Although I can't do it myself, I am always fascinated by watching or listening as someone else does it. So, yesterday at the Festival we had two events featuring improvisation by musicians, and for me this was a really special day as a result.
In the afternoon, cellist Matthew Barley gave an hour-long solo recital at the Cathedral. He began as a cellist is expected to begin, with one of Bach's Suites for unaccompanied cello -- the first and best-known one. But even before that, he gave an impromptu lesson on how Bach's apparently simple prelude to the suite is built right from the ground up on the natural harmonic series of the keynote. As part of his demonstration he had the entire audience singing the note of D, the dominant of the suite's G major key, while he played the last half of the prelude. This allowed everyone to hear and to feel the exact manner in which Bach built and resolved tension in the final bars of the prelude. It was a fascinating experience, and I'm sure many listened to the succeeding complete performance of the suite with newly opened ears. Barley treated this well-known music to a thoughtful reading which neither descended into boredom nor indulged in superfluous interpretation details.
It was the second half of his recital that was even more fascinating. Here, Barley performed three widely contrasted contemporary cello works and strung them together with improvised bridges lasting for several minutes each. In the second bridge he poised his bow, began to lower it onto the string, and then made a sudden decision to switch to a pizzicato motive with which he proceeded to shape the entire improvisation!
The three works, in the order played, were the sombre, meditative Threnos of Sir John Tavener, the half-folklike, half classic Appalachia Waltz by Mark O'Connor, and the vehement Lamentatio by Giovanni Sollima. Barley contrasted the moods of each piece strongly. He made the Tavener sound like a musical portrait of stillness. The rich double-stopped harmonies of the Waltz came across with all notes clear and present. Sollima's musical portrait of fury, including vocalization from the soloist, brought the recital to a hair-raising conclusion.
The improvising resumed in a special hour-long late concert at 9:00 pm. I had a ticket but ended up not going as battle fatigue was catching up with me. But I'm willing to bet that, with 5 musicians doing improvs based on themes and works heard through the Festival, it was probably an exciting event.
In between those two improv events, the standard evening concert was moved forward to 6:30. This programme, entitled Love Triangle, presented one work from each of three composers whose lives were interwoven by love and music and the love of music: Clara Schumann, Robert Schumann, and Johannes Brahms.
First, we heard the Three Romances, Op. 22 for violin and piano by Clara Schumann. This is skillful, accomplished music, and its very sophistication is neatly concealed behind a façade of artless simplicity. Violinist Helene Pohl spun out the endless chains of melody with the smoothest legato, especially in the first Romance, while pianist Dénes Varjon accompanied with lightness and sensitivity in a work which contains nothing in the way of romantic sturm und drang.
Next, we heard tenor Andrew Goodwin, accompanied by pianist Isabella Simon, in Robert Schumann's song cycle Dichterliebe ("A Poet's Love"). This cycle, setting 18 poems by Heinrich Heine, takes us through a story of love felt and then lost. The structure is unusual. The first half dozen songs are short, epigrammatic, at times even enigmatic in their concision. From # 7 onwards, the songs gradually expand in terms of the length of verses set in each song, but also in the length of the music and in the diversity of musical styles and means employed. If the early songs sometimes display a certain quality of wit, this gradually vanishes as the later songs turn deadly serious.
Goodwin's finely controlled voice presented the texts clearly, with always-beautiful tone, but in all honesty I felt that he was skating over the surface of some of the songs. The initial half dozen definitely needed to be characterized more positively. Beginning at # 7 he started to dig deeper, but even then the necessary involvement in the music seemed to elude him in some numbers. All the same, his control of breath and diction were impressive throughout, nowhere more so than in the final song. Simon's accompaniments covered the turf, but also to better effect in some songs than in others. The final piano epilogue after the end of the last song, beautifully sustained, created a most necessary air of regret and loss. There were a few passages where Goodwin was having to force tone on an uncomfortably low note, and still getting drowned out by the heavy playing of the accompaniment.
After the intermission, it was time for one of the supreme masterpieces of the chamber music repertoire, the Piano Quintet in F Minor, Op. 34 by Brahms. I'm not committing myself to an impossible-to-prove assertion here -- after all, this blog is all about my opinions! More so than any other of Brahms' major chamber works with piano, this one is all too easy for the pianist to overload and that did happen in some of the louder moments.
The New Zealand String Quartet and Dénes Varjon gave what was certainly the most dynamic, ferocious account of this score that I have ever heard. While it was definitely exciting, this work also exposed the acoustic shortcomings of the Theatre Royal. From my seat, the sound in louder passages seemed forced, becoming harsh, ugly, two-dimensional, even clangorous. The problem certainly didn't apply in quieter music, nor (according to a friend) was it a problem from a different seat location.
The slow movement was the best of this performance for me, soft-grained and poetic, and particularly fine in the gently-rocking triplet cross-rhythms. The succeeding scherzo was nearly as good, benefitting from a solidly anchored rhythmic pulse that kept the entire movement driving steadily forward without breaking the speed limit.
As a whole, it was a very exciting performance, if not perhaps the ideal one to come back to multiple times.
First, we heard the Three Romances, Op. 22 for violin and piano by Clara Schumann. This is skillful, accomplished music, and its very sophistication is neatly concealed behind a façade of artless simplicity. Violinist Helene Pohl spun out the endless chains of melody with the smoothest legato, especially in the first Romance, while pianist Dénes Varjon accompanied with lightness and sensitivity in a work which contains nothing in the way of romantic sturm und drang.
Next, we heard tenor Andrew Goodwin, accompanied by pianist Isabella Simon, in Robert Schumann's song cycle Dichterliebe ("A Poet's Love"). This cycle, setting 18 poems by Heinrich Heine, takes us through a story of love felt and then lost. The structure is unusual. The first half dozen songs are short, epigrammatic, at times even enigmatic in their concision. From # 7 onwards, the songs gradually expand in terms of the length of verses set in each song, but also in the length of the music and in the diversity of musical styles and means employed. If the early songs sometimes display a certain quality of wit, this gradually vanishes as the later songs turn deadly serious.
Goodwin's finely controlled voice presented the texts clearly, with always-beautiful tone, but in all honesty I felt that he was skating over the surface of some of the songs. The initial half dozen definitely needed to be characterized more positively. Beginning at # 7 he started to dig deeper, but even then the necessary involvement in the music seemed to elude him in some numbers. All the same, his control of breath and diction were impressive throughout, nowhere more so than in the final song. Simon's accompaniments covered the turf, but also to better effect in some songs than in others. The final piano epilogue after the end of the last song, beautifully sustained, created a most necessary air of regret and loss. There were a few passages where Goodwin was having to force tone on an uncomfortably low note, and still getting drowned out by the heavy playing of the accompaniment.
After the intermission, it was time for one of the supreme masterpieces of the chamber music repertoire, the Piano Quintet in F Minor, Op. 34 by Brahms. I'm not committing myself to an impossible-to-prove assertion here -- after all, this blog is all about my opinions! More so than any other of Brahms' major chamber works with piano, this one is all too easy for the pianist to overload and that did happen in some of the louder moments.
The New Zealand String Quartet and Dénes Varjon gave what was certainly the most dynamic, ferocious account of this score that I have ever heard. While it was definitely exciting, this work also exposed the acoustic shortcomings of the Theatre Royal. From my seat, the sound in louder passages seemed forced, becoming harsh, ugly, two-dimensional, even clangorous. The problem certainly didn't apply in quieter music, nor (according to a friend) was it a problem from a different seat location.
The slow movement was the best of this performance for me, soft-grained and poetic, and particularly fine in the gently-rocking triplet cross-rhythms. The succeeding scherzo was nearly as good, benefitting from a solidly anchored rhythmic pulse that kept the entire movement driving steadily forward without breaking the speed limit.
As a whole, it was a very exciting performance, if not perhaps the ideal one to come back to multiple times.
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