Wednesday 22 July 2015

Festival of the Sound 2015 # 4: The Celestial City

All my life I've been seeing cartoons portraying heaven as a place where people in white robes walk around on clouds carrying or playing harps.

Well, we didn't get the white robes, but the four musicians all playing harps yesterday at the Festival brought me as close to that vision of heaven as I've ever gotten.

A harp quartet is an interesting idea, to put it mildly.  In my personal experience, I only know of two works of music that call for this many harps at a time.  One is the Celtic Symphony for strings and six harps by British composer Granville Bantock.  The other is Arnold Schoenberg's massive late-romantic cantata Gurrelieder which requires four harps.  Otherwise, two is usually the limit.

So, the repertoire for a harp quartet necessarily has to consist of arrangements, until more original works are composed for this unique type of ensemble.

The more adventurous of yesterday's two harp concerts was in the afternoon, a recital by harpist Caroline Leonardelli, with various other instruments joining her in certain numbers.  Leonardelli included in her program works by two composers who had never come to my attention before, as both specialized in music for harp:  Marcel Grandjany and Felix Godefroid.  The works by these composers were intriguing and pleasing to the ear, with Grandjany's Rhapsodie the more harmonically advanced since he lived in the twentieth century.  Godefroid was active at the height of the nineteenth century Romantic era, and his music had an interesting near-Brahmsian sound.

As well, Leonardelli played a Fantasia for violin and harp by Saint-Saens (with violinist Gil Sharon) and a Canto for cello and harp by Villa-Lobos (with Yegor Dyachkov).  This latter piece was paired with an arrangement of the ever-serene Swan from Saint-Saens' Carnival of the Animals, also for harp and cello.

The highlight of the concert was Debussy's late Sonata for Flute, Viola and Harp.  In this rather enigmatic three-movement work, Leonardelli was joined by flautist Suzanne Shulman and violist Ron Ephrat.  I first heard this work at the Festival many years ago, and found it a tough nut to crack.  In contrast to many of the more popular works of Debussy's oeuvre, this one lacks long sweeping lyrical melodies.  Instead, we get fragments of melody interlaced with rapid little flourishes and some sustained chording.  Of the three players, the violist seems to get the lion's share of the challenging bits and pieces.  All three musicians gave of their best, yet the Sonata remains for me a work to admire and respect, but not truly music to love or live with.

In the evening, we had the full harp quartet consisting of Leonardelli, Lori Gemmell, Jennifer Swartz, and Caroline Lizotte.  Their concert, with spoken introductions by CBC Radio host Tom Allen, consisted of arrangements of three classical staples.

First up was one of the nearly 600 keyboard sonatas by Domenico Scarlatti.  As many concert pianists know, these sonatas make ideal curtain raisers to a recital as they are each a single movement lasting around 5 minutes.  The transcription by Caroline Lizotte showed that the original harpsichord writing could transfer very well to this new medium.

Next was another Lizotte transcription, this time of Mozart's String Quartet in B Flat Major, K. 589.  This work revealed interesting new lights on some of the inner parts which may be hidden from view on strings, while at the same time reminding us of  what we missed in normal violin and cello tone especially.  It was a draw between gains and losses for me.  The playing throughout was exemplary and the music came across very clearly.

All the same I couldn't help laughing at the irony.  More than one source I have read claimed that Mozart hated the harp!  It is a certain fact that he only ever wrote one work for the instrument, the Concerto for Flute, Harp and Orchestra, and never even received his full fee for that commission.  If in fact Mozart hated the instrument, you'd never know it from the Concerto, one of the most beautiful pieces he ever wrote.  The whole idea of Mozart-on-harps still makes me chuckle anyway!

The main event, after the intermission, was a complete performance of Vivaldi's famous concerto cycle, Le quattro stagione ("The Four Seasons"), in a transcription for four harps credited to the Venice Harp Quartet.  In these famous works, as originally written, there are parts for a solo violin alternating with sections for the full orchestra.  The four harpists each took the solo part in one of the four concerti:  Leonardelli in Spring, Gemmell in Summer, Swartz in Autumn, and Lizotte in Winter.

It was also at this point that Tom Allen's contribution became important, as he read -- with exaggerated comic emphasis -- the sonnets written to illustrate the programme or story behind each concerto.  It's interesting that in all the years I have known this work, I have only ever known of one recording that included the sonnets in the programme notes.  That LP indeed included reproductions of the illustrated sonnet texts from the original editions as well as translations!

One of the interesting aspects of this performance was the way it highlighted the differences in playing style among the four harpists.  Leonardelli's work in Spring was notable for emphatic playing at certain key moments.  I found Gemmell the most mellifluous of the four.  Swartz seemed to personify the playful aspect, an important feature in Autumn which focuses more on people and their entertaining activities than on nature.  Lizotte unquestionably had the toughest assignment as the soloist in the flying finale of Winter, and came through with flying colours.

I also found it fascinating, from my seat by the edge of the stage, to get such a clear close-up view of harp technique, in which I could watch closely the work both of the hands and of the feet on the pedals which control the use of sharps and flats.

Listening to such well-known music in such unfamiliar yet lovely guise is a fascinating experience, and I would heartily recommend it to anyone who gets the chance!

All the same, I can't help wishing that the Festival would take a chance on discovering some of the other masterpieces among the numerous concerti that Vivaldi composed.

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