Showing posts with label Caroline Dearnley. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Caroline Dearnley. Show all posts

Wednesday 11 March 2015

Surrealism, The Orient, and Sollertinsky*

This is a review of At Lunch 4 from Britten Sinfonia on Tuesday 10 March 2015

More views of - or before - Cambridge Film Festival 2015 (3 to 13 September)
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11 March

This is a review of At Lunch 4 from Britten Sinfonia (@BrittenSinfonia), as performed at West Road Concert Hall (@WestRoadCH), Cambridge, on Tuesday 10 March 2015


Piano Trio No. 2, Op. 67 (1944) ~ Dmitri Shostakovich (1906–1975)




1. Andante
2. Allegro con brio
3. Largo
4. Allegretto


The work begins with high, spidery writing for solo cello, scarcely the easiest place to have a performer be, quietly seeking these harmonic notes right at the top of the range, and probably keenly waiting for the violin part (from Thomas Gould, @ThomasGouldVLN) to come in underneath…

Yet, as throughout, this was playing of great poise from Caroline Dearnley in what, as the movement proceeded to rumination from Huw Watkins (@WatkinsHuw) on piano and ‘bounced’ notes from Gould and her, was really just the prelude to the Andante proper, which was a showcase for excellent communication, both between the three, and to us of their energy and rhythmicity in bringing us the wealth of material here.

The Allegro con brio has some gorgeous, idiomatic string-writing from the man who, although he composed his String Quartet No. 2 in 1944, the same year as this Piano Trio, was going to go on to write another thirteen, and here shows his forte. The players from Britten Sinfonia gave it to us with verve, skill, and endless enthusiasm, and, almost necessarily, with quite a different feel from the chorale-like opening from Watkins to the Largo.

This sets out, in essence, both the chord-structure and the pace behind the beautiful scoring for the string-voices, where we could hear, in the lovely tone of Gould and Dearnley (both separately and together), how the principal sense, again and again, is of falling intervals. In that pacing, there was also the awareness of a heart-beat, and, by the trio’s running the Largo on with the Allegretto, we suddenly had a faster one in the famous opening theme (from when Shostakovich revisited it**) :




The trio was immensely sensitive to adjusting its dynamic up and down to suit the ambience, and Dearnley and Gould also acted as a contrast to each other in the mood of their playing, so that the facets of the work were opened up. In this movement in particular, where so much emotion is concentrated by the composer, the ensemble was devastatingly effective, with Watkins bringing out the intensity and motivic qualities of the piano part, and leading into a passage that took him up and down the keyboard, at the same time as violin and cello tapped out the tell-tale heartbeat.

Although bringing back what some have characterized as a Dance of Death treatment of the initial Jewish theme, and also the high writing for cello and the chorale, Shostakovich actually takes this piano trio elsewhere to end, with a harp-like close. The result is a compelling composition, matched by a highly persuasive performance that the audience at West Road Concert Hall (@WestRoadCH) much appreciated.



The stage had been set, in a way, by two shorter pieces (amounting to the same overall length) by Lou Harrison (1917–2003) and Joey Roukens (1982–), the second of which is reviewed first


Lost in a surreal trip (2015) ~ Joey Roukens (1982–)




Reaching under the lid at the start of this piece, Watkins had to pluck some lower strings, but this never felt akin to John Cage’s approach to piano, but highly specified (with other strings to be played with a beater). Roukens, in writing a brief programme-note about the composition, says that :

Lost in a surreal trip evolves not unlike the experience of a ‘trip’



The feel of the opening keyboard-writing is that it is in and out of time-signatures, and never settling, which turned into a stretched-out section, where the piano played shorter note-values than everyone else. The fragmented opening then came back in a vigorous version, reaching a crescendo – with Owen Gunnell prominent on vibraphone – before the score turned to making minute interruptions to, or light accents on, the thematic material.

Next, recursive patterns gave rise to a sense of travel, of movement, and attention was then momentarily passed from vibes to the cello, and from piano to violin. Visually, and in terms of the emergent sound, Gunnell being asked to play certain cylinders of the vibes with a bow was strikingly different from what had gone before, and against which Roukens placed a quiet contribution from Gould, with Dearnley to the fore on cello.




Chimes of what can only be described as a ‘doomy’ character, accompanied pizzicato, heralded – for a very brief fraction – what closely resembled Bernard Herrmann’s principal theme from North by Northwest (1959) : it was no sooner heard than gone, and melded into a persistent scraping effect from Gould, and, with the alternating presence of snare- and bass-drum, a driving pace and mood was set :

Into it, after a caesura, both loud piano chords and a tam-tam crashed, but were straightaway stilled, and we were taken down to the sound of violin, and plangent, open tones from Watkins. Within several long bowing movements, Gould bent some notes against the sound of the vibes, a section that gave way to faint cello tones, and writing for violin that was almost ghostly.

Complemented by chords from Watkins, Gunnell picked out a theme on vibes, and, as the piano stated some new material, there was a strong sense of expectation in the air – but that was where the piece ended.


One was left, both by hearing it played and by a resultant appreciation of its scope, wanting to hear it again. For it offered such a richness, and one desired – although the title had suggested something rather limited and druggy – to go off with Roukens on an exploration of this cohering notion of the travelling in travel, and – telling words ! – of being 'lost in' a trip that was genuinely Surreal (since the word is much mis- and overused).

This co-commission by the Sinfonia and the Wigmore Hall (@wigmore_hall) was very ably brought to a Cambridge lunch-time recital by these players, as to sense and sound : Maybe not, in fact, the graphic dislocation of tiny figures struggling for life against the backdrop of the huge carvings of Mount Rushmore, but entering into the dream-worlds of Catalan artists Dalí or Miró, or of the Belgians Paul Delvaux and René Magritte… ?


Varied Trio for violin, piano and percussion (1987) ~ Lou Harrison (1917–2003)


1. Gending
2. Bowl Bells
3. Elegy
4. Rondeau in Honor of Fragonard
5. Dance


Going back to before Caroline Dearnley and her cello graced the stage at West Road, we had a trio of violin, piano, and percussion.

Reaching under the lid at the start of this piece, Watkins had to pluck some lower strings, but this never felt akin to John Cage’s approach to piano, but highly specified (with other strings played with a beater). Gending began, thus, moodily and quietly, and with piano and vibes. Yet it was really as the sub-text to elegiac writing for violin (and taps on a gong), ending, as we began, with Watkins sounding a low bass-note, which was allowed to fade.

Bowl Bells (which we later saw emptied of the water that gave them their pitch) began with a sort of ostinato, and with Watkins tapping the case of the Steinway with a beater, as Gould gave us a light pizzicato. This was a movement that revolved around repetitive patterns and rhythmic structures, but which eased off and ended quietly, with Gunnell holding his chopstick-beaters aloft.

It was in Elegy, which linked thematically to the first movement (which, with Bowl Bells, served as a frame for it), that we first had less sense of the oriental, in the writing for violin, and through Gould’s playing, both being more elegiac in a western style. The mood of the ensemble was chromatic, but not dissonant, and one could imagine the marking being espressivo. It concluded quietly, with chimes from Gunnell on vibes.

The Rondeau in Honor of Fragonard opened with ostentatious deployment of, now, a pentatonic scale in the string-writing. However, operating in sonata form, Harrison next gave us, for piano, what sounded like pastiche in the French style : a juxtaposition that, as both moods felt like stereotyped fakes, seemed neither quite a yoking, nor yet pointing up differences. In retrospect, it seemed a little as if it were a foil for the concluding Dance (just as the first two movements had been for the third) :

The restrained feel to the start was not at the expense of a very definite rhythmic quality, which accentuated the writing’s extreme oriental character. The noise of cooking-pans being struck was as of thunder, and Messiaen’s Quatuor pour la fin du temps, with its ‘Danse de la fureur, pour les sept trompettes’ as its sixth movement, was strongly evoked in the writing. The piece as a whole, though, ended with a simple rising cadence (up a third, then a fifth).

Well-executed though the work was, one could not imagine that revisiting it was likely to reward in the way that would the compositions by Roukens, and certainly Shostakovich. By being, even so, an introduction to those other works, it set up points of contrast, which was hardly an unworthy role to have played.


End-notes

* Shostakovich had Ivan Ivanovich Sollertinsky, his 'closest friend', on his mind at the time of writing his Piano Trio No. 2, Op. 67, as we read (in Jo Kirkbride's helpful programme-note) in a letter to Sollertinsky's widow from February 1944.

** In 1960, with his Opus 110, the celebrated String Quartet No. 8, which Shostakovich wrote in just three days (12 to 14 July) when visiting Dresden.




Unless stated otherwise, all films reviewed were screened at Festival Central (Arts Picturehouse, Cambridge)
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Wednesday 14 January 2015

Nods and gestures : At Lunch 2 2015 with Britten Sinfonia

This is a review in progress of Britten Sinfonia's At Lunch 2 on 13 January 2015

More views of - or before - Cambridge Film Festival 2014 (28 August to 7 September)
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13 January

This work in progress is a review of Britten Sinfonia’s trio recital At Lunch 2, given at West Road Concert Hall, Cambridge, on Tuesday 13 January 2015


Two members of Britten Sinfonia (@BrittenSinfonia), with a guest pianist in Huw Watkins (also a well-known composer), performed the second in the Sinfonia’s series of At Lunch concerts this season at Cambridge’s West Road Concert Hall (@WestRoadCH) : leader (Jacqueline Shave), and principal cello (Caroline Dearnley).


Kaija Saariaho (1952–)

The gestural language in which Nocturne (1994) begins – mediated so directly and tellingly, as a clean channel for this unfamiliar piece, by violinist Jacqueline Shave – resembles that of keening. However, it is only a point of departure for a highly expressive section, more open than the sparseness of a cry and its attendant hints of punctuation, and one where we first sense the way in which the piece is grounded in the instrument and in its technique.

On an over-analytical level, one just momentarily steps back from engagement with the work, and could be put in mind of the compendious nature of Paganini’s 24 Caprices for Solo Violin*, Op. 1, but then, with the force of Shave’s playing and the power of the writing for violin, dismissing such references :

For, paradoxically, just as Kaija Saariaho overtly invokes convention, in and through a trill, she pulls us straight back into the body of the score, and then leads us to the first of several serenities, which suspend in the air, and give the soloist and us rest – in musical and commonplace senses. Whether giving us, next, a sequence as of a written-out jazz improvisation, or some rather obsessive figurations, Saariaho also sings.

Yet the singing is of a painful nature, and, when there are chimes in it, maybe they do not feelingly break through, but instead we are taken to strong echoes of Janacek in his quartet-writing (and all those taut, tangled emotions) ? On with the work, though, and a passage with adept left-hand pizzicato brings back in the sense of keening, with basic harmonies, before a cry that is like a deeply felt howling.

We end on one note, and – after it has faded and we have been left silent – to keen applause.


Claude Debussy (1862–1918)


1. Prologue

2. Sérénade

3. Finale

Commemorating (as well as coming near to doing so) the centenary of the start of, and events in, The Great War has helped bring attention to Debussy’s Sonata for Cello and Piano (1915), which means that it has recently been much played (less so the other two works completed from the six that Debussy had planned ?). Caroline Dearnley and Huw Watkins gave us the Sonata in the context of the Nocturne that we had just heard –
and that was equally true, later, of hearing the piano trio by Gabriel Fauré (which came after the second of Kaija Saariaho’s works) :

Solo piano opened the Prologue in stately wise, and then, when the cello entered, there was a sense of Debussy invoking faltering, before the pair played together as one, with a fleeting theme that, before it was whisked away, had a clear sense of yearning to it.

A faster passage followed, with every note in explicit articulation, giving the impression, as the recital itself did, of composers in the early twentieth century (and onwards) feeling how non-discrete life, art and music were (to name but a few relations), and daring more to relying on the contiguous, rather than the formality of development or exposition. Not that, after a burst of energy that became a crescendo, it felt unexpected to bring back thematic material and revisit it, but it was unfortunate that the duo had to pause, because one of cellist Caroline Dearnley's tuning-pegs, for a lower string, had slipped…

None the worse for it, and having clearly needed the instrument to be just right for it, Dearnley produced a soul-felt passage where, as if we were not already moved, she took us down to the cello’s resonant lower register, and there was a reassurance that we did not end the movement before, Dante like (?), being brought back up.

The opening of the central Sérénade gesturally employed pizzicatti, some of them, once we had heard another section of careful articulation, even resembling the twanging of a guitar : a complete novice to the intricacies of musical notation would hesitate to imagine how the score, even with markings, would precisely stipulate that effect !

Here, one soon felt, the heart of the work lay, with the feeling that Dearnley brought to it being just breath-taking. By contrast, Watkins’ accompaniment felt written as an aloof voice, almost an ironic commentator – yet this very quality in his part had the strange result of foregrounding the depth of the scoring for cello, but without us overlooking that this other perspective was there. In essence, it was akin to being given fragments from which we not so much inferred as intuited a whole – perhaps, even, in the way that, when full-length prints from the early days of cinema have been compiled, trying to re-create the known original running-time of the feature film, something has been lost ?

The last movement, marked Finale, has the effect of putting the familiar in context, for its opening is well known (in our sampled, chopped-about world ?), with the writing for piano inhabiting the world of the Etudes. A quiet and moody section followed, with slurring, and with Watkins bringing out a sound as of rain on glass, but which, in turn, gave way to march-like tones, and a theme that was conveyed with verve, drive and vigour. In a few brush-strokes, Debussy brought the Sonata to an end, with a smile from Caroline Dearnley.


Rest of review to follow…


End-notes

* Or of John Adams’ ambitions in Harmonielehre ?



Unless stated otherwise, all films reviewed were screened at Festival Central (Arts Picturehouse, Cambridge)
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Tuesday 18 March 2014

Echoes of the future in Beethoven's Septet in E Flat Major, Op. 20 ?

More views of - or before - Cambridge Film Festival 2013
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18 March

A concert given by Britten Sinfonia (@BrittenSinfonia) at West Road Concert Hall (@WestRoadCH), Cambridge, on Tuesday 18 March

This lunch-time’s concert saw a pairing of Versa est in luctum, a new commission by William Cole for the same forces as and with Beethoven’s Septet in E Flat Major from 1800 (Op. 20), a string trio plus double bass, bassoon, clarinet, and horn – the Sinfonia and the Wigmore Hall asked Cole to write the piece after he won the Cambridge University Composers’ Workshop in 2013.

Cole’s piece preceded its illustrious forebear (as Jo Kirkbride’s informative programme note bears testament – in fact, too illustrious for Beethoven’s liking, as he came to rue it as a cultural straitjacket by means of which others sought to confine his artistic development), and ran to around one-quarter of its length, in one movement.

It opened with what seemed to be a canon*, Clare Finnimore (viola) following Marianne Thorsen on violin, which, as it recurred, had increasing levels of interjections from the other instruments. Not necessarily being anthropomorphic about the composition, but the original theme then started becoming fragmentary (and maybe with hints of an inversion ?) before an extrapolation that reduced any resemblance further.


By now, the sound had become an exciting hubbub, but this appearance subsided, leaving the violin over a repeated interval, and with a beat being kept by the bass (Stephen Williams). When this, too, had become intense, there was a long pause, as if the piece might be at an end, but a short pizzicato moment gave way to a section for clarinet (Joy Farrall), cello (Caroline Dearnley) and bassoon (Sarah Burnett). What then sounded like open notes from the horn (Susan Dent) led to a sonority with the reed players, before the work closed with a gesture from bass and cello.

As an experience, Versa est in luctum did not seem as though it were just ten minutes long, as there seemed to be worlds within it : fitting, indeed, as the text comes from the central chapter of what is known as Job’s closing monologue, and, given all that has happened to him over time, is of a reflective nature. It received its World Premiere on Friday in Norwich, and, of course, played with conviction and verve by members of the Sinfonia, was well met in Cambridge.


As to the Beethoven, its six-movement structure began with two marked Adagio, although the first turned to an Allegro con brio. Words that do not always fit in one’s mouth at the same time as thinking about Beethoven, from the opening unison chord it exuded charm and grace in the Sinfonia’s hands. After some writing that felt its way around the dynamics, and a theme that sounded as though it had a statement and a response built into it, the material proper began with a melody that the composer might have been disgruntled to have described as Mozartian, with that sort of ambience for clarinet that he so liked. The succeeding interplay of voices led us back to the beginning, ending soon after with a feeling of suspension.

The cantabile movement that came next gave the melody to the clarinet, with strings underneath, and then passed it to the violin, before a prominent passage for bassoon. An air of expectancy had been built, into which a series of horn notes fed, the strings then providing support as it went on, but leaving still a sense of restraint until the violin emerged and gave the movement its main expressive force. A short piece in Tempo di menuetto followed, with, as in the opening movement, a theme, of an accented nature, and a paired theme, the whole impression being somewhat grand, perhaps military.

A mildly staccato statement of the theme, as used earlier in the work, in the Tema con variazioni : Andante led to a set of six variations, a form that Beethoven was to turn to throughout his career and where his own voice became more apparent. The first variation began with violin and viola, and then introduced the cello, whereas the second had the other players responding to the violin giving the theme, with the cello in its upper register. Next, clarinet and bassoon with the strings beneath them, and then, in a variation reminiscent of a movement twenty-four years later in the Symphony No. 9 in D Minor, horn and violin together (then playing quickly underneath, with a pizzicato from cello and bass.

In another variation that evoked later writing, the fifth had some of the character of Beethoven’s masterly writing for string quartet, before the brass and reed players joined in, and with a real quality of sweetness of playing from Thorsen, as the theme passed back and forth. Finally, the bass and the cello in its lower voice were to the fore, and brought the set to a close. In the Scherzo : Allegro molto e vivace, a movement of equivalent length to that of the Minuet, the ‘parped’ horn theme reminded of somewhere in the first two symphonies (No. 1 being the next Opus number, and, as Jo Kirbride usefully tells us, performed at the same concert where this work was premiered). The cello then advanced, supported by the bassoon, with a softer version, and the movement proceeded in sonata form, ending quite quickly, but not before a short ‘pa pa’ from the horn to recall the opening.

Again, as Beethoven was to go on to do (and Mozart (and Haydn) had done before), the Andante con moto alla Marcia; Presto began in a funereal vein, before the full-blown finale broke through, with a great feeling of lightness. Nevertheless, he gave an insistence to the theme, and there were glimmerings of his writing to come in the Symphony No. 7 in A Major, just over a decade later, and wrote captivatingly, which Thorsen brought out, for her instrument. When the theme returned, the balance of the ensemble, as had been apparent all along, was just right, and, after a momentary suggestion that we were veering into the minor, this accurate and emotionally careful drew to a close.

There was immense appreciation for the quality and deftness of the musicianship that we had heard, and the concert will be a treat for Radio 3 listeners in the summer, not least for those who find similar evidence in this work of what was to come. At the same time, one can well understand, as he expressed himself to pupil Carl Czerny, Beethoven’s not wanting to be tied to this piece, and to look forward, not to be asked for something in the more agreeable style of the Septet ! How many times are we grateful to true artists for being true to what they felt that they should compose, or paint, or write…


End-notes

* Which Cole tells us, in his note, is from a fifteenth-century motet by Alonso Lobo, setting a verse featuring instruments from the Book of Job (Job 30 : 31).





Unless stated otherwise, all films reviewed were screened at Festival Central (Arts Picturehouse, Cambridge)
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Friday 20 December 2013

Echoes of Carnival of the Animals ?

More views of - or before - Cambridge Film Festival 2013
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20 December

Three members of Britten Sinfonia (@BrittenSinfonia), with a guest pianist in Huw Watkins (also a well-known composer), gave the first in the Sinfonia’s series of At Lunch concerts this season at Cambridge’s West Road Concert Hall (@WestRoadCH) : leader (Jacqueline Shave), principal viola (Clare Finnimore), and principal cello (Caroline Dearnley).


Mozart (1756 – 1791)

However, it was only in the closing work, that we heard all four voices together, as the concert opened with the slow movement from one of Mozart’s violin sonatas (in E Flat Major, K. 481). Watkins and Shave impressed straightaway that the piano could be heard with, not under (or through) the violin, and he played with poise and clear articulation.

There was a pleasing contrast with the tenderness of the string part, which was not played with a mute, but in which Shave brought out an inward quality, whereas the piano line felt as if it soared and was almost semi-operatic in character, not least in its use of ornament. Overall, the eight-minute Adagio felt as if it exuded gracious ease, and was not in the full ornate style of Mozart’s later classical works.


Lutoslawksi (1913 – 1994)

Bukoliki, for viola and cello, dates from 1962, and contains several Polish folk melodies. This short work, in five sections and lasting just five minutes, by twentieth-century Polish composer Witold Lutoslawski started off as one for piano solo, but was rearranged ten years later its composition. (Its title is the same as our word ‘bucolic’, meaning just pastoral.)

Lutoslawski made a nice expanded choice of instrument, because they are a good fit, both for each other, and for the series of miniatures, or moods. In the first, he uses the cello as a drone, and then gives its some very vigorous writing in the second – the use of dissonances between what cello and viola is notable, as is being in folk idiom (which we may know better from Bartók).

The third has effects that made one feel that one was going off the scale of Western music entirely, whereas the fourth, akin to the second’s feel, was more sombre and introspective, leaving the piece to end on a lively dance (and the overall construction of Bukoliki is not unlike Bartók’s Dance Suite. The main feature of this finale was relentless motivic and rhythmic energy and rotation around an interval.


Sally Beamish (1956 –)

The King’s Alchemist, in four movements, is a commission that had been given its world premiere the preceding Wednesday, and it shows that, in the early sixteenth century, people (James IV, specifically) did not know their Canterbury Tales, or they would not so easily have been allured by alchemist John Damian (what’s in a surname !).

The work begins with Cantus (which is a word with a variety of meanings in the musical world, perhaps reflecting the shape-shifting ambiguity of Damian), which makes use of open strings, also contains some difficult stopping, and has a keening air to it, as it is led by the violin at the top of its register. In comparison, in Aquae Vitae*, the instruments feel more equal, and they are very fluid**, with cross rhythms, and a lively ending.

The third movement, Pavana, not the kind of stately dance with a ground bass that I expected, but it built up to the use of discord at the end. Given the story told of Damian in Beamish’s programme notes, including the fact that he tried to fly to France from the battlements of Stirling Castle, one was led to expect the character of Avis Hominis, in the nature of a drunken dance (though not à la Max and The Orkneys), with, using harmonics, chirps and whoops from Shave – it was never going to end well (for Damian), and the final strokes denoted his demise. Beamish, a well-respected and innovative composer, was in the audience (with the Sinfonia’s David Butcher), and took a well-deserved bow.


Fauré (1845 – 1924)

Finally, longer by ten minutes than the rest of the programme put together in the estimated timings, Fauré’s Piano Quartet No. 2 in G Minor, and all the performers together. The quartet opened with an Allegro molto moderato, the first of three marked (with some qualification) Allegro, and was straight in, with themes stated by Watkins on piano that mutated into a sense of rumbling, almost as of the tossing of the sea, before returning to its tempestuous opening.

The shorter Allegro molto that followed had a syncopated theme given by the piano, which had an oriental feel to it. After some difficult runs, the movement ended with a bang. The third, an Adagio non troppo, opened with the piano and some musings from Finnimore on viola. The previous oriental atmosphere continued with arabesques, and Shave making languid cadences on violin, which developed into heady, exotic textures, which swayed hypnotically, as if under the thematic influence of Saint-Saëns (1835 – 1921). When the opening material returned, Fauré had it build, then subside by chordal progression, as if imitating passion sublimated.

The energetic start of the finale, another Allegro molto, reminded of an elephant’s gait (Saint-Saëns again ?) – the chords from the piano were taken up by the trio of strings, with the violin to the fore, before settling down to ensemble playing. The thematic material gave way to more quirky patterns on the piano, and then worked up into a furious mood, before the returning of the opening theme. An excited coda led to a triumphant conclusion, and the work felt as though, in its third outing in this programme, the players had achieved a mature balance between them and real, intelligent interplay.


A good set of pieces to set one thinking about how compositions in different ages go about the business of writing for small combinations of instruments.


End-notes

* The old name for what was effectively whisky, which is a name that derives from the Gaelic word for aquae vitae, usquebaugh.

** No pun intended.




Unless stated otherwise, all films reviewed were screened at Festival Central (Arts Picturehouse, Cambridge)
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