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.
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.
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