No debate about the quality

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19 November


This review is of a concert given by The Nash Ensemble, on Sunday 17 November, as part of Cambridge Music Festival


The Nash Ensemble (or this string subset of it) was never going to disappoint, but, despite live and recorded broadcasts on Radio 3 (@BBCRadio3), the delight of hearing and seeing it play had not been estimated. The group who played* comprised :

Violins
Stephanie Gonley
Laura Samuel


Violas
Lawrence Power
Philip Dukes


Cellos
Alice Neary (see her talk about her 300-year-old instrument and its character)
Pierre Doumenge



They began with Richard Strauss, the sextet that opens his one-act opera Capriccio. As such a title might suggest, the work had a sunny opening, and then the texture opened out, leading to hearing the upper register of the cello (with lower detail on the paired instrument), which is always a joy when composers let it sing properly. A tremulous passage followed, in which waves passed from the cellos to the violas, before we arrived at what felt like the emotional heart of the piece.

A brief cello solo then introduced writing where the other four instruments supported violin and cello in a duo, and this seemed a way of writing for this combination with which Strauss seemed most at ease, rather than, as the other composers did more, treating each voice as an equal. Here, virtuoso scoring for violin had an almost improvisatory quality to it, and Strauss had the lead player pass it to the second violin in order to effect a re-entry.

In a full ensemble as the piece concluded, it sounded as though these final chords depicted a sunset, before traditional means signified the actual close. The piece demonstrated the considerable balance of the ensemble, and the sonority that Strauss evoked was given its full effect.


Next, Dvořák’s four-movement Sextet in A Major, Op. 48, which opened as an Allegro–Moderato, with a theme whose instant engagement was brought out, and which increased in rhythmic intensity, as Doumenge plucked notes. The difference with Strauss lay in a balanced group of instruments, although one could still marvel at features such as Neary’s lovely tone, and the fact that, when the opening theme returned, it presented itself more deeply, and had a thoughtful character. A more agitated section was marked by the viola playing pizzicato, and then gave way to gestural notes from the cello, a softening of the tone, and ending on a loud concord.

The Dumka that followed (marked Poco allegretto) began with pizzicato notes from the cello, and was in three-four time (with a pair of quavers on the second beat) : as a dance, it felt a little strange to Western ears, and then the irregularly swaying beats intensified and swirled. In due course, the movement gave way to a more strophic passage, but whose metricality was suitably unaccented. Momentarily, it threatened to end softly, but gave way to a theme with a hesitantly oriental feel, before concluding in a few quiet strokes of the bow.

In a slightly squeaky Furiant, marked Presto, some cello pizzicati were executed with an unflashy ease before vigorous writing that paired the violin and cello, where we already had the greatest of confidence in Gonley and Neary. After a caesura, and a figure introduced by the violin, Power had a short passage where the viola gave a solo, which he played with great sensitivity. A tune in common measure, with a pair of quavers on the final beat, brought it to an end.

The Finale, in variation form, was marked Allegretto grazioso, quasi andantino, and the violas led in the opening, which became an effortlessly flowing violin melody that was to be the theme of the variations. Initially, they were underpinned by writing for the cellos, until the theme was passed to Neary, to the light accompaniment of sustained notes from the other players. As Dvořák proceeded, he altered the shape and the metre of his theme, and, in a variation that exuded serenity, the violas and the second cello played pizzicato. Later, he had contrasting blocks of measures, and the piece ended in rhythmic intensity and with an immensely impressive momentum.


By now, the audience was well pleased with the music that The Nash Ensemble had made, and reluctantly let them take a break. The pity was that there were so relatively few present to hear, as is all too often the case with concerts of chamber music (compared with orchestral or choral affairs).

With more there for a true experience of music in the round, the debating chamber of The Union Society in Cambridge would have felt no less intimate in this horseshoe of leather-upholstered bench-seats. Perhaps people think that chamber music is difficult, but, when you can focus on the playing of the individuals and appreciate their contribution to the whole, it takes some beating.



After the interval, a shorter second half with Tchaikovsky’s Souvenir de Florence (String Sextet in D Minor, Op. 70), also in four movements (slow movement second). The initial Allegro con spirito brought us straight into the flow, led by the first violin. This was playing of great energy, great expressiveness, as Tchaikovsky set up the recognized due of violin and cello. In a move that he was to repeat, he passed the melody briefly between violin and viola before on to the cello, and then the movement built and intensified, as the violin came to the fore, but with gorgeous detailing from Neary. The chamber felt as though it were full of sound from just these six instrumentalists, and then that movement of shifting emphasis reccurred. With motive force in the second cello, the movement ended.

Grave chords began the Adagio cantabile e con moto, giving way to the violin bowing over four pizzicato voices and a complementary entry from the cello, to which the second cello responded in the bass, with a rich, full sound from Doumenge. With a viola solo against the two cellos and the other three players pizzicato, the movement reached a very sonorous point, which gave way to a ghostly feeling, with a lower tone on the cello, a melody then completed by the violin, with flourishes on the cello, a deep bass line from the second cello, and the other strings pizzicato. Next, Tchaikovksy gave the viola a rich piece of writing, deep in the midst of its honeyed range, which, when it recurred, brought the Adagio to an end.

The Allegro moderato featured some very exciting cello-playing, before Tchaikovksy gave the violin some work reminiscent of the Violin Concerto in D Major, Op. 35, and where there was a feeling of rawness and freshness. Subsequent passages had a meditative quality, where it was clear how closely the players were communicating and listening to each other, and the end came with some very authoritative and assured string-work from Neary.

The opening of the Allegro vivace gave us a familiar theme, which moved on in a quasi-fugal way. As the movement developed, the players demonstrated again their mastery of a range of emotions and textures, and that they had dynamics under close control. Towards the end, they dropped down, but only to build up from there in volume, and, in a coda with bell-like notes, they brought the work to a conclusion with every last ounce of expression.


They were brought back three times, and, although there was no encore (we had ended on a good note), we were incalculably the richer for the evening.


End-notes

* Either four of the instrumentalists were guests, or the Nash web-site is not very up to date, because only Samuel and Power are listed there.


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

Max Bruch is most famous for...?

More views of - or before - Cambridge Film Festival 2012
(Click here to go directly to the Festival web-site)

9 March

Not for inventing the dishwasher (as Max Christian Friedrich Bruch didn't, having been born, on the day of Epiphany in 1838, too early to do so), but, from more than 200 compositions, arguably for that Concerto for Violin (in G minor No. 1, Op. 26 (1866))*, or, if not that for you, for one of three other pieces (with very close opus numbers, and even corresponding dates of composition):

* The Scottish Fantasy in E flat major, Op. 46 (1880)

*Kol Nidrei, Op. 47 (1881);

* Symphony No. 3 in E major, Op. 51 (1883)


It is not that his work was not received well by audiences in its time (apparently, his cantata Frithjof, in the early 1860s, was met with great enthusiasm), but it didn't help either that, on account of the second of the works listed above, it was assumed that Bruch had Jewish ancestry and so was not performed in countries under Nazi control, or that music critics since seem to have sidelined him.

And there is, of course, a huge element of chance in what makes it into the repertoire. I have always loved the symphonic music of Vaughan Williams, but it is taking a figure such as Andrew Manze, as conductor, to make out a case for listening to symphonies that I have long valued. I also repeatedly remember how important Mendelssohn was, in a similar way, in making sure that works of Bach such as the B Minor Mass were heard, and also - love or loathe what he did with it - there is the influence of Glenn Gould's first recording of the Goldberg Variations.

With Tchaikovsky, it is rare to hear (least of all live) the Piano Concerto No. 2, and, despite how it was famously received at the time, it is almost always No. 1 that is played. There are also four Concertos for Piano and Orchestra by Rachmaninov, but it is relatively rare for the first or the fourth to be heard.

As to Bruch, although some sources say that he thought that the third concerto was as fine as the first, he seemingly knew where he was in history, and that the reputation of Brahms would overshadow hs own. In an unascribed comment**, he said:

Fifty years from now he [Brahms] will loom up as one of the supremely great composers of all time, while I will be remembered for having written my G minor violin concerto.


In their concerti for the instrument, both men owed a debt to the great Joseph Joachim (violinist, but also composer, as had been Pisendel before him), and - although it is another story - where would either work have been without him?



End-notes

* There are two others, both in D minor.

** Taken from The Rough Guide to Classical Music (London, 2005).


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