Dvorak, Elgar and More

Among the spectacular public buildings of Ottawa, the National Arts Centre definitely holds a prominent place.  Although I've been in the Centre several times through the years for banquets held in one of the function spaces in the building, last night was the first occasion I'd ever attended an actual performance there.

This was one of the main stage concerts of the National Arts Centre Orchestra.  I've heard this orchestra in bygone years on their tours, but this review marks their first bow in my blog -- although the guest conductor (Peter Oundjian) and the guest soloist (cellist Bryan Cheng) are certainly familiar names to my regular readers.  This concert marked Cheng's debut with the NACO.

The programme opened with a contemporary work, and for me it was a rare privilege to be able to hear a modern piece for a second time, with different performers from the first occasion.  Anna Clyne's Within Her Arms, originally premiered in 2009, is a work for a string ensemble of 15 players, performed with the violins and violas standing, in chamber-music fashion.  It resembles a chamber work in another way, too -- the light-weight and often evanescent textures of the music.

As such, it seems a little out of place in the huge public spaces of the world's concert halls, even though it was written for the Los Angeles Philharmonic Orchestra.

On this occasion, I was seated closer to the centre of the hall than when I heard the piece in Kitchener just over a year ago.  It made all the difference.  I was able to hear and appreciate far more of the subtlety in the score, which was beautifully shaped by the players and conductor.

The Cello Concerto by Sir Edward Elgar could quite possibly be his most often performed work in North America, where his music generally hasn't caught on.  It's safe to say that the work rose to fame with the passionate, heart-on-the-sleeve recorded performance by Jacqueline du  Pre, laid down in 1965.  In fact, the biggest challenge for any cellist (and conductor) is to find a way of performing the work that doesn't sound like a pale imitation of that recorded classic.

Bryan Cheng and Peter Oundjian teamed together in a traversal of the score which highlighted the undoubted dramatic contrasts of the score, rather than going in for emotional overkill.  The sense of autumnal reflection and nostalgia in the music was clearly emphasized throughout, but not at the expense of musical values.

The first movement, so often laden with sadness, was played by Cheng with a telling combination of restraint and intensity from the first dramatic string-crossing chords, so that the cellist's crescendo on a rising scale became the dramatic landmark of the movement each time it occurred.  Oundjian matched his soloist in carefully shaping all the critical dynamic changes in the music, each crescendo and diminuendo on point and yet sounding natural and integral.

In the second movement scherzo, Cheng maintained clarity in all the furious passagework with an appropriately light scale of tone, matching the orchestra in a reading of Mendelssohnian clarity amid the fairy-light textures.  No mean feat in an environment as resonant as Southam Hall.

The brief slow movement found cellist and conductor drawing out all the lyrical quality in the notes, maintaining the through line of music that can seem shapeless in some hands.  The singing tone in the solo part made me regret even more than usual that the movement is so short.

Unlike many commentators, I find the final movement the weakest point of the concerto.  I think Elgar was trying to recover the bluff and hearty swagger of his Pomp and Circumstance Marches, but the imperial certainty which infused those works had deserted him through the war years when he was at work on the concerto.  Instead, he depended to a dangerous extent on endless repetitions of a single brief four-beat phrase.  While the composer did help out by tossing that little phrase around in high and low registers, and varying the instruments which present it, both conductor and soloist have their work cut out for them to create an involving experience out of this fragmentary theme.

It says much for the quality of the performance that I very nearly was convinced that the movement doesn't misfire.  However, it was in the long slow coda that Cheng and Oundjian really shone, returning us to the lyrical beauty of the slow movement and the intensity of the first movement in equal measures.  I'd never been so conscious of this section's significant role as practically a second slow movement in the overall scheme of the work.  Cheng's playing took on a decidedly improvisatory quality in this meditative slow passage.  His recall of the dramatic opening chords of the concerto then sounded for all the world like the concerto's proper end point -- with the brief little final flourish of the finale's theme from the orchestra coming off as almost an afterthought.

Overall, a reading of Elgar's final masterpiece marked by equal measures of drama, power and subtlety.

After the intermission, Oundjian led the orchestra in a spectacular performance of Dvorak's Symphony No. 6 in D Major, Op. 60.  It's a firm favourite of mine among Dvorak's nine symphonies, mainly because of the sheer vitality and energy which Dvorak infused into the score.  I constantly waver between this one and # 5 as to which is the favourite! How could anyone not get a smile on their face at the joyful opening theme?

Oundjian's reading of the first movement emphasized the overall arch shape of the main theme through careful attention to the dynamic markings, and kept the music rolling steadily forward at all times.  Dvorak's habit of entrusting some of his most lyrical, singing melodies to the wind choir is especially noteworthy in this score, and the winds covered themselves with glory from first to last.

Oundjian shaped this first movement with his customary finesse, creating a real feeling of organic inevitability in the several tempo shifts.  The one problem came at the movement's glorious climax, when the horns, trumpets, and trombones thundered out the theme with such emphatic power that the hard-working strings became momentarily inaudible.

No such problems in the tender traversal of the slow movement, where the beautifully-blended wind ensemble sang their melodious passages to particularly telling effect.

Dvorak labelled the scherzo as a furiant, a particularly energetic triple-time Czech folk dance in which rapidly contrasting phrases jump back and forth between twice three beats and thrice two beats.  In this movement, Dvorak recaptures the sound world of his eighth Slavonic Dance for piano duo, but goes one further in allowing the two rhythmic patterns to be played (in a few key moments) at the same time in different parts of the orchestra.   Oundjian and the orchestra shot the works with tremendous verve while maintaining absolute clarity of the cross-rhythms.  The slower trio then featured the winds in a nostalgic imitation of the sounds of a shepherd's pipe, with the delightful little piccolo cadenza on each phrase taking on a decided feeling of a sleepy, warm summer afternoon.  The furious acceleration of the scherzo into its final bars was perfectly judged

The rustic atmosphere of the scherzo then carried over into the finale, with its profusion of themes in many and diverse characters.  It's a long, discursive movement, but Oundjian kept the sense of direction and forward movement firmly in view.  The music then built up, in the most natural way, to the grandiose climax where the movement's main theme is thundered out by the brasses -- ending in a surprising cadence.  From there, it's only a short distance to the presto coda, where conductor and orchestra alike reveled in the composer's final entertaining revision of his theme and built the ending to greater and greater heights of speed.

The concert will be repeated tonight, January 30.

Toronto Symphony 2019-2020 # 3: Sublime Late Mozart

It's now become a long-standing tradition for the Toronto Symphony Orchestra to feature the music of Mozart in a series of concerts in late January of each year, around the time of the composer's birthday (January 26).  This week's concert series at Roy Thomson Hall featured no less than four performances of one of Mozart's most beloved works, the Requiem K.626, here played in harness with the delightful Symphony # 39 in E-Flat Major, K.543.

This is going to be a two-part post.  Before I get to reviewing the actual performance, here are some thoughts on the reasons why Franz Xaver Süssmayr's completion of the largely incomplete Requiem refuses to roll over and die, even with so many musicologists of the world screaming for it to disappear.

Okay, I admit that I am being a bit melodramatic here.  But only a bit.  Consider this quote from the house programme notes by Margot Rejskind:

"Süssmayr's work has been harshly criticized, not without good reason: the Requiem is full of errors in harmony, and his musical ideas were no match for Mozart's."

My immediate reaction is, "Says who?"

My own personal feeling is that Süssmayr's completion of the work continues to hold the stage against all comers precisely because Süssmayr successfully matched, not the quality of Mozart's ideas, but the unique sound world which Mozart was creating as he worked on this piece.  Süssmayr may not have been the best or the most favoured of Mozart's students, but he was there, on the spot, when Mozart was working on the score -- and that gives him an unbeatable advantage in comparison to all the twentieth-century musicologists who have tried to go him one better.

Consider the Lacrimosa, a movement which Mozart left incomplete when he died.  The manuscript breaks off after the first great climax, but Süssmayr's continuation successfully maintains the utterly tragic, funereal tone set by the master, finally ascending to a climax of heart-rending intensity on the  monumental final Amen.  The average layperson doesn't give two hoots if he made "errors in harmony" in doing so, because the net result is so powerful and emotionally gripping.

In Robert Levin's completion, which we heard a few years ago, the completion we arrive at instead is a jolly, light-hearted Amen fugue like a musical portrait of an Austrian church full of wedding-cake decorations and plump flying cherubs -- worlds apart (jarringly so) from the sombre, Masonic solemnity in which the movement opens.  It sounded to me uncannily like a refugee from one of the masses Mozart composed as a youngster -- music which is pretty in a formulaic way, and gives little or no hint of the glories that were to come in the composer's later years.  Mozart undoubtedly began that fragmentary Amen fugue (also incomplete) while he was working on the Requiem -- but it seems to me just as likely that he abandoned it because it didn't sit well with the much deeper, more emotionally intense music he was creating.

Süssmayr's other inspiration, one which rises above mere conventionality, is the recapitulation of the music of the opening Introit and the stern, granitic Kyrie fugue to set the final words of the Requiem Mass  -- Lux aeterna thus becomes a moment of blissful, heavenly beauty for the soprano soloist, soon to be followed by that redoubtable fugue now set to the words Cum sanctis tuis in aeternum.  The net result is a beautifully balanced unity in which the opening and closing movements anchor the two ends of the work's dramatic arc, with the tragic Lacrymosa as the central peak of the edifice.

In brief, Süssmayr's work is all of a piece with Mozart's in one most important aspect -- he got the overall tone right.

Part of that success arises, of course, from maintaining the unique instrumental scoring which Mozart used in the completed and completely scored Introit.  The upper wind instruments are completely absent.  The winds consist of pairs of basset horns (a kind of tenor clarinet), bassoons, horns, and trumpets, with three trombones, timpani, strings, and organ.  Notice the strong leaning on darker, lower instruments.

* * * * * * * * * *

And with that, on we go to the actual performance.

Interim Artistic Director Sir Andrew Davis led the orchestra and singers in a performance of the Süssmayr score as tightly integrated and dramatically varied as one might ever want to hear.  Gone was the stodgy manner of the Mozart recordings I heard in my youth, wallowing about in a vast, deep sea of Wagner-sized string tone.  The orchestra was pared down to a body of medium size, allowing the strings to balance the winds and brasses, without either one overwhelming the other, or being overwhelmed by the 120-some voices of the Toronto Mendelssohn Choir.

Tempi were lively one minute, slow the next, as the score demands.  But never, for even a second, was there the feeling that the music was losing momentum and was about to lie down and die.

As I vividly recall from my one year singing in the Mendelssohn Choir, Sir Andrew is a complete master of the art of conducting choral-orchestral performances.  From my seat to one side, I could see that he still makes use of his near-incredible balancing act, in which he conducts the choir with his face while leading the orchestra with his hands (and without a baton).  Far too many conductors have to leave one body of performers to their devices while helping another along.

Right from the opening bars of the Introit, Davis struck the perfect balance between the creamy tone and smooth phrasing of the basset horn lines on the one hand, and the tension engendered by the walking accompaniment pattern in the strings on the other.  The entire performance was marked and distinguished, in fact, by a just-right amount of tension between lyrical beauty and dramatic significance in every movement.

Only in the Sanctus did I feel that he dashed in a little too vigorously.  But even with that caveat, I have to express admiration for the very smooth slow-down with which he shifted to a slower tempo for the connected Osanna -- one section where he was surprisingly relaxed in speed when some conductors choose to go off like a rocket.

Throughout the performance, the orchestral playing in all sections was notable for strongly unanimous responses, marked by considerable agility in the rapid passages, and sensitive phrasing in the longer legato lines.  It's certainly significant in that respect that Davis is one of the most familiar faces on the Toronto podium, having returned to guest-conduct the orchestra every season (as far as I can recall) since his tenure as Music Director ended in 1988 -- thirty-one years ago.

Particularly impressive was the beautiful phrasing and legato of the basset horns, and the firm but not over-emphatic contribution of the three trombones.  None of the classic trombone jokes apply here; the TSO's trombonists can and do play beautifully in quieter dynamics, and amply proved it.

The bigger moments rested securely on the clear but not overwhelming pedal notes of the hall's magnificent organ.

Canadian soprano and conductor Barbara Hannigan brought her Equilibrium Young Artists programme to Canada last year, for the first time, in preparation for these concerts.  Hannigan joined with Davis in 2019 to select a quartet of soloists for these performances through a national audition process.  The selected singers then participated in an intensive week-long workshop session in Lunenburg, Nova Scotia. 

The results were everything one could ask, and -- indeed -- a good deal more.  Never before have I heard a more unified, more ideally suited quartet of voices in the Mozart Requiem.  The climax of their work as a group came in the near-heavenly final phrases of the Recordare.  The polish and sophistication of their interpretation puts to shame the efforts of many great virtuosi who have treated Mozart's work as a dress rehearsal for Verdi and let their own personal dramatic excesses have at it.

In referring to the soloists as a quartet, I am of course acknowledging the fact that Mozart, like his older contemporary Haydn, often used the solo voices in his sacred music as a group, as a kind of concertino ensemble in alternation to the larger full chorus.  But all four of the soloists on this occasion shone brightly in their own individual right.

Remember the names of soprano Jenavieve Moore (a lovely light-toned soprano, lifting memorably in the Te decet hymnus), mezzo-soprano Jillian Bonner (a firm and clear voice without any plumminess), tenor Charles Sy (a soaring, lyric voice allied to subtle interpretive shaping), and bass Trevor Eliot Bowes (a strong yet flexible bass tone which remains clear even in the low passages -- like the dangerously deep Tuba mirum).  I predict that we will hear great things from all four of these fine artists, and hope that each of them will soon make their second appearance on the Toronto Symphony Orchestra's programmes.

Wonderful as the soloists were, the honours of the evening, as far as the Requiem were concerned, rested with the Toronto Mendelssohn Choir.  Coincidentally (or not?) the first of the four concerts this week fell on January 15, the exact 125th anniversary of the founding concert of the choir in 1894 under Dr. Augustus Vogt. 

Throughout the work, the choristers excelled in the agility needed for the faster passages (the Offertorio and the Kyrie fugue the most stunning examples) while finding the necessary power for the more solemn and sombre sections.  Impressive indeed were the many passages placed low in the voice registers, and here in particular the singers maintained firm tone and immaculate blend in places where some choirs get into difficulties. 

Above all else, I was swept away by the sheer passion and involvement of the singing in the climactic Lacrimosa -- the penultimate phrases on Dona eis requiem were laden with universal sorrow and searing power in equal measures.

And now, what about the opening Symphony # 39?  After such a memorable traversal of the Mozart/Süssmayr Requiem, it's all too easy to forget what came before it.  And yet, the symphony was treated to a performance prepared with equal care and equal love for the material.

The slow introduction set a high standard, and the lightly sprung first main theme became a classic example of music that puts a smile on your face.  Maestro Davis again chose tempi that moved the music briskly on, without rushing it.  The articulation of the flute and clarinet parts was a total delight, as was the fact that you could clearly hear them thanks to the restraint of the strings and horns.  Generally, the balances in this symphony were impeccable.

The beauty of the slow movement found its ideal counterpoise in the lumbering rustic dance music of the third -- a piece that for me has always been peculiarly memorable.  The singing clarinet melody of the trio was another smile-on-the-face moment.

Then the finale tied all the threads together in a performance that never lost sight of its proper scale of tone, combining powerful thrusts in the bigger chords with the most nimble, lightweight articulation of the faster passages.