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

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

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

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

Our guest soloist at The Corn Exchange (@CambridgeCornEx) in Beethoven’s Piano Concerto No. 3, Japanese-born Noriko Ogawa – as well as the work itself – forms the focus for this posting

That said, there is also a soloist for organ on the programme, in the shape of Oliver Condy, for Saint-Saëns’ Symphony No. 3 in C Minor*, Op. 78 (and Borodin’s Polovtsian Dances**)

To-night in Bristol, at @Colston_Hall, next Wednesday @BrusselsPhil comes to Cambridge, with Noriko Ogawa soloist in Beethoven's Op. 37...
— THE AGENT APSLEY (@THEAGENTAPSLEY) November 27, 2014

For those who would like a taste of Ogawa’s playing, she can be heard here (for 30 days from Friday 7 November) on In Tune (@BBCInTune), talking to Radio 3’s (@BBCRadio3blog’s) Suzy Klein, along with fellow judge and head of the panel for Dudley International Piano Competition, John Humphreys, with whom she plays some duets.

Ogawa also gives a lot more out than when performing, as her web-site shows : as mentioned, she is an adjudicator, but additionally a teacher (including at The Guildhall), and has raised funds for the Red Cross Japanese Tsunami Appeal, and The Japan Society (in continuation of that work).

Ten years ago, Ogawa started giving Jamie’s Concerts to provide a sort of musical oasis : they are named after Jamie Mather, the son of Janice, both of whom she came to know when she lodged with Janice and could see how Jamie’s severe autism affected Janice and him. The concerts are not only a practical support for carers through the therapy of music being played for them, but have also helped raised awareness for the demands that they face. She has now just become a Cultural Ambassador of The National Autistic Society.

The opening movement (Allegro con brio) has a very hushed introduction before what then feels like an explosion of sound – just as, in the same time-frame (although it opens with abrupt initial chords), Beethoven’s Symphony No. 3 (in E Flat Major, Op. 55) goes on to make a very strong statement of the principal theme. The concerto and symphony were composed three or four years apart, and first performed – nearly to the day – within two years of each other :

5 April 1803 :

* This concerto - in C Minor, Op. 37

* Symphony No. 2 in D Major, Op. 36

* Christ on the Mount of Olives (Christus am Ölberge), Op. 85 (oratorio)


On 7 April 1805, his Symphony No. 3 in E Flat Major, Op. 55 was first publicly performed (the same year as the first version of Fidelio (with the Leonora Overture No. 2)), but seemed, to some, in the shade of Anton Eberl's Symphony in E Flat Major


In this concerto that Ogawa is bringing to Cambridge, she can be heard, via YouTube, in a nine-minute excerpt that concludes the first movement. Her playing is characterized by a feeling of fluidity, but also reflecting, at other moments, the lugubrious or hesitant character of the writing : repeated notes, sustained trills, and a sense of danger, summed up in the querulous undertones of the final chord.


In a performance by Mitsuko Uchida (with The Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra under the baton of Mariss Jansons), the Largo*** is, at times, extremely hushed and tender – with Uchida’s entranced engagement with, and responsiveness to, the dynamics and mood of the quieter sections of the orchestral accompaniment :

Since the movement (not least as Uchida plays) begins almost like a meditation or prayer, and it leads to, and so sets up, the livelier rhythmicity of the Rondo – Allegro, might we likewise see Ogawa communicating with key players of the reeds and woodwind – particularly with the principal flute, who has a near-duet with her (and which is an instrument that is to the fore in the concerto’s closing moments) ?

Also, Wikipedia® has a lengthy list of first-movement cadenzas composed by others (more than a dozen, including by pianists Wilhelm Kempff and Franz Liszt). Might we find ourselves surprised by hearing not Beethoven’s written-out ones, but someone else’s ? – or could there even be one improvised afresh on the stage of The Corn Exchange… ?

One says ‘afresh’, because, without wanting variation for the sake of it, music played is only music as long as it lives, and has life


End-notes

* The same key as the concerto.

** Which, by long tradition, have been extracted from his opera Prince Igor - rather as the so-called Manfred Overture by Schumann…

*** It starts at around 16:41. It is curious : Look, alongside this one, for the top listings for performances of this Concerto, Beethoven’s Piano Concerto No. 3, on www.youtube.com, and Krystian Zimerman, Evgeny Kissin and Uchida not only all finish before the thirty-eighth minute, but within no more than twelve seconds of each other.


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

Echoes of Carnival of the Animals ?

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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.


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

The Symphonies of Saint-Saëns, and so on

More views of - or before - Cambridge Film Festival 2012
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May Day

We are not confused by what Widor called Organ Symphonies¹, because we all know the Organ Symphony, made indelible (as to its last movement, at any rate) by that pop treatment in the late 70s!

If we know that it is Saint-Saëns' Symphony No. 3, we know that there must be others (though he could have destroyed them²), but they are never mentioned, and there seems no question of playing them.

So, as I dilated elsewhere, with Saint-Saëns as with Bruch, and we might, at best, hear

* Danse macabre

* The Carnival of the Animals

* One of the piano concertos³

* If operatically minded, Samson et Dalilia or one of a number of others


Well, maybe I shall try to find a CD of any of these other two or three symphonies, which might be indicative of whether conductors give them the time of day

If I find one, I might even buy it - at the right price - and waffle on about it in another posting...




End-notes

¹ Actually, he called them Symphonie pour orgue (but that amounts to the same thing) . Of course, the Toccata from No. 5 (Op. 42, No. 1) most often gets an airing, usually detached.

² It appears that he wrote four others, but withdrew the first, and that what is known as No. 3 is the last of the five that he wrote.

³ Of which (I have them on a two-CD, with, as I recall, a crazy need to change discs mid-concerto!), I think that I like No. 4 best - it may be that it is the one with the jaunty theme that I find reminiscent of Beethoven's Piano Concerto No. 5 (the so-called Emperor).

The Beethoven, at any rate, has that bouncy, Tigger theme in the last movement, which Imogen Cooper, as soloist in a live performance, convinced me could sound other than ridiculous (and said afterwards, as I recall, that playing it was a question of properly addressing the fact that it contains a hemiola).


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