This is absolutely the latest I have ever been with posting a review! It's four days shy of a full month since I attended this event! The only feeble excuse I can make is that the concert was so unusual and memorable that many of the details are still very clear in my mind, even after all that time lapse.
My apologies to the performers and to my faithful, oh-so-patient readers, for this unseemly delay.
What made this concert so unusual was the fact that I had heard none of the music on the programme before. None! After I've spent 50-some years of attending classical concerts, this is not at all an easy feat to pull off!
The programme was given on Friday evening, April 15, at Little Trinity Church on King St. East in Toronto, and was entitled NOCTURNE: Music in the Key of Spring. That proved to be a very apt title for an unusual assemblage of chamber music works.
The first work was a sonata for oboe and piano by Alessandro Besozzi (1702-1793). I was intrigued when I looked up his biography to find that he was himself a virtuoso oboist as well as a prolific composer. All the more startling, then, to find that a list of his compositions included relatively few for the oboe but a great many works for one or two violas! I wonder why? Anyway, to hear more from Besozzi, you should certainly check in with your favourite neighbourhood violist!
The present sonata was played with style and grace by oboist Jolie Chrisman and pianist Valerie Rivers-Moore.
CONFLICT OF INTEREST ALERT: Valerie Rivers-Moore is my cousin,
which is the reason why I travelled into Toronto for this particular concert!
Plainly this was a standard example of Italian Baroque, with no surprising features in the four movements. It's the sort of music that requires nimble fingers and a light touch from both players, and that we certainly got.
Next came an unusual instrumental arrangement of the song Litanie auf das Fest Allerseelen by Schubert. This song was composed in 1816, a little more than 20 years after the death of Besozzi, but here we enter an entirely different musical world. Chrisman and Rivers-Moore were joined here by violist Barbara Hart. Exactly as in a sung performance, the sustained melodic line is the key element that must be heard, and the instruments were well-balanced to achieve that end. A couple of moments of shaky intonation apart, the beauty of Schubert's inspiration was clearly presented.
The first half closed with a sonata for oboe and piano by Julius Röntgen, a Dutch-German composer and teacher who was a great friend of Brahms. Not surprisingly, then, the music had a somewhat Brahmsian sound -- but that was combined with a more adventurous approach to harmony than the older master ever adopted.
In the first movement, Allegretto con sentimento, both oboe and piano observed the direction without allowing the sentiment to become overloaded. The Poco animato e grazioso similarly captured the flowing character of the music with a lilt that carried through the movement. The Andante sostenuto featured particularly lovely playing from the oboe, and the Moderato finale tied the entire performance together. The work as a whole came across as music of both substance and great interest thanks to the playing of both artists. Definitely a work worth hearing again!
After the intermission, Chrisman took on a noteworthy challenge: a Fantasie in A minor for oboe without continuo (unaccompanied) by Telemann. The obvious comparison is to Bach's sonatas and suites for unaccompanied violin and unaccompanied cello. Telemann composed whole sets of these works without continuo for the flute, the violin, and for other instruments including the oboe.
The trick with this music, of course, is for the soloist to ornament the music in such a way as to beguile the ear into thinking it's hearing full chords. Easy on a string instrument, but less so on a keyed woodwind like the oboe! Chrisman combined a beautiful singing tone in the opening Grave and the Adagio with rapid and clear articulation in the two faster movements. An impressive performance of a challenging piece.
Rivers-Moore then took the stage solo for four selections from the Eight Nocturnes of Francis Poulenc. Poulenc has always been a favourite composer of mine, a man whose music is sometimes quite comical in nature and sometimes very serious. He was described as "half monk and half naughty choir boy" and I would agree with that, except to add that you can always see the monk watching when the choir boy is being most outrageous, while the monk's own most solemn moments almost always include brief glimpses of the choir boy peeping out from behind the monk's robes.
That kind of duality could certainly be glimpsed in these piano pieces. By turns playful and serious, the music swerves from one to the other on the turn of a dime. Poulenc's art is primarily melodic and diatonic, but occasional chords with "wrong" notes are seldom far absent.
Rivers-Moore captured the playful spirit of the lighter moments with clear articulation and effective under-use of the pedals, while the more lyrical concluding movement ("To Serve as Coda for the Cycle", as Poulenc wrote) showed both depth and wisdom. The final reminiscence of an earlier theme came in an appropriately veiled, inward kind of sound which was most moving.
The concluding work of the evening was a Trio for Flute, Oboe and Piano by Madeleine Dring (1923-1977), an English composer and actor. The style of the work came across as poised nicely between modern and traditional, jazzy and classical -- reminiscent at times of Gershwin. It's believed to have been written in 1968 (most unusually, Dring rarely if ever dated her scores).
After hearing this catchy work, my great regret was that the concert did not allow us to hear more of the fine playing of flutist Elena Goriacheva. The blend among the three players was excellent, allowing the contrast between the cooler tones of the flute and the more piquant sound of the oboe to register. The opening and closing movements, respectively Allegro con brio and Allegro giocoso, both went with a bounce and a swing that brought a smile to my face. The central Andante semplice provided a gentler contrast. A rewarding end to a truly intriguing and varied programme!
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