it the other three string parts came and went, sometimes in spicy dissonances, sometimes in repetitive ostinato figures which were clearly in major keys.  A few moments found the plucked rhythmic part jumping briefly to each of the other instruments while the cellist took up the more melodic lines.  The music contained ample variation of its materials to sustain interest, and wound up with that punctual feeling of having arrived at the right moment -- a relatively rare sensation in much contemporary music.

The Pavel Haas Quartet appeared to be enjoying themselves very much in this score, where artfully apparent simplicity concealed considerable complexity and sophistication.

The next work was the String Quartet No. 1 by Erwin Schulhoff.  His idiom in this work, written in 1924, moved freely between expressionistic dissonance and strongly tonal, even modal, harmonies.  The peculiar result reminded me of early Prokofiev one minute, and Vaughan Williams the next.  It's not an entirely insupportable comparison, since both of those masters made free use of conventional harmony alongside fierce dissonances.  The Pavel Haas Quartet pointed up the moments of maximum contrast between styles, a wise course as those sudden shifts provide much of the dramatic and musical interest in the score. 

Bohuslav Martinu's String Quartet No. 2 of 1925 was the third offering.  Considering that it was being written almost simultaneously with the Schulhoff quartet, and within a broadly similar musical environment, Martinu's work projected a startlingly different atmosphere.  This work brought a more severe idiom, with less tonal writing and considerable quiet work in the high harmonics.  The Haas Quartet managed to give these harmonics a cold, glittering sheen, creating a disquieting background for whichever instrument was currently occupying the spotlight.  The Quartet rightly deemed that this kind of music calls for beauty of tone to take something of a backseat to more edgy attack and tension throughout the melodic lines.  The wide leaps called for rapid string crossings, all very cleanly executed.

The major work of the concert, after the intermission, was the String Quartet No.2 "Intimate Letters," by Leoš Janácek. This quartet was commissioned in 1925, but not performed until 1928, a month after the composer had died.

This is a large work in four movements, but with each movement containing several subsections in contrasting tempi.  It shares common features with many other works of Janácek's prolific last decade: lyrical melodies with wide melodic leaps, frequent ostinato figures repeated obsessively above, below, and around the melodies, and frequent clashes or quick switches between unrelated tonal chords.  The music was described by Janácek as his "manifesto on love," and specifically on his long and unrequited love for Kamila Stösslová, a married woman 38 years younger than himself.  The pair exchanged over 700 letters during the years of their friendship.

This biographical detail is important for 2 reasons in the finished work.  One is the prominence of the viola part, intended by the composer to represent the voice of Kamila.  He originally planned it as a part for a viola d'amore, but substituted the conventional viola when the viola d'amore didn't fit the texture in the way he had hoped.

The other important feature is the uniquely quiet, introspective tone of the slower sections in each movement which become -- at least for me -- the personification of Kamila's cooler letters to the composer, versus the more vehement and passionate utterance of the composer's voice in the louder, faster sections.

In effect, then, the single quartet has to become like two different quartets, playing in two very different styles that can speak with the voices of the two protagonists in the relationship.  In every way, then, a work which challenges and stretches both players and audiences.

All four members of the Pavel Haas Quartet gave great weight to the bigger sections, while using a very spare, almost sparse sound in the quieter, slower pages.  The all-important viola part was clearly heard but not unduly spotlighted by the other three.  Crisp execution of the endless ostinato figures avoided any feeling of boredom or routine.  The various sudden shifts in tempo, key, and volume were allowed to be sudden by these players -- which matters a great deal because those blunt changes are a central feature of Janácek's compositional style.

This intense and powerful performance of Intimate Letters made for a rewarding culmination to a particularly intriguing programme of lesser-known music from less well-known composers.