Seven installments and no end to the online performances -- the socially distanced musical events keep on coming thick and fast. But I've decided to end my series of articles with this seventh set.
This article presents a mixture of brand-new video recordings and older ones which I have only just discovered. As always, a link is included with each review.
Holberg Concluded
The five cellists of the National Arts Centre Orchestra here present the final two movements of Grieg's Holberg Suite in an arrangement for five cellos by Gwyn Seymour.
It's a curious paradox that the Air, the fourth movement, is both the most Bach-like and the most forward-looking movement of the suite. This music's kinship to the serene Air on the G String or the Adagio movement of the Toccata, Adagio, and Fugue for organ is unmistakable. But Grieg takes us into some more adventurous harmonic corners, most notably in the chromatic buildup to the final climax of the piece. These cellists give it a flowing performance in a lighter emotional vein where some slower readings give the music more of a sombre or funereal air.
And so to the concluding Rigaudon, a rapid dance enclosing a slower, more wistful contrasting section whose melody takes off from the same rising fourth that opens the rigaudon. Due to the bouncy nature of this finale, the arrangement incorporates a good deal of pizzicato in various parts of the accompanying harmony. Here also I became more aware than in any of the other movements of the way in which both melody and various other voices within the music get tossed around from one cellist to another.
And Now For Something Completely Different
Here's a social distancing performance that completely upsets the format so many others use. Three section leaders of the Pacific Symphony have combined together to give a live performance of chamber music outside the chamber (you'll have to watch it to see what I mean).
Also unusual is the choice of music. Erwin Schulhoff, to give his name in its more familiar German form, was a Czech composer who composed much of his music during the years between the first and second world wars of the last century. His Jewish ancestry and his Communist sympathies alike led to him and his music being blacklisted by the Nazis, and he died of tuberculosis in the Wülzburg concentration camp in August of 1942. His Communism likely played a significant role in keeping his music out of view through the years of the Cold War as well.
The piece these three musicians have chosen to share is the finale, Rondino -- Allegro gajo from Schulhoff's 1925 Concertino for the unusual -- not to say eccentric -- combination of piccolo, viola, and double bass. I think you'll enjoy this sprightly, upbeat music, which these musicians perform with great energy and a strong sense of fun.
I think you'll enjoy their choice of venue too.
Bach to the Basics
This clip features the same three musicians as the one above, this time in a composition from one of the greatest masters of the entire history of music.
This time, our intrepid trio of viola, bass, and flute presents the second movement, a languid Sicilienne, from the Flute Sonata in E-flat Major, attributed to Johann Sebastian Bach. I suppose the "great experts" have their reasons for regarding this attribution with skepticism, but it's a truly delightful -- indeed, haunting -- melody which sounds authentic to this somewhat educated layman.
What is intriguing here is the adaptation of the original keyboard part for a viola and double bass, which actually works surprisingly well, with the bass player carrying the all-important bass line and the violist filling in some of the keyboard's upper voices.
The venue is the same as in the Schulhoff excerpt, and apart from some unfortunate (albeit natural) background noise, the music comes across just as clearly.
And just as a footnote, the industrious musicians of the Pacific Symphony have recorded nearly 90 socially-distanced musical clips or excerpts throughout the last few months. You can find the entire array of these laid out on the orchestra's YouTube page, here:
The Final Blessing
After seven different episodes of this collection of socially-distance arts performances, I think I'm ready to wrap up this series of articles. There's so much more out there that I haven't even touched on yet -- and it's great fun to go exploring online and see what you can find.
At different points in this series of pieces that I've reviewed, several artists have commented on the healing power of music in difficult times. The point is made more explicitly by music director Marin Alsop in her spoken introduction to this musical excerpt.
One of the most profound journeys of all music is that undertaken by Gustav Mahler in his massive Symphony No. 3, a work which seeks to depict the ladder of creation from the inanimate rocks and mountains through the flowers in the meadows, animals in the forest, the voice of humanity at deep midnight, choirs of angels singing in heaven, to the ultimate depiction of love as the animating force of the cosmos. The final movement, which Mahler at first called "What Love Tells Me," is a long, slow adagio which spins apparently endless streams of continuous melody out of the simplest of diatonic figures.
Here's how the great conductor Bruno Walter described the power of this music:
In the last movement, words are stilled—for what language can utter heavenly love more powerfully and forcefully than music itself? The Adagio, with its broad, solemn melodic line, is, as a whole—and despite passages of burning pain—eloquent of comfort and grace.
At the peak of the movement, after a massive climactic "passage of burning pain," the music dies away to near-silence and then -- a magical moment if ever there was one -- the sound of a solo flute casts a blessing of peace across the landscape. And it's at that precise point, with that ethereal flute, that this virtual performance picks up the music, taking us through the final seven minutes of the symphony to its ultimate achievement of the heights of exaltation in a clear, unclouded D major.
The musicians of the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra provide some magnificent playing, particularly in the quiet opening pages, and the sound balance achieved at post-production for the video is remarkable considering how many different recording venues were in use.
Listening to these final pages is always a profound emotional experience. Mahler speaks in a way that I can't even analyze intellectually to some significant place deep within me. After hearing again this musical message filled with wholeness and love which the world so sorely needs right now, I can't think of any more appropriate place to sign off from this series of articles.
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