What a treat, what a surprise ! : Pembroke Festival of Voice, with Ruby Hughes and Joseph Middleton (work in progress)

This is a review of Pembroke Festival of Voice, with Ruby Hughes and Joseph Middleton

More views of - or before - Cambridge Film Festival 2019 (17 to 24 October)
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29 February

This is a review (work in progress) of Pembroke Festival of Voice,
with Ruby Hughes and Joseph Middleton, in a recital given in The Old Library, Pembroke College, Cambridge, on Friday 29 February 2020 at 8.00 p.m.

When one had paid on the door, expecting Kitty Whately (accompanied by Joseph Middleton), but put right by known others there who were in the know, how could one possibly not be delighted - with no disrespect whatever to Whately ! - to find that Ruby Hughes was performing in her stead (with Middleton) ? !

Love them or loathe them, but the wonted place - though there is also The Cambridge Concert Calendar for every term - to find a music-event is 'the railings : Middleton and Whately, with Mahler's Rückertlieder (in The Old Library at Pembroke), had fitted the bill, so Middleton with Hughes was certainly no disappointment.

The directness of Ruby Hughes, and the concomitant sincerity that it expresses, is palpable - it is through the former that we feel and read the latter

[...]


With Frauenliebe und -leben (i.e. Frauenliebe und Frauenleben), Schumann's Opus 47 song-cycle on the bill of fare, however, who could be dissatisfied at the thoughtful arc with which Hughes and Middleton traversed these eight numbers, from the - very much as it were - infatuation of 'Seit ich ihn gesehen' to the stark realizations of 'Nun hast du mir den ersten Schmerz getan' : not in any way even needing (as some do) to be apologetic for the milieu and import of Chamisso's poems, let alone limit them by or to their time. As the Purcell texts should have shown us, human-beings are and have been over the centuries, for all their differing trappings, creatures with and moulded by the same needs, desires and weaknesses as the heroines of Shakespearean drama, or the novels of The Brontës.

[...]



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

Czech classics in Cambridge

This is a Festival review of Melvyn Tan and The Škampa Quartet

More views of – or before – Cambridge Film Festival 2015 (3 to 13 September)
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24 July

This is a review of a concert given, as part of Cambridge Summer Music Festival, by Melvyn Tan and The Škampa Quartet at West Road Cancert Hall on Friday 24 July 2015 at 7.30 p.m.

Cambridge Summer Music Festival (@cambridgemusic) has, in years past, given opportunities to hear both the Quartet and Melvyn Tan – one well remembers the latter in Messiaen (Quatuor pour la fin du temps – same page-turner !), and in a piano recital (also at West Road : @WestRoadCH) – and the former at The Union Society (@cambridgeunion), and here they were together !

West Road Concert Hall, Cambridge

Beethoven ~ Piano Sonata No. 30 in E Major, Op. 109

Janáček ~ String Quartet No. 2 (‘Intimate Letters’)

Dvořák ~ Piano Quintet No. 2* in A Major, Op. 81



The review begins with what is most immediate in one’s mind, where Melvyn Tan (@Melvynbetan) and The Škampa Quartet played together



Antonín Dvořák (1841–1904) ~ Piano Quintet No. 2* in A Major, Op. 81

1. Allegro, ma non tanto

2. Dumka : Andante con moto

3. Scherzo (Furiant) : Molto vivace

4. Finale : Allegro


The huge scale of Dvořák’s Piano Quintet No. 2 (in A Major, Op. 81) (from 1887), is necessarily influenced by the scale of the quintets by Schumann (1842) and Brahms (1864), and its principal themes will not fail to be known to and impress us.

So Dvořák gives us one of his telling melodies on cello, before it is passed to the first violinist (Helena Jiříkovská) : we could not only see, later, Melvyn Tan’s facial pleasure at how she rendered it, but also smiles from Adéla Štajnochrová (second violin), Lukáš Polák (cello) and Radim Sedmidubský (viola) at playing this music from their homeland, which they were going to develop for us with commitment and verve :

Into the structure of the movement, Dvořák inserts dance measures, and we hear him, through them, reaching to make a grand assertion with the material. Then, when Polák brings back the theme, it is controlled, with piano set against it, and Tan goes on to punctuate and facilitate the movement, with the music revealing itself, and its expressive potential, in the repeats, and with the intervallic leaps giving us a sense of reaching for the stars.

The scoring seems to use the piano and the quartet as if they are desks of instruments in an orchestra, ranging the former against the later, and, in the rise and fall, do we hear echoes of the composer's symphonic sound from the late 1880s / early 1890s ? (It is a different approach from the more integrative one of Brahms, but with the same orchestral possibilities at work.) With the sound of the piano closing the movement, there was a strong feeling of excitement in the ensemble to be performing this work.


At the opening of the second movement, Tan placed the theme before us with articulation and great delicacy, and then, as the others handled it, continued to do so in the capacity of embellishing and enriching it. We are a little reminded, by a melodic line in the cello part, of the slow movement of the Schumann quintet, and then Dvořák lulls us, again and again, into a restful state with each time that the piano restates the initial theme.

New vistas open with a feeling of holidaying (or journeying), and, with an undercurrent from the cello, of traversing summer meadows. Very tender playing from Polák, with the merest of gestures on violin, brought in a section of enchanted quietude : the other players were profoundly hushed as he played tremolo writing with a powerful strength of feeling. Then, full of energy, a new motif, and Tan’s face said it all, as that motif turned into a modified form of the theme. Just before the end, the holiday mood resumed, and so did the magic, in this respectfully unhurried and quiet music-making – almost a lullaby.


Albeit in proportion to the rest of the work, this is a biggish Scherzo**, and it is almost an anthology of themes, with the same feeling of yearning / journeying. This was playing with every appearance (though we know the hard work that it belied) of effortlessness, and Dvořák makes us feel a measure of ease, though he is shifting the tonal centres, and also playfulness, with Tan giving us a profound legato, echoed by the string-players. That moment of yearning briefly recurs, before the use of variation-form reminds us of the Beethoven Piano Sonata, and the Scherzo closes with very definite, clear strokes.

The Finale is written with, and was played with, graciousness and also propulsive force, and Dvořák subdivides, by sounding the violins against the cello and the viola : the stage arrangement chosen, with the first violin to audience left, and the viola to the right, was good visibly, but also separated the voices here. Rhythmic patterns are used in the scoring, as well as little, playful gestures of the notes of another key, and the effect of small pulses.

As the Allegro moves, it develops into a fast, modulating fugue with a lively piano voice, but then bringing back a theme from an earlier movement. The harmony becomes ambiguous, and there is a play-fight of a tussle as to where we are rooted, before reducing to a hush, for a simple statement on violin, to which the other strings add descending figures.

They provided exceedingly quiet harmony to a piano passage, before what must have been one of the softest sections of pizzicato ever. From there, first violin Helena Jiříkovská took the lead, but, with competing material that desired to come to the fore, Dvořák left us guessing right to the closing bar to see how he would end this thrilling, lively piece.


One took great pleasure in and in hearing this work, and was most impressed both by the integration of all the players into the work, and by the deployment of what Ralph Vaughan Williams (in praising a performance under Sir Adrian Boult) called a true pianissimo (or ppp). The Festival audience was abundantly happy to have finished the varied programme with this compelling playing, where attention had been intense all round.

* * * * *

Ludwig van Beethoven (1770–1827) ~ Piano Sonata No. 30 in E Major, Op. 109

1. Vivace ma non troppo / Adagio espressivo

2. Prestissimo

3. Gesangvoll, mit innigster Empfindung. Andante molto cantabile ed espressivo

Melvyn Tan (image from www.nmcrec.co.uk)

Performances vary as to whether the two sides of the first movement are ‘run together’ with another in that of the second movement, but these so-called five (or six) ‘Late’ sonatas are their own kind of beast : probably, one guesses more (as one listens), not because Beethoven only came technically to think in terms that broke the mould at this stage in his life, but because, as Bach was, he must have been aware of his legacy, and could dare to say the things that had been in his heart for a long time ? [For CRASSH (@CRASSHlive) in January (also at West Road), Murray Perahia’s compelling analysis of, and guided performance with The DoricString Quartet (@doric_quartet) of movements from, the original form of Beethoven’s Opus String Quartet Op. 130 revealed the roots of his thinking, and of his future-proofing compositions.]

Wonderful concert last night @melvynbetan @cambridgemusic pic.twitter.com/5WEFMo353P

— Cambridge Plants (@CambridgePlants) July 25, 2015

Melvyn Tan, who saluted the one nearest to him, clearly had not seen before the distended urns, bearing plants with green foliage, that had been arranged at either end of the piano : as they did not disturb him, they served to give a certain balance to the backdrop of what can, visually, be an exposed stage at West Road. As is usual with him, he seems to catch himself as much as us by surprise in starting to play, i.e. without any grand preparation of holding the arms aloft above the keyboard :

He threw us straight into something that causes us to ask what Schubert (1791–1828) would have made of this theme (or of the use of variation form ?) – he whose mere thirty-one years alive were, apart from the last twenty months, coincident with when Beethoven was alive (1770–1827 : as we do not always realize ?). Beethoven gives us here – with typical, and undimmed, Beethovenian fire, drive and energy – a mix of feelings and techniques straightaway, with a great sense of balance, and of modulation, momentary touches of great beauty, and the hands gradually separating to the ends of the keyboard.

In all this, Tan felt immensely prepared, but not to have premeditated the exact interpretative choices that he brought to the performance – which is what one values so much in his approach, the sense of freedom within full facility with the score – except that it was always going to be rhythmically very live, and played from the inside outwards.


A Schubertian theme of tenderness (or Schumannesque, ahead of its time ?), which was right at the outset of the Andante, Tan repeated slightly more softly. Pacing the playing as if it were breathing, he brought out its quality as a chorale, and, emphasizing some of the not obviously significant internal lines, led us into the variations : the heart of the matter, infused by dance-forms, and also with wonder at what the world might have made of this music at the time...

If one had judged by appearance, and been unable to hear Tan’s playing, he did not look at ease, and one would not have imagined that he was creating such a beautiful, appropriately precise sound much in his approach, the sense of freedom within full facility with the score – as part of which, as the variations progressed, he also brought out some spikiness in the writing. In working on Beethoven with The Doric Quartet (as mentioned above), Murray Perahia talked about a moment when, to try to paraphrase the religious conception that he evoked, Heaven comes to meet Earth, and we had that feeling from Beethoven here much in his approach, the sense of freedom within full facility with the score – and then building to an expansive treatment.

Yet, at root (as with, say, The Goldberg Variations), all that development comes back to a simple statement, and then further decoration / ornamentation, in which we hear Tan exposing the full feeling within this sonata, and enwrapping us in it : we are willing it on, to where we hear it to be going, and he is maintaining our engagement, by keeping something back. It is, though, in a simple statement again that Beethoven, through Tan, seeks a conclusion, with much in his approach, the sense of freedom within full facility with the score – reminding us of the chorale element much in his approach, the sense of freedom within full facility with the score – a nigh Lutheran, quiet close to this thoughtfully vibrant interpretation.


* * * * *


Leoš Janáček (1854–1928) ~ String Quartet No. 2 (1928) (‘Intimate Letters’)

1. Andante – Con moto – Allegro

2. Adagio – Vivace

3. Moderato – Andante – Adagio

4. Allegro – Andante – Adagio

The Škampa Quartet (but one got away, Adéla Štajnochrová) : Radim Sedmidubský (viola), Helena Jiříkovská (first violin), Lukáš Polák (cello)

The opening Andante sees paired violins against, first, viola in an extreme Sul ponticello, then cello : in all this, there is the assurance of mastery of language and form from, especially here, Radim Sedmidubský (viola) and Lukáš Polák (cello). Propelled by writing for the latter, the work opens like a flower, but one that is both vibrant (energy, passion, enthusiasm, from Janáček and his interpreters) and, at the same time, shy and delicate, exemplified by an almost imperceptible Sul ponticello passage from Polák. Throughout, the members of the quartet are communicating to each other, as well as to us, links in its episodic structure, where it moves from a slow and reflective feeling of the rhapsodic to intensity. Brought in by quiet writing for viola and touches from the violins, the movement came to a high, bright close.


The Adagio starts with sinuous writing for viola, which passes back and forward with the second violin : we hear not only the full, rich sound of the quartet, but also Janáček’s pleasure and skill in writing for what is best in the viola. Beginning with very fast figurations for lead violin, the Vivace is heartfelt in its harmonies, but there are also ambiguous notes and discords – as it progresses to the rhythms of a march or dance, there is the ambivalence of Will it, won’t it ? to the mood.

We noticed the quartet’s careful use of a range of dynamics, and how contributions to the dialogue from the viola are a significant part of the work***. It is with a sensation of inner irresolution (in some version of Janáček whom we fictionalize having all these experiences of mood- and thought-patterns) that we conclude.


Led by first violin Helena Jiříkovská, the third movement has a formal, but not icy, tone, before sounding triste and regretful. Just for, initially, a short episode, it is like a folk lullaby – when, after other material, it recurs, it is quieter, but with intensity and feeling in the realisation. With an element of squeakiness (from the score), the violins quietly proceeded, but, then, the players are on full, with an alternation of a dance and a firm pulse. With a highly energized section, from which a frenetic version of the lullaby emerges, and we come back – and back – to its theme, it is as if the music (as art is sometimes thought to be) is therapeutic. Janáček seems to be seeking a soft resolution, and, twice, ushers in an open sound, although it is to be with the end of its outbursts that it is over.


As we had been used to, The Škampa Quartet brought overwhelming musicality to the familiar theme with which the last movement asserts itself – then, a quiet interlude, before a little moment of fireworks, and resuming the theme, now full and clear. Still, all is not well with the interaction between the inner and outer in this work, and Polák had some stark statements to make on cello, and there are tensions in the harmony, and with keys and rhythms pulling against each other.

A first use of playing pizzicato (first the viola, then the two violins) led into a ‘jogging’ line for cello, of which the violins were then mimetic. In this, a sense, still, of unease and even pain, and a reduction to a very gentle dynamic. However, there is no way except up, and then all four elements of the quartet in several bars’ worth of a hugely scratchy, amorphous character : it is to resume, louder and longer, but, before it does so, the viola gives us the big theme. On the edge of our seats with the emotion in the viola part – and somewhat as with the Dvořák quintet (please see above) – we are asking where does / will / can this music end.

But end is what it forces itself to do, and we know that we have heard what offers great understanding of this soul-searching piece : Yes, factually the players are Czech, and share that with the composer, but they really felt, on some quite different level, to be magnificently in tune with this repertoire, and to have done far, far more than entertain us with it : taking us into their world.



For now, the review ends there, with a continuation / completion to come...


End-notes

* Wrongly identified, in the Festival programme, as Piano Quintet No. 1, which was Dvořák’s Opus 5 (in the same key) : although he destroyed the manuscript soon after, it did have a premiere, and one understands that it was having borrowed a copy to revise the work, fifteen years later, that caused him to write anew, and produce this masterpiece in the tradition of those already mentioned.

** Not unlike the scale of that, marked Andante, of Schubert's Piano Trio No. 1 in B Flat Major, Op. 99 (D. 898) ?

*** Maybe it was an instrument favoured by Kamila Stösslová, who (despite being a married woman who did not return his feelings) corresponded with Janáček for many years, and was with him when he died ? (We understand that she was Janáček’s inspiration for Kát'a in Katya Kabanová, the vixen in The Cunning Little Vixen, and Emilia Marty in The Makropulos Affair.)


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

Thaxted Festival, from several years ago : Charles Owen demolishes Schumann, but builds with Bach

A much-delayed review of a recital given by Charles Owen at Thaxted Festival

More views of – or before – Cambridge Film Festival 2015 (3 to 13 September)
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14 July

Much delayed (through having hidden itself in a sub-folder), a review

(now impressionistically completed) of a recital given by Charles Owen at

Thaxted Festival on Saturday 30 June 2012

By which title one means that Carnaval, Op. 9, when played, coheres, but this performance had the opposite effect.

One cannot claim, of course, to be able to play the work, with its demands, but would one wish to, if it sounded as measured, as ‘balanced’ as this ? :

One had taken more pleasure from hearing the close of the work played, by chance, on Radio 3 an earlier day, and longed to play a CD of Martha Argerich to counteract this impression of performing the work, but without actually seeming to play it.

It was not that what Charles Owen did was four-square as such, but that, in each movement, every phrase or gesture balanced every other one out, feeling as if it were leaving nothing. Also, in terms of a feeling of a whole, nothing linked each movement, and it was only when we got to the Davidsbund, in that there then has to be a leading-up to something, that using restraint seemed to come off – but too late.


So there were reservations about how The Goldberg Variations, following the interval, would fare : there was the promise that, led by feeling, it was likely that most of the repeats would be played, but would one stay, and be there for seventy minutes or so, regretting it ?

No, for this was a recital of two halves, and, as night atmospherically fell in Thaxted Church, and one could see less and less, and focus less and less on seeing Owen in a pool of light (there with Bach, in his score, and the page-turner), one experienced the greatness of this work, its inevitable, but always surprising, unfolding – leading back, as we know that it will when we get to Variations 30 / 31, to the simplicity of the Aria.

We had been told that what to notice were the three variations in the minor, and the performance did really work around them. Unlike with Charles Owen’s Schumann, where one felt that we had heard – and he had brought out of it – nothing but the notes, the essence of the Bach had been present to us here, and one lingered in the darkness, satisfied, before daring to applaud as the impression of the quiet close Aria died away.


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

Britten Sinfonia Voices : life, song and wine

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14 February

A concert given by Britten Sinfonia (@BrittenSinfonia) at West Road Concert Hall, Cambridge, on Tuesday 11 February


This concert comprised three compositions by baritone Roderick Williams (two of which had received their World premiere at the Sinfonia’s concert in Norwich the previous week), four-part songs by Schubert and Schumann, and a Lied by the latter.

It started with Williams’ Red Herring Blues for clarinet and piano (from 1994), which opened with a jaunty solo from the former, played by Joy Farrall. Tom Poster then joined in, but with similar material that yet sounded different on a different instrument. As it developed, there were some violent gestures from the piano, reminiscent of moments in Olivier Messiaen’s Vingt regards sur l'enfant-Jésus when some powerful chords are struck, and even of that composer’s birdsong. A short, meditative piece, it ended with what seemed like a quotation from the first bars of Gershwin’s Rhapsody in Blue.

Next, the four members of Britten Sinfonia Voices (Susan Gilmour Bailey, Alexandra Gibson, Nicholas Mulroy, and Eamonn Dougan) gave two multipart Lieder of Schubert, Der Tanz (D. 826) from 1825, and then the earlier (1816) An die Sonne (D. 439), the second much longer than the first, which gave a taste of the operatic quality of these voices, which happily reached right to the back of the auditorium, and with very clear German diction. An die Sonne allowed us to hear what good voices they are individually, before blending them again so well.

Whereas the other Lied contrasted the despondency and infirmity of age with the energy and dancing of youth, this writer, Johann Peter, turns to weightier things : the poet’s persona enjoying creation in the immediate moment, even praising it, but suddenly realizes the truth of his mortality along with it. The line-ending of the final stanza, Staub (dust, in the phrase ‘Return to dust !’) is followed by a somewhat creepy tone from Mulroy’s tenor, but, as the stanza is reprised, resolving into a happier conception (via the word Laub, meaning ‘foliage’).

The first of Williams’ two commissions by the Sinfonia and Wigmore Hall was The last house on the river, for all forces, and had an eerie quality to its opening, and hints of Boulez’ writing for piano, before we heard from the clarinet in its chalumeau register. The work went round in cycles of Williams responded to by the singers in close-harmony style, and with regular instrumental intermissons.

Karen Hayes’ highly poetic text (she is the librettist for both works) is deftly set by Williams, and the very English sound of the group of four anchored this very specific evocation of time and place, with the intensity of the what is perceived picked out by the almost improvisatory feel of the clarinet writing. An enthusiastic round of applause met this new work, and the sensation in West Road Concert Hall was that there was appreciation for a well-conceived and performed programme of music by and sung by Williams and his colleagues.

A solo Schumann Lied followed, Auf einer Burg (from Liederkreis, Op. 39, setting Joseph von Eichendorff), where Williams’ mastery of his vocal resources, and of telling a story with his intonation and phrasing, were to the fore. As with the earlier Lieder, where there was a movement from a joyous state to – or to contemplating – a state of decline, this Lied leads us up, through all the surrounding circumstance, to a wedding, but the final image is that the beautiful bride (die schöne Braut) is crying.

Staying with Schumann, Britten Sinfonia Voices brought us Mondnacht, from 1840, which had a feeling of floating, of calm, with a change of mood as it ended just with piano. Then Schubert again, Schicksalsenker (D. 763) from eighteen years earlier, which began with tenor voice, and gave the feeling of being taken back in time, partly in the restraint with which the quartet sang, and partly in the repetition of the word from the title (Fate’s Anchor). The link is that there is a feeling of transcendence, of the soul stretching wide its wings (Und meine Seele spannte / Weit ihre Flügel aus), and of a world where every pain has escaped far away (Fern entfoh’n ist jeder Schmerz).

The feeling of Gemütlichkeit in the Trinklied (D. 183) from 1815 set the mood for this final group of works, with even a table and drinks of some sort as the Stammtisch of the Voices, as they gave us this drinking song, praising friendship and wine, and with variants of the sentiment of Ohne Freunde, ohne Wein, / ich nicht im Leben sein (‘Without friends, without wine, I should not like to be alive’) as the closing couplet to each verse.

Next, the second Williams’ commission In His Cups (again setting Karen Hayes), so one could see why it was keeping company with this Schubert genre. For this piece, Joy Farrall played off stage in a piece that evoked a Britten-like sort of Englishness, of a village pub, and of secular and church life in small communities in an earlier decade, and with outbursts from the piano. The diction and syntax of Hayes’ poetry takes one beyond John Clare and ‘The Deserted Village’ even to Shakespeare : But in his cups he’d thought her beautiful could evoke the topers in Twelfth Night, and Williams had carefully matched his setting to a pastoral of yesteryear, such as might parallel an inland Peter Grimes.

The final two short songs, both by Schubert (Lebenslust(D. 609) from 1818, and another Trinklied (D. 75) from 1813), ended the recital, and both stir up the notions of friendship. In the first, we have allein sein ist öde, wer kann sich da freu’n (‘To be alone is bleak, who could enjoy being there ?’), and the delivery was both crisp and emotional. The second had a clarinet line added to the scoring for tenor, chorus and piano, so it was a rousing close to the proceedings, with even a Schiller-like invocation of the spirit of brotherhood in Laßt uns all Brüder sein ! (‘Let us all be brothers !’) – perhaps the correct context of the ‘Ode to Joy’ is the pub ?!

A recital that delivered many flavours and juxtapositions, all of which seemed to enrich each other.


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