Once again, I have leaped at the chance to take in an actual live concert, under appropriate social distancing requirements, of course. It's only the second chance I've had since the pandemic began.
As with virtually all live arts presenters, the Festival of the Sound found itself with its entire 2020 summer season cancelled due to Covid-19. Like many of the others, the Festival decided to at least partially rescue the season -- and the planned anniversary tribute to Beethoven -- with an online concert series during the fall.
Much of the content of these online concerts has consisted of previously-recorded video performances, but last week the Festival brought together a group of artists and a small live audience in the Charles W. Stockey Centre to film a live performance for future video streaming. Need I add that I was thrilled to be able to secure a ticket?
For our better protection, we were asked to remain at our seats for the entire performance. This meant taking several minutes between pieces to watch the stage be reset, and to view the careful work of rearranging the microphones which were picking up the music for the video recording.
The concert opened with Beethoven's very first published string quartet -- Op. 18, # 3 in D Major. Conventionally identified as "Quartet # 3" in the list because of the opus number, it was actually composed the year before its two stablemates in the Op. 18 publication.
This work was treated to a spirited performance by the Rolston String Quartet -- a performance which never forgot that this was the voice of the student of Haydn. While the work mainly inhabits the same Classical realm as Haydn's later compositions, there are foreshadowings of the mature Beethoven in a few of the unexpected harmonic turns. The Rolstons brought equal measures of energy and charm to this early work, producing ravishing lyrical sounds in all four movements.
Next up was an even earlier work, the Clarinet Trio in B-flat Major, Op. 11. Beethoven was here taking full advantage of the relative novelty of this instrument, although the score specified that a violin could be used instead, which would make it a conventional piano trio. That's enough to make the cataloguists dizzy as they try to decide whether to include this equivocal work in the numbered list of piano trios or not. More confusingly still, a bassoon may occasionally be used as a substitute for the cello.
This early three-movement work was played with ample energy by the same trio I heard performing it in Europe last fall -- clarinetist James Campbell, cellist Roman Borys, and pianist Jamie Parker. While there was much to admire in their interpretation of all three movements, it was the variations of the finale that give each player the most distinctive and memorable moments.
After a rather longer reset pause (which many of us used to good advantage to stand and stretch), the concert concluded with the first of the late string quartets, the Quartet in E-flat Major, Op. 127. With this four-movement work, we had reached what could fairly be called the realm of the "symphonic" quartet, certainly as regards the playing time. And to think that Beethoven originally planned two additional movements!
The Penderecki Quartet gave a luminous reading of this work, with the centre of gravity placed right where it needs to be -- in the long, second, slow movement. The opening section was played at a nicely judged tempo which flowed smoothly without ever ignoring the score's direction of adagio ma non troppo. In the later third variation, headed adagio -- molto espressivo, the quartet certainly captured the expressive quality which the composer requested. More striking still was the mysterious quality of the sound in the sotto voce fifth variation.
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