A night of all Tchaikovsky with The Royal Philharmonic Orchestra

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

This is a review of an all-Tchaikovsky programme given at The Corn Exchange, Cambridge, by The Royal Philharmonic Orchestra under Christoph Koeing, and with Laura van der Heijden as cello soloist, on Tuesday 24 November 2015 at 7.30 p.m.

The playing of The Royal Philharmonic Orchestra (@rpoonline) had last been previewed on these pages, in advance of a concert at The Corn Exchange, Cambridge (@CambridgeCornEx), when they were to give a performance of Beethoven’s Symphony No. 3 in E Flat Major, Opus 55, under Christoph Koenig. They returned with a concert of works, solely by Tchaikovsky.


Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky (1840–1893) :

1. ‘Fantasy Overture’ Romeo and Juliet, TH 42, ČW 39 (1869 (revised 1880))

2. Variations on a Rococo Theme, for cello and orchestra, Opus 33 (1877)

3. Symphony No. 5 in E Minor, Opus 64 (1888)


The opening statement of the (1) ‘Fantasy Overture’ Romeo and Juliet almost evoked Greek Orthodox chant, but flourished into another kind of beauty and tranquillity, with a sense of space given by The Royal Philharmonic Orchestra’s (@rpoonline’s) subtle pizzicato. As the sound built emotively, still it felt to be delaying – whether we knew the piece, and what Christoph Koenig was having the ensemble delay for – and even when, with percussive reinforcement, there was a pulsing, it was heard dying away in the woodwind and brass.

Not so in the strings, which maintained the momentum, and heralded the gorgeous melody (which it is convenient to refer to as ‘the love theme’), although it did still cut away to piano. When we hear the blossoming of the theme, it is understated – harp, strings and the plangency of the oboe are ‘in reserve’. Koenig established Tchaikovsky’s tension through a suspensive mood, which broke out into a very forceful passage for timpani and brass in a whirl, and then quickly dissolved to woodwind over brass over lower strings.

The love theme is drawn forth with rich brass, but it gives way to the strings to explore another crescendo, and the theme is vanquished by an impassioned statement. Except that, in a coda with a pizzicato bass-pulse, which resolves the earlier monastic feel in the woodwind, we have the apotheosis of the love theme in measured terms : the work can conclude with the usual cadences, timpani and brass to the fore.


The initial section of the (2) Variations feels fresh, and opens in media res. It has an amiable conversationality to it, and cellist Laura van der Heijden (@LauraVDHCello) was clear and unfussy in making a statement of the principal theme for the work, yet bringing out the (good-)humour and its feeling. Tchaikovsky, through adept use of linking passages, brings us first into the variations, and then from one to the next : the first was as of a promenade, with winsome phrasing, whereas the second resembled the soloist in conversation with the orchestra, about the urbanity of their treatment of this material.

Next, came a sunset-tinged emotion, supported at its reticent heart by woodwind, and desirous of being heard, with which Tchaikovsky contrasted a mood with quiet flute and clarinet and pizzicato strings – van der Heijden was inward looking, as if to deeper things, and in improvisatory mode. After this time, in which (and in the preceding variation) the origins of the heart of the work can be located, Tchaikovsky concentrates on the upper strings of the cello in the next variation, with our soloist bringing out the accents in the writing, and Koenig creating an expansive feeling in the orchestra.



From here, and despite sprightly additions from principal flute Helen Keen, the work is not always brighter, but it is increasingly virtuosic : with trills and use of tremolo, some intense cadenza-like writing in the bass register, and even the impression of Tchaikovsky seeking to continue to explore it (even at the cost of keeping off reaching a finale) ? Eventually, this intense solo reverie does conclude, and it led into what van der Heijden and Koenig gave a distinct Scottish feel. It is vigorous writing for cello, played with liveliness and keen phrasing, and there are interactions between soloist and instrumentalists that keep us guessing as to the composer’s overall direction :

He gives us quick tutti sections, and ones where the soloist is moving over pizzicato strings : we heard van der Heijden going to the theme and unearthing more in it (as if it were a mineral-seam), and one minute being soulful on the lowest string, but then with brisk octaves and harmonics. Not just because there is nowhere else to go from here, and any set of variations must end (even if, with perhaps the most famous set (BWV 988), Bach movingly takes us back to the Aria where we began), Tchaikovsky momentarily jumps to quite another frame of mind to close the work, and to great applause for van der Heijden, who had clearly much impressed in her appearance at The Corn Exchange.

* * * * *

Symphony No. 5 in E Minor, Opus 64 (1888) :

1. Andante - Allegro con anima
2. Andante cantabile con alcuna licenza
3. Valse - Allegro moderato
4. Andante - Allegro maestoso



In (3) the Symphony No. 5, the clarinets quietly stated the opening theme of the Andante, on which Tchaikovsky has the bassoons and strings enlarge. Gradually, over time, Koenig led us into the energy of the Allegro con anima (which, as it emerged, did feel like ‘anima’, in a fully spirited sense), and we were introduced to the counter-theme, before the initial one returned, but with interruptions / interjections.

In a way, we were back to the opening of the concert, and the language and emotion of the Fantasy Overture, with that same sense of the composer in a whirlwind, exploring in, out and around the material. In all this, the RPO, under Koeing, was using dynamics very carefully, and the movement, and its close, were very understated.


As a second movement slowly starting and marked Andante cantabile con alcuna licenza (which means ‘with some freedom’), this one is quite a bit shorter, and begins with an emotional tutti, which nevertheless felt inward and restrained, and then a quiet solo horn superposed to give a tender statement of thematic content (with some support from the principal clarinet). Even as the horn is concluding, Tchaikovsky picks out moving his attention, for a cognate theme to be passed from oboe to clarinet to the basses.

Principal horn Laurence Davies, now with other woodwind players and more prominent orchestral accompaniment, revisited that theme, which is soon given over to string immersion : it develops to a soaring passage, but is ultimately held back, and leads to contributions in a folk idiom on clarinet, which the bassoon then brings out. Revolving the material results in a passionate crescendo, concluding with strings, timpani and horns (in a theme that will be heard, in less un-triumphant form, at the close of the work).

The mood calmed to first violins pizzicato, and with woodwind and brass, which felt like it might be an easier formulation for the symphony (and its composer) on which to meditate, and then gave rise to a full, unrestrained statement. A vigorous counter-melody came from the brass, but afterwards a decrescendo to a softer, more exposed, and very quiet end.


In comparison, not least, with what has gone before, Koenig made the Valse feel effortless, and it went with a sway, first the basses offering comments, and then the principal flute and oboe, and so on. When Tchaikovsky does bring us back to the feeling of the opening, Koenig drew out more of a sense of the quirkiness in the horn part. Before drawing the movement to a definite and quick close, he had Paul Boyes bring out the main theme, in sombre guise, on bassoon.


At the same time that the closing movement opened Andante, with a statement of the principal theme, we heard a hesitant one of subsidiary material*, and then Tchaikovsky opens out into variation form : fast, rhythmical writing that dominates our attention, and heralds bell-like descending motifs.

More peal-like gestures follow, treating the theme as a short fanfare, and could be heard in the strings and the brass, before arpeggiated string-writing ushered in a sudden tutti, and yet further figurations as of bells. Tchaikovsky takes the related theme through a series of rising modulations, and, on drawing in the timpani and brass, Koenig led the orchestra into a crescendo, which, with a drum-roll, fell back again to the second theme.

The close to the symphony, which now felt very ceremonious (hence the dignity conferred by Allegro maestoso), established the falling motifs and peals in their place, with the strings taking the latter up and down in celebration, ably assisted by the brass, including trombones. Its coda was characterized by a very quick, rising passage, building up to a full close – with full brass, woodwind, and timpani.


All in all, a very pleasurable and successful evening with Tchaikovsky, through Koenig and the RPO's welcome residency in Cambridge : a few years ago on The South Bank, Martyn Brabbins gave all of Beethoven's Symphonies in one day, so who know whether a Tchaikovsky all-nighter of the Concertos and Symphonies would appeal to Cambridge... ?


End-notes

* A little as with Berlioz’ Symphonie Fantastique ?


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

Charity begins - in Ireland ?

This is a mini-review of A Thousand Times Goodnight* (Tusen ganger god natt) (2013)

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6 May

This is a mini-review of A Thousand Times Goodnight*(Tusen ganger god natt) (2013)

* Contains spoilers *


A division was called on the motion 'This Film is Not a Good Film'


Nos

* Lovely shots of the beach in Ireland

* Arty tricks with light at the beginning (which remind of K-PAX (2001)'s tag-line beam of light)

* The whole mystery of the opening scene, with the near-masonic pre-burial - though a mystery sought for in vain elsewhere...

* The girls are convincing sisters

* A cute kitten (a device as favoured by The Movie Evangelist (@MovieEvangelist))

* Some of the photos from the Kabul trip

* A role for Maria Doyle Kennedy (one of the people who rescued The Commitments (1991)), but blink and you miss it - sure some scenes cut there along the way !



Ayes

* Too many lights crystallized as out-of-focus dots

* Much wooden dialogue / delivery

* Flagging up that it is Afghanistan by the descending words on a building KABUL BUSINESS CENTRE (or some such)

* Accents from Binoche and Coster-Waldau that nearly wander as much as her character travels the globe

* Editing that cuts off several scenes rather abruptly, and not as if to move 'the action' along with a pace

* The closing resemblance to Jennifer Saunders, let alone the wild, bearded stereotype of marine biology

* She is patently not taking photographs with those Canon EOS 5Ds - at best, she shows how to snap a lens onto a body

* As if she would (but she is thoughtless...) only realize on the plane that her daughter might want to photograph Kenya whilst there, not giving her the chance to try out the camera

* As plausible as The Bride's rising from a coma (in Kill Bill Vol. 1 (2003)) that she should recover both so quickly and with so little damage from that blast

* How a family could possibly have survived in tatters this long, given how old the daughters are 

* The clunky Skype-type scenes with Jessica (whoever Jessica really is)

* We also need to believe that Jessica just commissions photographs of someone about to become a suicide-bomber, no questions asked - let alone the ridiculous belief that it matters very much that those particular people were killed or maimed, whatever the real target was

* That the said 5D and its lens are so robust that photographs can be taken after the blast - even more robust than Binoche, really

* Any notion that the camp in Kenya, declared safe, was going to be safe

* That the hut used as a shelter really afforded the photo-opportunities whose results we see

* The clear similarity to te main theme of In a Better World (Hævnen) (2010), which may not have the billing, but... could be a better film


QED The Ayes have it !



End-notes

* What Romeo and Juliet has to do with it is anyone's guess - director / co-writer Erik Poppe likes the sound of the words ?

It could easily have been A Thousand Times Goodnight (2013) to the film... Sooner Friar Lawrence any time !
— THE AGENT APSLEY (@THEAGENTAPSLEY) May 6, 2014

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Turkish delight I

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

This is the first part of a review of Box of Delights, a collection of short animated films, as shown at Bath Film Festival 2013 (@BathFilm) and thanks to a complimentary ticket from the festival


Box of Delights (programme 2), though it takes its title from him, really has nothing to do with John Masefield, and the festival’s film note says :

Although chosen for children, these films appeal to all ages as they summon an assortment of charming characters whilst exploring themes of identity, culture and friendship*.


It is well known from as far back as Greek tragedy, and the ways in which use of the chorus can be dramatic irony, through Chaucer’s ambiguous pilgrims and the punning of Shakespeare that things can operate on more than one level, and the best of these short films (though the longest, at 28 minutes, is much longer than the shortest, which is 2 minutes) do that.


Office Noise (2009)

For younger members of the audience, this film may just have operated (superficially) on the level of a clumsily large animal (elephant), where, as with Tom and Jerry, the hurts are momentary and creatures passing through walls make a hole their shape : in fact, we have a fall, and some bandages, but very little notion of severe or lasting damage. (I have never been in a huge open-plan office with free-standing padded dividers, but we all think that we have from such sources as The Matrix (1999), or even After Hours (1985) – conveniently, here, the place is deserted.)

The dynamic of the film, though, is a little tenuous, with irritating colleague (with an ingressive trunk) becoming regret at irritating colleague being injured, but coming back just as irritating – a lot of effort not to say very much, except as (somewhat dark) entertainment. (Somewhat oddly, an 'Acting Consultant' is credited at the end.)


Between Two Crumbs (2005)

This English title may not be a brilliantly idiomatic translation of Entre Deux Miettes. In any case, Sylvain Ollier, in the entry on Vimeo, says ‘This is my student animated short film, made in 2005 at the Emile Cohl School (France)’.

As Kimberley Ballard’s write-up says, the film ‘seamlessly mixes live action with animation’ in this five-minute short. As to what comfort adults with an experience of bullying can take from it, except that there is always a nemesis in someone bigger than the bully, I do not know, but the embodiment of the minute creatures at its heart is rather wonderful.


What Light Through Yonder Window Breaks (2009)

The quotation from Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet may be lost on some of the audience, although famous, but the film puns on the idea of light breaking into pieces, no doubt partly influenced by the wave / particle duality by means of which science seeks to explain its properties.

Sarah Wickens, on the page for the film at Laughing Squid, is said to have ‘created the beautiful stop-motion short film titled What Light (Through Yonder Window Breaks) [Note the added parenthesis] for her 2009 Masters in Animation graduation project at the Royal College of Art in London.

It is a complete break (no pun intended !) with what went before, because the credits simply acknowledge the starring (no pun intended !) role played by The Sun. What that means is amplified by this quotation on the web-site :

I like to experiment with combining techniques and finding new ways to make animation; in my graduation film I use windows and stencils to create animation from sunlight as it travels around my bedroom.


The film speaks for itself (available via the link above), but just the row of five photographs with the sea in black and white and a jetty centrally reaching out into it show an artistic mind occupies this space. What is created may very well fit in with Mercutio’s equally famous (interrupted) speech in the play about Queen Mab, for example :

She is the fairies' midwife, and she comes
In shape no bigger than an agate-stone
On the fore-finger of an alderman,
Drawn with a team of little atomies
Athwart men's noses as they lie asleep


Akbar’s Cheetah (1999)

This film, according to Kimberley Ballard’s description, is one that comes from an ecopolitical agenda, and I wonder whether, in consequence, its story-line about the Emperor Akbar (1542 – 1605) verges on a racist account. For the emperor’s Wikipedia entry suggests that he understood cheetahs rather better, if he was, indeed, an animal trainer and hunted with and even trained cheetahs, whereas the animation has him acceding to be a prisoner in his (modest) palace to let such creatures rule the roost.

Apart from suggestions of breasts and genitals early on, the film is quite a stylized and relaxed one for this audience, even if the figures, particularly the baby, have a lardy quality. However, it drifted through its course relatively predictably, and just gave the impression that Akbar was rather naive and out of touch, whereas British history of around this era (maybe before – probably the reign of one of the Henrys) shows that control and importation of animals even at this stage was so advanced that the Tower of London’s White Tower was a royal zoo, which is not really consistent with this painted fable.


Nicolas and Guillemette (2008)

Just as What Light, not least as the work of an artist, seemed poles apart from the first two shorts, so this animation is engaging, and charmingly inventive, built, as it seemed to me***, around or even because of the lovely berceuse that we first hear via the musical-box (actually, quite a sophisticated one, with a tape of hinged, punched cards, such as a pianola uses).

The music, composed by Mami Chan and Norman Bambi, is utterly of a piece with the visuals, and they are credited, along with director Virginie Taravel, with the singing voices that we hear. As with Wickens’ film, no description can really do justice to this piece, although Kimberley Ballard rightly talks of ‘childlike glee’, and ‘a whirl of vibrant colours’, and the closing apotheosis is a very pleasant surprise, and, by transcending circumstance, a fitting close.



Continued here (with the remaining four films)


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

Snippets of Shakespeare (with thanks to Radio 3)

More views of - or before - Cambridge Film Festival 2012
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29 April

Some responses to hearing (part of - my fault, not Radio 3's!) the new radio production of Romeo and Juliet to-night


1. What are we to make of Friar Lawrence?

Not really what Prokofiev did in that singing melody that he gave to him in the ballet (and the piano suite that derived from it - at least, until I check, I think that it was in that order (not that the piano writing was fleshed out for orchestra)).

I have little idea whether it is still fashionable to call Shakespeare plays such as Measure for Measure (and All's Well that Ends Well) by the name 'problem plays' (or who originated that term), but the Duke's ethics in MfM seem no more dodgy than the friar's!


2. Whisky in Shakespeare

Not that it was called that in this play, but that is, essentially, what the acqua vitae* that is called for when Juliet's body is found, after she has taken the friar's concoction and so appears dead (but might be capable of being revived).


3. Overacting in Shakespeare

As the scene unfolded, it may have been the performance, but the reactions - in particular of Juliet's father - seemed overblown (and even ridiculous) in an age much more used to mortality at any age (Juliet's certainly being no safeguard) than ours.

For me, almost reminiscent of Lady Macbeth's awkwardly incriminating interjection, roundly put down as inappropriate given that the king has been killed, to the effect not in our house!


4. Sun and Moon

For those who have read - or dare to read - Lunch on the moon?, my own lines needfully do not bear comparison with:


Arise fair sun and kill the envious moon
Who is already sick and pale with grief
That thou her maid art far more fair than she

(Act 2, Scene 2)



5. Another link with Macbeth

Macduff, when he enquires after his wife, is told that she is 'well' (meaning, as used, really that she is at rest), and only comes to the realization about 'all my pretty chickens and their dam' a few lines later.

Here, with the economy that we will see below when Juliet kisses Romeo, Romeo introduces the word, in its usual sense:


How doth my Juliet? That I ask again,
For nothing can be ill if she be well.


To which Balthasar, his servant, directly replies:


Then she is well and nothing can be ill.
Her body sleeps in Capels' monument,
And her immortal part with angels lives.



6. The apothecary

Since the seeming source, in Brooke's Romeus and Juliet (1562), not only narrates the story, but gives characters speech, it should be possible to see how much invention there was in Shakespeare's Act 5, Scene 1, when, 60 lines in, Romeo procures poison**...

That said, before he does so, the Act opens with 11 lines' worth of a dream, in which Romeo begins by questioning the 'flattering truth of sleep', but also showing that, maybe, he is tempted to credit it, and, in any case, feels better for it (until the question in line 15, quoted above, to Balthasar):


My bosom's lord sits lightly in his throne
And all this day an unaccustom'd spirit
Lifts me above the ground with cheerful thoughts


The purchase of the dram of poison, such soon-speeding gear / As will disperse itself through all the veins, put me in mind of a similar transaction in The Canterbury Tales, in the tale told by the Pardoner of the three young men who boast that they will seek out the villain Death to punish him - and find him.


7. The kiss

Brooke's narrative has Juliet kiss*** Romeus, but very differently from Shakespeare's portrayal of the touch of lips:

A thousand times she kist his mouth as cold as stone


Shakespeare's kiss is not only more tantalizing (as Romeo is clearly not long dead, and so might more nearly have been alive****), but there is a telescoping of several elements in barely more than half-a-dozen lines:


What's here? A cup clos'd in my true love's hand?
Poison, I see, hath been his timeless end.
O churl. Drunk all, and left no friendly drop
To help me after? I will kiss thy lips.
Haply some poison yet doth hang on them
To make me die with a restorative.
Thy lips are warm!


Two-and-a-half lines later, Juliet has stabbed herself, not having time for the long speeches and decisions of Brooke's narrative, as she does not want to be prevented from following Romeo in death when she hears voices.

No time for any more kisses than one, no time for farewells, but, more affectingly, the affectionate rebuke of her dead lover, and the conceit of wanting to share the means of death (with all its overtones) in that kiss.



End-notes

* Revd E. Cobham Brewer's delightful A Dictionary of Phrase and Fable, in an old edition that I have, reassuringly tells us, in the entry before, about Aqua Tofana:

A poisonous liquid containing arsenic, much used in Italy in the 17th century by young wives who wanted to get rid of their husbands.


Fair enough, one might think, but the entry puzzlingly continues (and concludes):

It was invented about 1690 by a Greek woman named Tofana, who called it the Manna of St Nicholas of Bari, from the widespread notion that an oil of miraculous efficacy flowed from the tomb of that saint. In Italian called also Aquella di Napoli.


** Which sounded like a woman, on Radio 3, not a man, make of which change what one will...

*** Sure a Freudian slip, I typed 'kill' just now!

**** I am reminded of Leontes, at the end of The Winter's Tale, kissing what he thinks a statue of his dead wife Hermione, and finding it warm to his lips' touch.


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