What I am looking forward to in the Cambridge Classical Concert Series… (Part IC)

What I am looking forward to in the Cambridge Classical Concert Series… (Part IC)

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

What I am looking forward to in the Cambridge Classical Concert Series… (Part IC)

On Friday 17 October at 7.30, Cambridge Corn Exchange (@CambridgeCornEx) hosts the first in its annual Cambridge Classical Concert Series

The programme for Friday has Natasha Paremski (@natashaparemski) as soloist in Rachmaninov’s Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini, Op. 43, with The Royal Philharmonic Orchestra (@rpoonline) under the conductorship of Fabien Gabel

According to the score, Sergei Rachmaninov (1873–1943) wrote his Rhapsody between 3 July (Franz Kafka’s birthday (in 1883)) and 18 August 1934 - which seems a reasonably short time, but see what follows.


Rachmaninov and Brahms

Some people like to see it as something Russian – as if pigeon-holing helps* – that Tchaikovsky’s response to success was often introspection and melancholy, or that, on the other hand, Sergei Rachmaninov was sensitive to new works of his being poorly received. (So much so that, around the turn of the century, he lost faith in his powers as a composer, but seemed to find help through hypnosis from, and conversation about music with, Dr Nikolay Dahl, an amateur musician.)

Neither composer can have been helped by the fact that the standards to which we have become accustomed to-day, not only of musicianship and of time and space to prepare works for performance, but also of seeking more to be objective in reviews of concerts and new music, did not always obtain, even at the turn of the nineteenth century. Well into the twentieth century, indeed, as well as having to make a living / become accepted as a composer, since Rachmaninov was still performing in the winter of 1942–1943 (in support of war relief) – it is thought that it was partly because of it that he died, on 28 March 1943 (in Beverly Hills, California).

The length of time that Brahms took to write his Symphony No. 1 (in C Minor, Op. 68) has been mentioned elsewhere in writing about the relatively short gestation of his Symphony No. 2 (in D Major, Op. 73) : essentially, a question at that time of seeming cramped, or inhibited, in the symphonic form, by feeling himself to be in Beethoven’s shadow.

The further link with Rachmaninov is that some premieres of Brahms’ works suffered equally for lack of orchestral preparation, not to mention the entrenched hostility of some critics : if, though, we were still paying regard to what they wrote after the first performance (in Leipzig) in January 1859, we would not be listening to Brahms’ Piano Concerto No. 1* (in D Minor, Op. 15). (In it, he affected to transmute material from a predecessor to the Symphony No. 1.)

As many will know, Rachmaninov’s Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini (Op. 43) is indeed rhapsodic in nature. Yet by way of what could potentially have been episodic, because it consists of a set of twenty-four variations on the theme from Paganini’s Caprice No. 24 in A Minor (itself a Tema con Variazioni), but made effortlessly flowing.

And the piece comes with much musical / numerical resonance with, amongst other comprehensive compositions, Bach’s Well-Tempered Clavier (Das Wohltemperierte Klavier) Book I (BWV 846–869) and II (BWV 870–893), Chopin’s Preludes (Op. 28)**, as well as his own two sets of Preludes (Opp. 23, 28) : in total twenty-three, which, with the early Prelude in C Sharp Minor (from the Morceaux de fantaisie, Op. 3), cover all the major and minor keys***.

The Rhapsody is famously complete with Rachmaninov’s favourite evocation, the theme of the Dies irae, and the inestimable, graceful beauty that is variation XVIII. Not uniquely amongst his compositions, it cries out for dance, and the ballet is where, new to his work, it was first heard : the sophistication of the orchestration, the inventiveness of the inversions and transmutations, the subtlety of the transitions, must have thrilled Baltimore in 1934 at its world premiere, and its first British performance in Manchester in 1935…


Michael Kennedy’s trusty third edition of The Concise Oxford Dictionary of Music**** (though, for some purposes, one would not refuse the donation of a new edition…) rightly calls it one of his finest works, for it is simply glorious – energetic, lively, thoughtful, passionate, but also abstracted, and slightly matter of fact in a tongue-in-cheek way.

So that is certainly something to relish in the coming season !


End-notes

* Or helps anything – other than further viewing someone different as ‘other’, whereas one could try to understand him or her.

** Plus two sets of twelve Études, Opp. 10, 25.

*** There is also, of course, the so-called Revolutionary Prelude, in D Minor.

**** Oxford University Press, Oxford, 1980.


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

Did Hewitt succeed – or did The Art of Fatigue intervene ?

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29 April

This is a review of a concert performance, given at the Faculty of Music's concert hall in West Road in Cambridge (@WestRoadCH) and in conjunction with CRASSH (The Centre for Research in the Arts, Social Sciences and Humanities), of Bach's The Art of Fugue by pianist Angela Hewitt

It was clear from what Angela Hewitt said in what was billed as a Symposium yesterday* that she has approached Bach’s The Art of Fugue (Die Kunst der Fuge, BWV 1080) as a problem, which therefore implied that it needed to be solved**.

The nature of the problem being that she thought that, without adjustment in playing (she did not name anyone’s recordings), it can sound (or does sound) boring, a word that she must have used at least half-a-dozen times to describe a straight way of playing a passage as written, as against what she preferred (and which she then demonstrated).

In fact, the problem described may only exist because of attempting a performance, from start to seemingly unintentional finish***, in one go : if one did not try such a thing (as it is no more self-evidently desirable than with Book I or II of The Well-Tempered Clavier (Das Wohltemperierte Klavier, BWV 846–893)), would there be a problem ? A recording is one thing, and one accepts its limitations – unless the quality of the recording itself deteriorates, it is invariably the same. Yet there are not a few who like that feature of a recorded symphony or concerto – and, knowing one recording of a work, are disappointed when a concert sounds different.

That accepted, certain things had emerged from, or been confirmed by, the Symposium (and by clarifying a point with Butt that had arisen in an answer to a question at the end) :

1. We do not even know for sure (because programmes for, for example, the concerts of the Collegium Musicum, in Leipzig, do not survive) whether Bach ever gave wider performances of either Book of the Well-tempered than those reported to have taken place in a teaching context : as Butt agreed, he may have done, but we do not have documentary proof. What we do know is that, after his death, they were not published for another fifty years, around the beginning of the nineteenth century.

2. We do know, however, that the mighty achievement of writing the Mass in B Minor (BWV 232), another two hours or so of glorious music, did not lead to the opportunity for Bach to hear it realized – indeed, we do not seem to know for sure why he wrote it, although scholars have speculated about that question, as well as identifying earlier music that he adapted to the task and revised for the purpose.

3. There is accordingly a pattern of lengthy works, all of which were assembled over the years (as was the case with both Books of the Well-tempered), and part of the answer about why Bach wrote / revised them lies in this : he died at the age of 65 (in 1750), and must have been all too aware, throughout the preceding decade, of that principle of putting his house in order.

Coming back to performance, both knowledge of life-time performances (which we know definitely in some cases, such as the two Passions) and Bach’s expectations about how The Art of Fugue and the Mass in B Minor might be received in the future (and the debt that we seem to owe to Mendelssohn that we still have the latter), we probably know even less in the latter case than in the former, but the obstacles to mounting a concert rendition of one work (whether with a huge choir, or a voice to a part) are different.

With The Art of Fugue, if one sticks to one keyboard instrument, whether clavichord / harpsichord, organ, or piano (or even fortepiano, one supposes), the obstacles are different, and they came to the fore in seeking to proselytize about this work in events either side of the weekend – different from those if one arranges it, as, say, wind quintet Calefax’s saxophinist Raaf Hekkema did with his group, for an ensemble, and different from if one breaks the work with an interval.

In Cambridge, in this same venue, Richard Egarr (director of the Academy of Ancient Music) has certainly played a Book of the Well-tempered (on the harpsichord) in an evening’s performance, and also a selection of three of the six Partitas (BWV 825–830) in a lunchtime concert, but maybe not with much of a pause between the first and second sets of twelve Preludes and Fugues.

Can it be argued that inherently, if one wants, as here, to perform The Art of Fugue on a piano, there must be no break ? If, as Hewitt suggested, one is proselytizing, which one was not solely doing****, the needs of those new to this work – whatever the overview(s) have given to them – do not obviously require a very lengthy period of uninterrupted fugal and canonic writing.

For one is also preaching to the converted, who have come not to be persuaded so much, but to appreciate an interpretation, and not to wish to find fault, with global or specific matters. Having said which, Hewitt used (as she previously had) the word ‘swing’ to describe her approach to Contrapunctus 2, and, in full, the effect was more that of Jacques Loussier than of Johann Sebastian – with which one could cope as an aberrational belief that adding (accentuating ?) syncopation is the only way to play this part of the whole, although it seemed rather unlikely.

This performance at eight o’clock to-night ended at a quarter to ten (it had been preceded by a short version of the overview, for those who missed the Symposium) : by the time that Hewitt came to play the four Canons, which she had placed before the final Contrapunctus (and in her own order), she was, regrettably, very clearly flagging, because there were slips and stumbles in her playing.

That said, Hewitt did not let herself be put off, even by a significantly askew sequence of notes in the right hand that jolted one into full attention. Yet the test of endurance, of ninety minutes of playing, that she was making of herself must put the viability of the endeavour in doubt, for she really seemed to need the support of the front edge of the piano when she took applause :

That objection is not answered by Hewitt building up stamina yet further, but by stopping to question the purpose of playing through without a break. As the ancients said, but for a different reason, Cui bono ?

Here, it is the law of diminishing returns that tends to apply, because, if the audience can tell that the performer is tiring (and Hewitt, understandably not wanting the tensions of a page-turner, nonetheless seemed let down by her technological solution*****), he or she gets their sympathy for the feat attempted, if not their patience and toleration for the faults. Here, they were not just slips, but places where Hewitt sounded lost as she played what she read.

The opening of Contrapunctus 7 seemed wholly undigested (before its resemblance to fugues around 5 to 7 in Book I became apparent), whereas, in Contrapunctus 3 and 12, it felt as though the performance was suddenly on the hoof : in performance, Egarr has given notice, with his very expressive face, that something in Bach’s score has pulled him up, but not that it is any more than a pleasant surprise, rather than conveying musical uncertainty as to where it is going next.

At the end of the work, something seemed really awry. It eventually became clear, after the event, that the part had been reached where, in the MS, the music runs out without the Contrapunctus otherwise concluding. Before that, it had been clear enough when Hewitt started the first of the Canons, yet, in between, there somehow seemed to be too much material to account for four Canons and the closing Contrapunctus******.

As Bach’s end that is not an ending was awaited, one Canon or Contrapunctus finished in a way that other members of the audience could be heard saying had sounded like an attempt to improvise a conclusion in Bach’s style – whatever happened, it seemed out of place, and was perhaps the result of the technological aid.

Until we reached the Canons, and passing over the question of Contrapunctus 2, Hewitt seemed on course to manage what she had set herself. Necessarily, one did not always agree with her other choices. However, the whole concert could have been so much better but for the feeling that she was weary (and that two glasses of water had proved insufficient), and that the sense of the weariness (and the mistakes attributable to it) was passing itself over, to disrupt one’s own concentration.

A noble enterprise to perform The Art of Fugue straight through – but can one believe that even Bach required it ?


End-notes

* In fact, an introduction to the work and interview with Hewitt by Bach scholar John Butt, followed by Hewitt’s overview, with examples.

** And even revealed that she had initially been using a swear-word to refer to it, surely The Fart of Fugue, or The Art of Fuck (although she did not actually say what).

*** Then closing with the Chorale Prelude that Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach added to his father’s work when it was published under his direction, Vor deinen Thron tret’ich hiermit (BWV 668).

**** Some of us have known recordings of this work for more than thirty years (even if, in the light of the Symposium, it can be understood that a recording such as that on Deutsche Grammophon's Archiv label, by Kenneth Gilbert, is of the work before Bach’s revision for the press).

***** In the Symposium, it was all too clear from what Hewitt said that she temperamentally could not have tolerated a person turning for her, and she said that the complete score, with her markings, was on her iPad®, with a pedal to change pages.

****** Unless, maybe, Hewitt had actually announced that, in departing from the order given in the programme, the Canons would come after Contrapunctus 12, and thus Contrapunctus 13 and 14 followed them (and with an arithmetical error in thinking that the part before the Canons had been Contrapunctus 13.


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