Return to the Concert Hall: The Cheng²Duo

On Tuesday evening, I did something I haven't done since February: I walked into a concert hall and sat down in my seat to hear a live concert of classical music.

The venue, itself unusual, was the Salle Bourgie, a part of the Montreal Musée des Beaux Arts.  It's located in the sanctuary of the Erskine and American United Church on Sherbrooke Street, right beside the main building of the museum.  This Romanesque stone church with its beautiful Tiffany windows is a National Historic Site of Canada, and now forms part of the museum's collections.

The use of this lovely space for concerts is, of course, subject to social distancing guidelines.  Every second row of seats has been removed, and in the remaining rows seats are sold with two vacant seats on either side.  So I had a single seat to myself, my nearest neighbour in the third seat to my left, and an aisle on my right.  Masks had to be worn until the recorded announcement which began the performance.

In this unique setting, the Cheng²Duo presented a short recital of French music of the twentieth century, as a tie-in to the special exhibition of the post-Impressionist French artist Signac and his contemporaries which is on display right now (I visited the exhibition on Wednesday, and it was impressive).

The evening opened with an incisive performance of Debussy's Cello Sonata in D Minor, composed in 1915, just a few years before the composer's death.  This late music is in many ways worlds apart from the Debussy of the well-known orchestral frescoes like La mer, Iberia, or the three Nocturnes.  For listeners, it's a demanding piece, requiring full attention to every detail as the music unfolds.  Despite one or two moments where the piano momentarily overpowered the cello (a particular hazard of this width of hall, I think), the music remained clear throughout, with much fine detail from both players.

Nadia Boulanger became renowned as the greatest teacher of composition in the twentieth century, but herself retired from active composition at an early date to devote herself to teaching.  Her Three Pieces of 1914 remain as one of the few works she did complete.  The first movement, Modéré, came across like a chamber evocation of a cloudy day.  Both this movement and the second Sans vitesse et à l'aise, drew out something like a sigh or deep breath across the audience as the final notes died away.  By contrast, the third piece seemed almost raucous as the Chengs played it, a necessary contrast to be sure, but still with a strongly-civilized pedigree.  These delightful works were all played with sensitivity and poetic feeling.

Even more so, then, the 1897 Violin Sonata (posthumous) of Ravel, here transcribed for cello by Bryan Cheng -- and very successfully too.  For those who missed the sensuous earlier Debussy, here was music which often called him to mind -- and that's ironic to say the least, because the student Ravel who composed this sonata would later go on to mine his own vein of mordant irony, developing his own personal musical language in a totally distinctive and unique vein.  Cellist Bryan Cheng shaped the long melodic lines into musical poetry of a high order.

Speaking of distinctive musical styles, Francis Poulenc was a composer with a completely unique voice and approach to composition.  His music covers a wide emotional compass, but only a few bars of almost anything he ever wrote will bring you face to face with one of his signature mannerisms.  His 1948 Cello Sonata is no exception.  Indeed, the first time I heard the Cheng²Duo perform this work, I made a little mental bet with myself about how soon I would hear the distinctive voice of the composer.  It's no more than 5 or 6 bars in.

The second, slow movement (Cavatine) is the odd one out in this work, since it's the only one of the four movements that isn't notably invaded by the rakish boulevardier aspect of Poulenc's style.  It provides a lovely lyrical contrast to its surroundings for this reason, and the evocative melodies came out from both players with simple beauty and poise.  

In the other three movements, although the music certainly exists as an equal partnership, it's through the quirky harmonies in Silvie Cheng's piano part that most of the humour emerges -- music busily pushing the audience's buttons, in fact.  Plainly, Silvie Cheng was relishing the innate fun and satire built into the music.  Like a good joke teller at a dinner, she knows just how much extra emphasis to give to the punch lines.  When the Cheng²Duo play this piece, it's impossible to repress a smile and I don't advise trying.  I'm sure Poulenc would be pleased that the Chengs treated his work to such a witty performance.

The recital ended with a small bonus, returning to Debussy for a transcription of his song Beau soir -- as Silvie Cheng said, a perfect little description of the 75 minutes we had just spent together.

Ludwig and Beyond Part 1: Beethoven Meets a Stunning World Premiere

 On Saturday night, the Cheng²Duo launched the world premiere of their "Ludwig and Beyond" project in honour of the Beethoven Anniversary year -- in front of a small but appreciative live audience and a very much larger and also appreciative online audience.

The premiere had originally been planned for Europe, in June, and was of course cancelled due to the Covid-19 outbreak.

Thanks to the Ottawa Chamberfest, which has launched its first online "season" to make up for the lost summer festival, the Chengs had an opportunity to perform Part 1 of their unique programme right in their home town of Ottawa.

The uniqueness of this project lies in the Duo's conception of commissioning several contemporary composers to create new works inspired by or connected in some way with one of the five Beethoven Cello Sonatas, and then present the Beethoven works with the contemporary ones all together at the same time.

The three composers commissioned are Paul Wiancko, Samy Moussa, and Dinuk Wijeratne.  

In last night's performance we heard the world premiere of Wiancko's stunning Sonata No. 1: Shifting Baselines, alongside the Beethoven Sonata No. 4 which Wiancko took as his point of departure -- and with the rest of the programme filled up with the Beethoven Sonatas No. 1 & 5.

Contemporary classical music can be a mixed bag.  Reactions can range all the way from the mental garbage can, through, "Well, that was interesting," to "I  want to hear that again -- I'm sure there's more to it than meets the ear at first hearing."

Very much rarer is the excitement of "I need to hear this piece again -- now!"  And that was very much my reaction to Wiancko's Sonata.

This is a striking example of a work conceived on a broad scale, 23 minutes long, with more than ample musical interest and thought to sustain that length of time.  The work unfolds in a series of interconnected sections, each one displaying its own unique sound world -- ten sections was my count.  

The Sonata began with an introduction of pizzicato notes on the cello, evoking the idea of a plucked jazz bass.  Soon the piano joined in, doubling the cello and adding a few selected notes in the higher register.  What captured my interest right at the outset was the presence of a clear rhythmic element in the music, distinct tempo and frequent shifts of metre combining to keep musicians and audience alike on their toes.

The great strength of Wiancko's work is the continuing presence of a clear rhythmic sense through every subsequent section -- whether fast or slow, simple two-step or more complex cross-rhythms, every page of this Sonata has something to say on the rhythmic level.  I take the time to emphasize this point because so much contemporary music consists of sound effects totally lacking in any kind of rhythmic life at all.

Not that melodic or harmonic interest is lacking in Wiancko's music -- far from it!  Different sections of the Sonata ranged from solemn chordal harmonies to fiercely discordant dance-band sounds, from gentle wisps of melody reminiscent of Debussy to cello melodic figures cutting directly across the patterns of the piano.  A furious scherzando came closest to evoking the musical world of Beethoven.  

The penultimate section returned clearly to C major, the key of the Beethoven Sonata No. 4, with slow scale passages rolling quietly up and down on the cello, beginning on different degrees of the octave but remaining firmly grounded at all times in the home key.  This merged into a shortened recapitulation of the opening pages which brought the work to a subdued conclusion -- a classical touch indeed.

As for the three Beethoven Sonatas, the music is too well known to require comment.  Performances by the Chengs covered the fullest range of style, from the quasi-Mozartean world of the early Sonata # 1 to the more rarefied atmospheres of the late Op. 102, containing Sonatas No. 4 & 5.  Entirely appropriate was the scaled-down tone of the first sonata.  More striking was their subtlety in some passages of the later pair where other interpreters may find more blood and thunder appropriate.  The key here was the adoption of a taut, crisp articulation by both players which prevented overly-romantic lushness and kept all the strands of the musical argument clearly in view -- especially valuable in the fugal finale of No. 5.

And who could resist the piquant playfulness which equally characterized that fugue?  Certainly, I had a smile on my face -- and I'd like to think Beethoven did too.

The second programme of this remarkable Beethoven project, with two more world premieres, will be live-streamed on Dec. 19, 2020.  Details are available from the Ottawa Chamberfest.